A Girl...

O Come Let Us Adore Him

This weekend, in addition to enjoying our first Saturday at home in three weeks by doing the tea/muffins/Car Talk/buried-in-blankets-on-the-couch-until-noon thing, we drove out to Target, whose aisles were lined to bursting with Very Serious Parents taking Very Serious Swings with kiddie-sized baseball bats and Very Serious Shakes of Etch-a-Sketches, no doubt new! and improved! and XTreme! (Cue Kenny Rogers). It seemed everyone else's largely scientific approach to Christmas toy shopping was in stark contrast to Simon and I staring slack-jawed with wonder at the Barbie Jacuzzi Party Van with real working disco lights. If you ask me, the "reason for the season" just might have something to do with getting adults to look at the Barbies and Cabbage Patch Kids and Superman action figures and stop worrying so goddamn much about interest rates. Alas, we did not buy the Barbie Jacuzzi Party Van, but left instead with a box of cereal, some exfoliating shower mits, six plastic containers for under-the-bed storage, and a DVD of Grease 2: Electric Boogaloo, one of the best movies ever despite Maxwell Caulfield having the weakest singing voice this side of the equator. Strangely, our December trip to Target also marked the first time we've spent under $100 at that establishment, which means we may or may not be responsible for the downfall of the American economy come 2007. What can I say? We spent all our money on camarones south of the border.

And speaking of kids (weren't we?), if you're going to throw a party at which guests will be required to take off their shoes when they enter your house, consider noting that detail on on your Evite. Otherwise you're likely to end up with a pack of disgruntled gentlemen partygoers stomping about with their naked hairy toes poking out, exposed to the sensitive eyes of children, and there's nothing Christmassy about going blind when you're five years old.

And still speaking of children, the twenty or so at the party we atteneded shoelessly on Saturday made enough noise for one hundred furry monsters on uppers. As a group, they were so loud I thought the cops were going to come shut us down and breathalize them all for spiked juiceboxes. Damn, kids are loud. (And also "Damn kids are loud.") Among the quiet ones, however, were a 14-weeker, a 12-weeker, an 11-weeker, a 10-weeker, and the 3-weeker that belongs to my coworker. Simon held them all and made up inappropriate songs for them, which they repaid in drool and in not questioning the validity of his religious headwear.

As for my piano-ing, one and a half plastic tumblers of wine before I took the bench meant that by time we hit the first "fa la la la la"s I was in that soft and fuzzy space between knowing that I'm missing every fourth note and not caring. No one was really into caroling anyway (who could hear singing above the toddler racket?), but that worked out just fine for me as I hadn't practiced at all until that morning, which is also when I discovered that of my twenty books of Christmas music, all but one were left in Salt Lake last year. (Un)fortunately (depending on who you are), the sole remaining book just happened to be the one that contains the classic "R2D2, We Wish You a Merry Christmas," which you might recognize as the B side of the smash hit "What Do You Get a Wookie for Christmas If He Already Has a Comb?" You think I'm kidding. But who has time to ponder the paradox of a Star Wars Christmas that somehow occurred a long long time before and a galaxy far away from Jesus' birth? Because seriously: