Prancer thinks Rudolph sucks reindeer butt

It’'s been an awesome few days, last-minute Christmas shopping aside. It's a bitch when you've twisted your ankle, forcing you to do mad shopping in the last few days before the Christmas weekend. This resulted in frantic shopping in very few areas, so a hell of a lot of people got stuff from the same shops as other people. Not that anyone minded, I hope.

I'm also beyond poor, given that my mother (who never asks for anything), named a digital camera as her gift of choice when pressed, leaving my bank balance looking rather forlorn. I also spent two manic mornings baking like a fiend, first, because I was broke and homemade gifts in pretty glass jars for the Only Friend's parents were a heck of a lot cheaper than individual presents, and second, because my father insisted that the only thing he wanted for Christmas was cookies, even though I knew he wouldn't eat them. Nevertheless, I spent two mornings breadcrumbing biscuit mix by hand, and thank god, creaming with the amazing Kenwood mixer we have at home to make cheddar cheese snaps and spiced oatmeal cookies. There were some horrific moments when I realized that while I had halved the proportions for some things, I'd failed to do it for others, resulting in desperation. On the plus side, I got to eat a whole lot of cookie dough. Which was fun until I had to also eat the baked cookies to test for baking times. Those two mornings might have done more damage to my metabolism than all five dinners I had over the Christmas period combined.

Yes, five dinners. There were three different turkeys, two hams, my family’s usual smorgasbord, Makcik's smorgasbord, and then the Only Friend's smorgasbord. I think the crunch point came when I had the chocolate mousse and followed it up with the blueberry cheesecake (both by a Cordon-Bleu-trained pastry chef) at the Only Friend's place, after having stuffed my face with dinner and Awfully Chocolate chocolate-banana cake at my place and turkey, ham, oxtail stew, and way too much baguette at Makcik's place. I spent the rest of the night half-leaning against The Boy, saying sadly, "I'm soooooooooo full" as more dessert I could no longer eat was dangled before me.

There was food and fun and lots of time spent with loved ones. For the first time in almost a year, my family is back in the same country and it was lovely to just wallow in it. We opened our presents together, we took stupid photos together, we laughed over bizarre gifts and it was so Hallmark, you would have puked. I woke up on Christmas morning and for the first time in longer than I can remember; we all went to church together. It was a simple, blessed thing.

The Boy and I, when we weren't stuffing our faces, were curled up together, watching trashy TV ("Baby,I'm finding ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’ morbidly fascinating." "Oooohh, Gojira destroy Tokyo, raaar!") and generally just hanging out like we don’t get to do for eight months out of a year. On Boxing Day, The Boy humored me by letting me drive Fuzzy to her doggy swimming pool where she proceeded to break two hind claws at some point and bleed all over the concrete and his tarp. I rewarded him by nearly crashing his car. uzzy was pleased. The Boy, not so much. We watched House of Wax to watch Paris Hilton die and to mock the movie("Look, how convenient, they're cast in wax which saves them from actually having to act! Clever!” "Hey, Paris died on her hands and knees in front of a big stick. The producers must have been all "Oh come on, let's put it in! No one will notice!"). Fun really is in the company.

I'm looking forward to New Year already. Hoping all of you who stop by here had a wonderful Christmas.