December 25th:
Mom was still snoring away on the futon in the living room until 9:30 or so, thank god.

I tiptoed into the kitchen and had a couple of the several hundred full-sized peanut butter cups we made the day before. I forgot to mention it in my last entry. The three of us ladies formed a sort of chocolate bark-peanut butter dough ball assembly line and cranked out a fridge full of candy in less than two hours. One of my greatest accomplishments to date, for sure.

Anyway, we pulled ourselves together by noon and headed over to a friend's house for brunch, where they served a menu straight off of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy"-little poached egg muffins floating on sauteed porchini mushrooms in a cupcake liner made out of prosciutto, that sort of thing. Scrumptious. We brought over a box of our peanut butter cups. I didn't eat much as I had already ruined my appetite with candy, but I'm an adult and if I want to spend Christmas the way most 6-10 year olds spend the day after Halloween, it's my perogative.

Then we went back to our house for a rousing hour of opening presents. Since everyone gave everyone else exact lists with product numbers and sizes, there weren't any surprises, and the whole thing seemed sort of hollow. The exception to that being that I gave Chris a DVD burner and managed to keep it secret for two whole months. I told him I was getting him a new office chair. He was quite pleased. And he said he'll give me his old CD burner, and so we were both happy, materialistically speaking. Mom gave me a stapler, Kristi gave me some fun underwear that I'd never be able to justify buying myself. Kristi and I gave mom a massage scheduled for the next day. Wine was consumed. Chet Baker was played. Grocery bags used as wrapping paper were folded and recycled. The whole thing was really very civilized.

The five of us went to see The Life Aquatic in the late afternoon. Theater packed. People cranky. Chris had a mild anxiety attack. He doesn't like crowds. Movie was great. Best line was "We're not good husbands, are we? But I have an excuse. I'm part gay."

After the movie, more chocolate bark products were eaten, and we all passed out by 10.

Oh, happy day!