Dear Penelope,

Enclosed please find evidence of Christmas Eve. It was an inauspicious start. And I was pleased with my pre-eve outfit. Not so pleased with my actual Eve outfit which was a lovely black dress, greensweater jacket and scarf- colorful but still. The service was a bit of a let down, though i did get to play with fire!-- but nice because of the thought- that counts. But I think I wanted more contemplation and softness, a little more length and seriousness. I felt it was more like a leaflet on Christmas and I wanted more of an essay. Like tweet vs. Blog. Because don't just throw the service together if we're not going to do it up right. Which it wasn't not right, it just didn't have any breadth to get you into it. And the crying whining kids were detracting as much as it was suppose to be a kid friendly service- there wasn't enough boisterousness to make it that way. We enjoyed some apple cider and I did get into at least 2 conversations with people I margainally knew. So I get points.

Pre-eve was fairly entertaining. My uncle kept jabbing my aunt with the, just get a new one, you're rich. To which my aunt would just internally explode and walk away. It was pretty funny. But I see his point. He collects gold and has furniture from 1978. And likewise my frugal aunt and uncle share his monetary success- so of course he doesn't see the point of pampering furniture when they are well off enough to get new ones, but when I told my uncle jerry to just change the color scheme of the house if he was tired of it, he sighed like i was asking him to haul that Sisyphean bolder up a hill... Likewise my aunt asked if my parents were enabling me, right at the heels of her mentioning the loss of their brother and enabling him, to which I replied a little, maybe, but if they didn't I'd be sad, and then I whispered to mom, well we do have the God thing. It's not like he's telling me to leave and i'm not. That and I don't think I'm an addict. But maybe? Addicted to being jobless? I don't know. I won't dismiss the charge completely. I told my aunt I hoped to be financially solvent eventually and I promised to take care of my mom when she got older. I then slung out that they only have themselves to blame as they've failed to find me a christian republican to marry. That set my aunt laughing which I'm glad of and she did say she knew a tennis player named Matt... but he's older and moving to Orange County. Dang. Come on people. I also hinted to my uncle John that if his extremely wealthy friend Bruce needed any artists I was totally available.

Later I got into a conversation with Carmel, who proves to be patently the most livewire in the house at almost 94, about death, and how she jabs her sons about, oh just wait till you get to my age. If you last that long! ... She says it makes them mad, but I found it funny. I would. I can't help myself. I told her though that transitioning to death is difficult and they're at the age where they're having to accept their mortality so it makes it difficult. And I told her also that as independent as she is, its ok to accept help.

I wrapped up the night with fudge and ice cream. Nevermind that we had to microwave the ham. It was all fine. I got home from all of it and had a $1burger and fries from mc'ds and came home to flip channels and sing songs. More from today, tomorrow. Love you, M.