So it appears that I blinked at some point last week and tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. My bad.

I wish I could say that the Rock Star and I have been engaged in madcap holiday related hijinks, but the truth is, we’ve mostly been trying to get stuff done in between Prawn tantrums and being slavering Heroes converts in the evening. (My theory is, the sooner we watch all of them, the sooner we can start getting constructive things done again. At the moment, though, we’re utterly helpless.) We’re a little late to the party on this one, but it kicks ass all over Lost, which we tried VERY hard to get into, but spectacularly failed. Bunch of people on an island with monsters. A bit Scooby Doo for our liking.

The week after Christmas always leaves me feeling a little lost. Vacations are bad for your brain in the sense that once you start forgetting which day it is, you start forgetting other things too. (As in, “Why is the baby screaming?” “Oh, because we haven’t fed her since breakfast. Oopsie. And dude, why are you only wearing pants and socks?”)

We were dumb enough to attempt a trip to Ikea today in order to find a piece of living room furniture tall enough so that the Prawn cannot pull our scalding hot cups of tea down on her head. We had considered waiting until after the New Year, but we decided that a tidy and Prawn friendly flat to start off 2008 would inspire us to get on with some other tasks that we’ve been meaning to get to. (By the way, Ikea on a weekend with a baby? Foolish, at best. Ikea on a weekend with a baby when 10 of the 24 tills unexpectedly fail? Just call us Mr. and Mrs. Yoghurt.)

We have a few projects within our little living space scheduled for the New Year. The first is going to be sorting out our bathroom.

The bathroom isn’t awful, as such, (albeit not very pretty) but has one rather embarrassing issue and that is the fact that the shower’s main design feature is a very large window to the outside. I’ve had a look from the pavement next to the village green opposite our house and it’s become very clear that people passing by have been treated to a slightly blurred view of our pasty naked bodies every morning despite the distorted glass, so it’s something that we’re kind of keen to fix. (If we’re in the bathroom at night, we light candles rather than turn on the overhead, because lets face it, I might just as well go stand starkers in the middle of Piccadilly Circus if I hit the light switch.)

The oven and range top are also on the list of things to do mainly because in the 11 months since we moved in, we have still not figured out how to use them. The oven boasts 6 mysterious buttons. These buttons seem to have only one function which is to stop the oven actually WORKING unless all mashed down at the same time. Also, if pressed in a certain sequence (which is also a mystery) they will cause the oven to admit a piercing beep that sounds approximately every 2 seconds. In the beginning, being the resourceful folk we are, we called the previous owners of the flat (who we’d become fairly friendly with) for instructions only to be told sheepishly, that they didn’t totally understand it either. No matter, we thought, we’ll find the company and ask for a manual. 5 quid and two weeks later, we received the manual only to find that nothing it said actually corresponded to anything on the oven. I know that 180 degrees is at 6 o clock, so for any other temperature I may require, I just guess. That is the extent of my understanding of my oven. The range top technically works fine, but the burner symbols rubbed off long ago and attempts to replace said symbols with permanent ink have done the same, so I’m always left guessing as to which plate will get hot.

The final job is the rest of the kitchen. I’m in two minds now as to whether I actually WANT to paint over it’s cheerful salmon walls with something rather drab like white which might not fully compliment it’s vaguely larry tiling job that I’ve grown accustomed to, but the ceiling needs painting and moulding.

With our tasks for the year ahead firmly laid out, all that remains is for the year to actually begin. I better not blink again.

Holy gadget, Batman.

I got just one present this year from The Rock Star.

A most excellent present.

A most unexpected present.

A present that doesn’t run Windows.

I am now the proud owner of a lovely white Macbook that I have lusted after for many months, but had no thought of being able to own. Not only did I get a Macbook, but I got a Macbook that had been lovingly installed with all of my favorite programs, a Vienna reader with my entire blogroll on it and my favorite geektastic monster-slaying game, Heroes of Might and Magic V.

I win Christmas. The Rockstar rocks in many, many ways.

On behalf of The Rock Star, the Prawn and me, we’d like to wish you a happy Judeo-Christian, Pagan, Middle Eastern, Indian or African American holiday of your choice. Us, we do the Christmas thang, so we’re snowed under with pre-preparing a feast of grotesque proportions for tomorrow afternoon as well as a fancy-ass breakfast, so by tomorrow night, I imagine we’ll all feel well and truly sick. Happy Christmas! Pass the Gaviscon!

At any rate, hope the holidays find everyone well with many agreeable friends and relations to make merry with.

Just wanted to share the Christmas card that I’ve received that’s caught me most off-guard this year and kind of made me wish that I’d had the balls to send it.

