List.

Looking at my Christmas post from last year, I realize that I'm fairly spoiled (or something akin to it); in the year since then I've gotten nearly everything on the list that I wanted that was feasible. I don't own the Boulder Bookstore, but I got two new bookshelves (that are both full) and I got into graduate school for English. I didn't get Clive Owen, but Tim grew a very impressive goatee. I didn't get a greyhound, but that's only because we moved into a new apartment that won't let us have cats or dogs and Tim has promised to get me a new fish when I get home. He also renewed my subscription to NatGeo, got me tickets to the TerraCotta Warriors Exhibit, and got me a t-shirt that says "Someone at the State Department Loves Me."

Here is this year's Christmas list, nonetheless:

1. I wish Tim was spending Christmas, or at least New years in Colorado with me. I don't want my first kiss of the decade to be with anyone else.













2. EA Sports Active: More Workouts. I love my Wii Fit, but I'm kind of getting bored. I realize this is not a terribly sophisticated request, when I could also go outside and jog for free, but this is way more motivating for me. I also want Super Mario Bros. Wii, for sitting on my butt.



3. Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series. Yeah. That's right. For Tim and I both. Nerds have Christmas wishes too.









4. There are a ton of books I want (as always) but there are about four I haven't bought myself because they're just out of my reasonable price range:

Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, by Jon Krakauer






Stitches: A Memoir, by David Small






Good Eats: The Early Years, by Alton Brown






Shop Class as Soul Craft: A Inquiry into the Value of Work, by Matthew B. Crawford






5. A combination DVD player VCR. Yup, it's a dead technology. The problem is that I have about $2000 worth (in DVD dollars) in VHS tapes, that I want to watch. It's cheaper to just suck it up and get a VCR. So, I mean, whatever.

6. For you to come and visit. Come see us. I will cook.

Vamanos.

I'm so close I can taste it.

Ready. Break.

This is Emerson, who lives on the walk to the metro and sometimes comes BOLTING out the bushes, begging for love. He makes my day.

Yesterday was the last class of my first semester of grad school. And it. was. awesome.

Ok, maybe the class itself wasn't that awesome, it was actually kind of hilarious. It was a "final presentations" class in which everything went totally wrong for at least one presenter, and at least partially wrong for everyone else in some way. We ordered a pizza for the class and the pizza guy got lost on campus and kept calling the professor, who would answer the phone and shout "I CAN'T UNDERSTAND YOU. WHERE ARE YOU?" in the middle of someone's presentation. At one point a choir started doing vocal warm-ups right outside our door... It was bad.

And of course the class went almost 45 minutes long and my phone died, so by the time I got home Tim was put on his shoes and coat to go drive around looking for my dead body because I hadn't shown up.

But my final presentation of the semester went ok. (I like it when the only comment is, "you're on to something." Thank god.) And I'm glad I did it. Because in working on it I had a bit of a breakthrough content-wise, where before I was sort of floating around in space thinking there had to be a story out there somewhere. If you're interested, the paper is on the Jamaican poet Louise Bennett, who was a comedienne and a champion of the Jamaican dialect.

So I'm in the home stretch now. One 20-ish page paper to turn in before I go home on the 16th and the semester is done. I'm completely finished in my other class and my professor has already told me I got an A there. I've told myself that if I can get A's in both classes I'm going to reward myself with a Georgetown sweatshirt.

My reward for getting IN at all was a t-shirt. My reward for graduating--if I can manage--will hopefully be a nice education, a job, and a small pile of loans.

It feels really nice to have made it to the end of the semester. Nothing like the end of the first semester at Centenary, with Dead Week and Finals, etc. Just me and my paper. Chillin'.

I'm excited about next semester's classes (Sex and Time in 19th Century America and Testimonial Fictions & US Latino Lit.) and about going home for a month, and about the fact that Georgetown looks like Hogwarts to me. That excitement is ALMOST rubbing off on the paper, so it ALMOST feels like I'm excited to write a 20-ish page paper. That's how I can tell I haven't yet been in Grad School long enough to be bored/tired/frustrated.

Good.

Happy Guiltmas.

Ever since I was little I've had the exciting task of choosing where to spend the holidays every year. I always said when I was younger that the best thing about having divorced parents (Yes, doubters, there are good things about having divorced parents) was having two of lots of awesome things. Like two cats (12 cats), two bedrooms, two sets of friends, etc. Unfortunately, the shittiest thing about the whole arrangement is the life-long accompanying sense of "holiday guilt."

This is the awesome sensation that comes when you know you have two groups of people who want you to be with them, and who love you enough to let you choose where to be, but also enough to be disappointed when you're not there. This means that no matter what you do, you're disappointing someone. And in case you think I have a Rock Star Complex, and am sad that I can't bestow my glorious and benevolent presence on everyone at once, a lot of the time, the person I'm disappointing is myself.

Cheerful, I know.

Wait there's more. Like, fact that I never expected to attach myself to a Texan. What this means is that now, rather than two potential groups of people to disappoint, there is a third, half a country away, and the fact that Tim and I will probably just never get to see each other on Christmas morning because of the long-standing "thanksgiving one slope, Christmas the other slope" principle, which dictates that my holidays are pre-dedicated to one side of the Rockies or the other.

I've always wondered how this delicate "pleasing people" balance would be thrown off if I had a sibling to take off some of the pressure, or if I didn't live so far away from everyone to begin with, or if I talked about politics a lot and loudly so I wasn't such damn good company.

I know other people and families deal with this problem all the time, oh but if only there wasn't so much guilt involved. Some days I wish I could let someone else tell me where to go and when, but then I would be guilty and a ping pong ball. Until someone invents teleportation I suppose I will have to continue my 16 year tradition of doing the best I can with the support and grace of my distant friends and family.

Gifts help. Just sayin'.