A Girl...

Unsilent Night

I have figured out the key to staying warm in the house, and it is not, surprisingly, to sit on the couch and whine pathetically until both the boyfriend and the cat leave the room because I am just that intolerable.

No, the key to staying warm in the house is to keep moving--briskly! efficiently!--from the minute I walk in the door at six and tuck in under the electric blanket at eleven. Last night instead of hunkering down in front of the tube to commence my usual moaning and groaning, I told Simon that my goal was to get the suitcases unpacked and the Christmas tree out, and that, my friends, kept me from freezing into a permanent slouch with the channel stuck on the goddamn CW.

Usually it takes us two weeks to unpack, but seeing as how we'll be travelling again in exactly fourteen days, for once I forced myself toward the active end of the continuum--the one opposite of where we don't unpack at all and just take our Mexico stuff to Salt Lake City, where it is currently hovering just a few degrees above nut-freezing frigid. But because I would like to keep my beloved's nuts thawed and in good working order, and also because I don't think I'll be wearing a halter top to look at the holiday lights in Temple Square, I declared that we should unpack, and unpack we did.

I also thought it was important that we make a priority of putting the tree up (in the hallway, outside our apartment door, where no one, not even we, can see it, because that's the only place it can't get eaten artificial needle by artificial needle by my cat) because, again, we're leaving in two weeks and if we don't get it up now we might as well just skip it. We also put up a fake garland with fake snow that covers every solid surface with glitter (goody; watch for catbox glitter poo) and a few other little festive knick-knacks. We have not yet broken out the Christmas music (save the Mexico hotel lobby music ("Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" en Espagnol) and the old lady with headphones and sheet music practicing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in her warbly old-lady voice while sitting in a deck chair beside the pool). This Saturday is the annual Christmas party at which I play crappy piano for a bunch of people I don't know and their children, who are all under age 4 and speak French because apparently French lessons are the height of toddler cool these days. I guess this means I will spend tonight practicing my arpeggios while Simon is at band. I guess this also means I will be cold cold cold, unless I can work a little stand-up-and-dance-around Jerry Lee Lewis* into a rock-and-roll version of "O Holy Night." Maybe not.

*It wasn't until earlier this year that I realized Jerry Lee Lewis and Jerry Lewis are not the same person.