The inside reads, “Merry Christmas, no matter who you fucked.”

Strangely enough, two years ago, on this day, I shouted at a teenage girl who ran up to me with a charity tin, squealing, “Give us money!”

Me: If you rattle that tin in my face again, you little slag, I swear to god I’ll smack you.

I don’t know what it is about December 20th, but it’s a day that tends to make me lose my grip a bit. Today, my tenuous grip on sanity was shaken further by a 9 month old who’s teething and fighting a cold at the same time. Everything I tried to do this morning was rebuffed with a barrage of what I can only imagine was baby cursing, so much so that I was tempted to wash her mouth out with soap. (I DON’T MAKE MY BABY EAT SOAP. No calls to child services, please.) Putting pants on became akin to being jabbed by sharp objects. Putting a coat on was obviously a fate worse than death. Being put on trial for war crimes at The Hague was infinitely preferable to being strapped into a car seat. And going round the shops? Don’t even ask.

Going out near Christmas is asking for trouble, really. I can’t really blame anyone but myself for going out and encountering inconvenience after inconvenience; forgetting my change purse, so having to abandon a good car park for a crappy one, getting stuck behind a display squadron of old ladies dragging shopping trollies behind them, trying to convince the Prawn to stop shouting in the middle of the Body Shop, etc. For the last few years, I’ve done almost all of my shopping on line at least 3 to 4 weeks before Christmas, but this year, due to our Thanksgiving trip to the US, I’m terribly behind and having to cram the shops along with every other silly schmuck who didn’t get their ass into gear when I’d really rather be at home, baking more cookies and listening to that Christmas CD that no one else likes but me.*

Hope that all of you are having a far more relaxing lead up to the festive period!

*The Chieftains- The Bells of Dublin. Celtic music is definitely not for everyone and this album is an acquired taste. Around Christmas time, my mother would wait anxiously for my father to go to the store so that she could put this particular festive, fiddly fare on.

Mmmmm.

When I was little, my grandmother on my father’s side used to make a batch of 6 DOZEN cookies every Christmas. When I asked for the baking directions the other day, my mother e-mailed it to me and to my horror, I discovered that the recipe calls for a full HALF POUND of butter. This is probably why there is a history of obesity in my family and why I myself am having trouble shifting this damned baby fat off of my hips. (I know, I know, but I prefer to blame my genetics instead of my predelection for cheese, so shut up.)

My kitchen is great source of glee for me. After years of being relegated to a galley style boat kitchen with room on the counter for approximately 1 chopping board, I am having a huge amount of fun actually being able to COOK. Cooking used to be one of those things that people on telly did well, but I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. (Not that I was incapable of cooking before we moved to the flat, but it’s certainly broadened my horizons having room to, you know, store ingredients.) However, when I decided to bake some traditional Christmas sugar cookies, I was still a little nervous.

Dough has always been a little frightening to me. Anything that I can’t correct once it’s made is kind of nerve wracking. Instead of my grandmother’s heart stopping recipe, I chose one of my mother’s that features far less butter. (In fact, my mother’s recipe actually subsitutes vegetable shortening for butter, but as I had none lying around, I used butter as a fallback.)

To my utter shock, I actually managed to turn out a rather enormous batch of cookies that tasted exactly as I remembered them from childhood despite the fact that I consumed about 2 glasses of wine during the baking process. Trumpet assisted as well as both BoyRacer and the Rock Star were cavorting at a client Christmas do, and baking Christmas cookies seemed like a satisfyingly girlie activity to engage in while our respective men went out to do whatever it is that men do.

The real fun, however, lay in the decoration. Not abandoning our wine glasses, we broke out the decorating icing, M&Ms and hundreds of thousands and decorated our unholy pastry army in shades of red and white.

Notable cookie figures included Ghosty Lady (eaten), the Swimming Instructor (eaten) and the Rude One. (eaten in the line of duty)

Okay, I’m finished being angry and whiny now. Screw her and the limited edition, hand painted, Royal Dalton china “Equestrian Fantasy” horse she rode in on.

The Prawn is just on the brink of sentience. Although she discovered vanity some time ago, (she gets unnaturally excited about her own reflection in the mirror. I sense a world of teenage image dramas in my future) she is just learning that there are many things in the world with which to interact and eat. So, obviously, this means it’s time for toys.

The Prawn’s favourite toys are as follows:

-Any laptop within reach.

-Any mobile phone within reach.

-Any electrical cord within reach.

-Any remote control in reach. (which usually results in us having to watch the shopping channel with subtitles that we can’t figure out how to turn off.)

-The strings on the hood of Daddy’s sweatshirt.

-Daddy’s guitars.

