Kevin went off to a church thing with his kids. I cleaned my studio–we all have our particular religious observances–and conducted that most longstanding of family traditions–namely I went out for Chinese food on Christmas Eve.

Tomorrow there will be dinner with Kevin’s family and lunch with Deb, who’s family of another sort, and there will be ham and other Christmas foodstuffs and the various small gifts of the variety you give and get when you’re old enough to have already bought everything you really really wanted, and are mostly exchanging presents as tokens of affectionate acknowledgement. Tonight, though–tonight is takeout Chinese, as it should be, as it has been since I was about five and Grandma baked cookies all day, spooned the last jelly into the last thumbprint cookies* and wiped the sweat from her brow, and said "Heck if I’m cooking dinner too! What’s open, anyway?" 

I drove home munching on crab rangoon and now I have pork fried rice and a glass of white wine (I don’t know what wine is supposed to go well with Chinese, and honestly, I don’t much care.) There are people scattered around who love me despite everything, there is an unopened box of Russell Stover chocolates sitting on my newly cleared off desk and a video game paused right before the sudden but inevitable betrayal by my childhood friend and I have fuzzy socks and I am very happy.

May you all have most excellent holidays!

*Which frankly, I never liked, but she made every year because they were festive, goddamnit. It was red and green jelly, anyway. But she also made this fudge that had three cans of sweetened condensed milk in it…hooo mama.