Mayonnaise & Moonlight

You know, because it’s before Christmas Eve! Mom told me that last night.

I can hardly believe it’s so close to Christmas. With moving and all that, Advent went by as a blur of purple and what?-already?-pink. But the tree is up (with a new piece of tape on the stand, as is traditional), the lights are lit, and the gifts are wrapped. I bought the last of mine two days ago… Example number five thousand and one of how I am a procrastinator. I always want to find the Perfect Present to give people. Something unique! And cool! Yet useful! Soooo, yeah. Luckily Mom knows of all cool stores ever and was also willing to drive me there even in her slightly stressed mood. We went into the first one, where I got __________ for ______, but did not find anything else. Then we went into a ____ store so I could look for ______, but did not find any, so then as we got into the car…
Mom: “Oh my gosh. Ohhh my gosh. We’ve been in like a ton of stores and you haven’t found anything!!!”
Me: “Um. We’ve been in two stores, and one of them was like a fake Hallmark. And I actually did buy something. So… be calm.”
Mom: “Oh. Right.”
So then I kept doing my impression of her freaking out, which made her laugh, and I found the rest of my presents in the third store we went to. All was well.

It even snowed this morning, and there was a GORGEOUS first snow last week which actually stuck and was awesome and cool. I took a walk through my new neighborhood in it, and got a bit lost. I was going to follow my tracks home, but the snow was falling rapidly and I didn’t really want to go the same way I had come. The unknown was calling me! Oh, and I heard the bells ringing from the nearby church, which gave me some idea of which direction I should walk in. I eventually made it home… Though at one point I was a little afraid I would be doomed to become the Lost Soul of Serborn, doomed to wander suburbia forever in search of home.

Buuut then I heard very familiar barking, and realized I was right around the corner from my house.

Humans: 1. Cul-de-sacs: 0.  

Right now Dodge is pretending to spy on me from the other side of the Christmas tree, and Dad is listening to cats meowing Jingle Bells.

Yep. It feels like Christmas now… 

The other night I had a dream in which I was talking to my mom, and I said “Hey, tomorrow is Thursday.” But she said,  “No, tomorrow’s Christmas!” and I shouted “YAY!” and did a happy dance. I think I’m aging backward this year. :)

In that case, YAY!!! CHRISTMAS!!!

Merry Christmas everybody!

Love,
Pen

OHMYGOSHINTERNETINTERNETINTERNET—

Hi.

Did you miss me?

Yeah. I’m a little insane right now, from not having the internet in a week, or more, I think. I;ve been able to access email once or twice, and look up a few things in bits and scraps. To do this post, I had to outwit a computer at the school where my mom works. It’s all because we’re living at our new house now (yay! I must say, unpacking is way better than packing.) and the internets have not yet been connected. Tomorrow is the day we’re back online. I hope.

I mean, I didn’t think not having internet would have this big of an effect on me. I consider myself very low-tech. Anti-tech, sometimes. Convenience, bah humbug! But the past few days have proven me pretty wrong.

Still, I guess it’s been good. I’ve been reading real books a lot more. Plus, my room is pretty much unpacked; I’m just working out the details. I can see the moon setting as I lay in bed– I saw the lunar eclipse the other night. I have been looking out of the spy-hole in the side door, and gazing at the sky, learning where everything is and what is around me. The new house is starting to feel like home….

From beyond the realm of internet,
Pen

Moving is…..

Insanity.

We’re throwing things into Dad’s new (insanely yellow) truck and the back of the van, driving back and forth to the new house, putting things in bedroom closets and basement corners. One of my tasks was to pack up all the Precious Moments figurines from the dining room hutch. Then Mom made me organize them in some theme-related manner, the result of which was me trying to make the boxes fit into other boxes in an optimal-usage-of-space. It’s a new game I like to call…. Precious Tetris! Every time I finished a box (oh yes, there were many boxes of boxes) it was Next Level time. I also played Mini Tetris by packing small, breakable items inside of loaf pans.

I also packed:
One million rolls of film (Mom told me to label the box, so I wrote “Please Develop These!”)
CDs (and casett tapes. …..really?)
nature items (feathers, shells, rocks, a bit of a wasp nest– what’s a bedroom without them?)
all my books (*cries*)
an electric typewriter (there is truly nothing like it for curbing the inner editor! I get good ideas while typing on it, which happened yesterday night while I was there…)
most of my clothes (I have a huge closet now, and I take up one fourth of it.)

Poncho packs like four toy guns in a box and takes it over. Then this morning he was complaining that he has no boxes. Hmm, I wonder how that happened.

We also took over the Christmas tree, which will now be kept in the basement, since the new house doesn’t exactly have an attic.

Dad: “I’ll sure miss throwing it down the stairs.”
Mom: “We could throw it down the stairs after…?”

I know. The loss of a lovely Christmas tradition. But, the way the ceiling peaks in the new living room prompted Dad to suggest that we get an extra-humongous tree. “It could be like the White House tree.”
Me: “Christmas at the gray house.”
Dodge: “How would we decorate it?”

It’s going to be interesting having Christmas at the new house. I’m pretty excited…. But not about packing more boxes, or vaccuuming more baskets, or seeing another square inch of contact paper…. But at least by the end of this madness I’ll be really, really good at Tetris. ;)

~Pen