-The recycling.

-Crap she finds on the floor, no matter how well we’ve hoovered it.

If someone had told me that babies were the same at cats, (wanting to play with anything but the stuff you buy them) then we probably could have saved a lot of cash.

There are a few playthings, however, we’ve bought her that can hold her attention for more than 5 minutes.

Mozart Magic Cube, by Munchkin. A gift from my parents. This thing is pretty bitching, actually, despite our feelings about toys that require batteries. It has 8 works by the master of babysmarts himself programmed in and a choice of 5 instruments-harp, French horn, piano, flute, and violin- that are available on each side of the cube for individual or orchestral listening. Each side flashes to the beat of it’s instrument so it makes for a cool visual experience as well as audio. The Prawn digs kicking it around the room, turning on and off instruments. It’s the toy that is inevitably kicked by one of us while we’re trying to get the Prawn to sleep, setting off a cacophonic version of “Là Ci Darem la Mano” and triggering a desperate attempt to find which edge of the cube boasts the “off” switch.

Wooden Shape Sorter, by Mothercare. Mothercare has a small, but fairly decent range of own-brand infant toys that do not squeak, squawk, chatter or play stadium volume music. The Prawn just doesn’t need that shit. (Translation: we don’t need that shit) While visiting my folks, they dragged out and sterilized all of my baby toys and out of all of them, the Prawn tended to gravitate toward the shape sorter more than any other. (Save for the xylophone, but that’s only because it had a stick attached to it that was clearly perfect for poking an eye out with) Upon our return, I managed to find one that didn’t holler “GOOD JOB!” upon putting the shape in the correct slot to bring home for her. She’s spent a lot of time chewing on the pieces and banging the sorter itself on the floor, no doubt endearing herself further with our downstairs neighbours.

Black Labrador puppet, by Folkmanis. This is the first thing that she’s chosen herself. There’s a lovely children’s toyshop in the trendy downtown area where my parents live that sells imported wooden toys, fun games and other unique stuff. We held a number of things out for her to look at that were met with the withering indifference that only an 8 month old can muster. However, when we held out the Labrador puppet, she reached her arms up for it. Little surprise, as she is fascinated with The Rock Star’s family dog, Dougal, who is also a black Lab. So, we bought Mini Dougal home where she has proceeded to lie on him and bury her little face into his fur, giving her an outlet for her love of the real thing which would most likely be very dangerous as Dougal is a total nutter.

I think probably many people go slightly mad their child’s first Christmas, but I’m saving the bulk of my crazy for her first fully sentient holiday. She’ll be getting a tambourine from Santa this year and that’s about it.

Considering that everything she REALLY wants to play with is ours anyhow, perhaps I should just wrap up my car keys for a bit of extra magic.

There are things that we have to accept about our natures as we grow older and can no longer ignore them. It’s both liberating and frustrating to embrace elements of your character that you might not want to display to the general public. According to the ancient Greek writer, Pausanias, the engraving on the forecourt of Temple of Apollo at Delphi read, “gnothi seauton” or “know thyself”.

Wisdom of the ages aside, what I’ve had to accept recently is that true unfairness makes me utterly crazy. Seeing red crazy. Waking up with a headache and bits of pillow fiber stuck between my teeth crazy.

Just before we jetted off to the States, you may remember that I was involved in the Herculean task of trying to sell off a rather daunting number of china collectibles that I knew nothing about other than that they were small and fiddly and collected dust. When I returned from my holiday, I spent two bleary eyed, jetlagged days emptying the house of its cardboard and packing peanut reserves to stow every little breakable bit securely in order to meet the delivery terms of the auction. (To be sent ASAP upon my arrival back in the UK.) I hauled 14 individual parcels down to a local village post office (where I was less likely to be lynched by a long queue of fellow customers) on Friday and breathed a sigh of relief when I was shot of the breakable little bastards.

In the back of my mind, I was always vaguely uneasy about the auction as I knew absolutely NOTHING about the items I was selling. There is a certain type of person who is REALLY SERIOUS about collectibles (a middle aged, middle England woman with chintz curtains, shag pile carpeting and approximately one husband, two cats and 4 grandchildren. Note: please no hate mail if this describes your mother) that I wasn’t particularly keen to deal with should the items for some reason not measure up to their standard.

My auction winners have pretty much now all received their winnings and left pleasant feedback.

Save one.

