It's been a rather involved couple of days. I was left alone with my family today - never a good idea - and somehow managed to have a snit about the Oxford English Dictionary of all things. Family never fails to make me act like a sullen teenager in all black. I feel like I should be listening to the Doors and the Cure. I feel like I should be wearing eyeliner. Wisely I abstained from dinner and I'll meet up with my mum tomorrow afternoon. She's also meeting Michael tomorrow evening which is surprisingly not unsettling. I feel a bit more centred now. Family is frustrating for virtually everyone I know, to some degree, but it's freaky how much it makes you revert to childhood when you've been away for a while. It's much easier to deal with across a phone line.
This Christmas Eve will be the first one that I don't spend drinking mulled wine and martinis at Eric Martin's house, where anyone under 26 ends up playing video games in the basement as if we're at the kiddie table. You know, with Eric swishing up and down stairs to mingle with all his guests. Last year, Matthew and I argued with this rather stupid pagan woman who made ignorant statements about Christianity as well as highly stereotypical male/female statements. Not only does everyone have the right to believe in their own faith, she had no grasp of the fact that her friend, the host, is actually Christian. How is that not insulting? She called me on the fact that I thought she was shit. Then she wandered away - the woman has children, which scares me - and the rest of us played Dance Dance Revolution. I was, as usual, completely uncoordinated. I abhor structure, apparently.
But I can't say that it's horrible that I won't be in Prince George. Other than Matthew, the only one I'd miss was Eric, but he's not even in PG. He's in Bangkok with Leather-Michael. The Andrews are in Vancouver. I talked to Matthew on the phone but then my cel's power cut out and I was left with dead air. Yes, I miss my dad, but he'll see me in March and I think having one parent within range is enough for any given time.
Michelle went to PG today for a week. I have the house to myself. Which is nice, but I know she hates it there and I expect a phone call within a few days. I think the main thing for both of us is that we have a home now, here, in Victoria. It's ceased to be "going home," it's just going to Prince George, where the sky is grey and we're reminded what snow is. I like not being able to remember snow. I like the wandering around with my friends here, the impromptu trips to Peabody's for porn or my writing dates with Joy and Matty-B.
Oh, Michelle and I opened each other's gifts. I got her a copy of the first volume of Promethea, which she was craving. She got me a book of essays and interviews about and by the Dalai Lama, which is rather exciting and is now at the top of the pile for when I finish Tom Robbins's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, a book which makes me want to have thumbs the size of dinner plates.