One of her points was valid. She complained that I over charged for posting. When I looked back at the auction, it was clear that I had, although not intentionally, so I apologised and refunded the difference. Her other points prove her to be absolutely barking mad. She accused me of misrepresenting one of the items she purchased. I was incredibly surprised, as I didn’t feel like I gave very much information about the items AT ALL, let alone enough to misrepresent anything. She made a rather stupid assumption about one of the items based on several other items that I put up for auction at the same time in totally different lots. My understanding of the way eBay works is that it is heavily based on the principle of Caveat Emptor and that if something isn’t SPECIFICALLY stated, a) you can’t assume ANYTHING and b) if you have any questions, you have to ask.

So I get negative feedback because of something that SHE assumed? Oh HELL no.

When I received her email, I actually felt lightheaded for a few minutes, so great was my perturbation. The fact that I managed to reply to her civilly not once, but TWICE despite wanting to drive to her home and make her eat the figurine in question should have made me feel better about the sort of person that I am; being able to fight against destructive impulses for my own benefit. But sadly, so great is my aversion to injustice that I still feel a burning lump of avarice in the pit of my stomach which has gone unsatisfied.

She essentially called me a liar. She called me a liar in public. There is a small 8 year old child inside of me who is stomping her feet so hard her legs are in danger of shattering and shouting “IT’S NOT FAIR!!!!!!!” at the top of her voice. It’s not like it’s a mystery to me where this reaction came from; Yeah, I was that kinda smart, quiet, vaguely uncomfortable child who got picked on in elementary school a lot and who’s parents told her it was best to “just ignore” her tormentors, but it reality, it just gave them license to see how far they could go and they did. (Note to Shannon Hall, the girl who enjoyed spitting in my hair on the school bus EVERY MORNING for 3 years- at some point in your life, I hope that you are non-fatally run over by a Chevy Suburban.)

As an adult, however, I imagined that my cynicism would eventually take care of these feelings. However, I feel them all the more keenly. It’s both a burden and a blessing to believe in human potential- it just makes it all the more disappointing when people fail to live up to it.

Should I really be upset that some anonymous weirdo somewhere out there on the internet has got the ridiculous idea into her head that I’m unscrupulous? Of course it shouldn’t. Should I be getting my panties in a bunch even though I KNOW that I’m right and she’s wrong? Of course not.

But upset and bunched I am, nonetheless.

It’s taken me almost a week to get my ass back into gear, but considering that I’ve been living with a jetlagged 8 month old for the last few days, I’m surprised I’m still standing.

So, it’s that time of year again. This Christmas is particularly exciting as I will have the opportunity, to actually, you know, decorate. While living on a boat has it’s advantages, especially if you like ducks, fish and manual toilet emptying, a rather large disadvantage is not having the space to swing a cat, let alone put up a Christmas tree. The Rock Star and I always tried to make do with a tiny plastic tree which was never large enough to accommodate our already vast collection of ornaments. (When we were married, my mother threw an “ornament” shower for us, so we’re all good on the hanging stuff front).

This year, while we finally have the space, we also have someone living with us who will want to get physically, spiritually and orally acquainted with said Christmas tree, so it’s going to be a little bit of a challenge to decorate like I’ve always wanted and still make sure that there is only a wisp of a chance that the Prawn will decide that Christmas lights are tasty and nutritious.

My father once wisely said that Christmas is a holiday that’s always tinged with melancholy due to the fact that it cannot be celebrated one Christmas at a time; every Christmas is a reminder of all the Christmases that have gone before.

I suppose I was around 15 or 16 when I had a sudden and unsettling realization that Christmas was never going to have the same kind of magic that it had for me as a child and it made me terribly sad for a number of holiday seasons. I’m not sure I even knew how to articulate how I was feeling, but I just knew that it “wasn’t like before.”

On my first Christmas home from college, we travelled up to Pennsylvania for the annual family Christmas get togethers. The Christmas Eve celebration (typically my favourite part of the whole holiday) was held at the house of my mother’s cousin, as it had been for years. (She’d taken over the party from HER mother, my grandmother’s sister) It was actually snowing, making the woods where her house was achingly picturesque. I’d left something in the car, so I’d crunched back down the driveway to get it. On the way back, my foot shot out from under me and I ended up flat on my back in the driveway. As I lay there, looking up at the falling snow and hoping that I wasn’t suffering from a concussion, I suddenly hear the faint sound of a choir in the valley below singing “Silent Night.”

It was a strange and happy epiphany I had at that moment; I suddenly made peace with sense of loss from Christmases past and knew that although that feeling of wonder that I’d experienced as a child was gone, it would be replaced with a warm, more familial feeling as I grew older. I’d look forward to it for different reasons. I’d celebrate it in different ways. The melacholy that had afflicted me for years evaporated, leaving behind the knowledge that it would leave behind only a happy, nostalgic ache, once every 25th of December.

So, lying in the driveway, snow slowing soaking through the back of my coat, I smiled.