Tonight was an important and wonderful night, because tonight Leith came over and we had a very extra special kind of Christmas party, ie: the kind of Christmas party where we sit at my parents’ dining room table, eat popcorn with cream cheese (don’t knock it until you’ve tried it) and listen to/sing along with the entire Sharon, Lois and Bram Christmas album (which is also not to be knocked because it is such an integral part of my childhood experience of Christmas that I credit it with having made significant contributions to the person I am today), and then go and act like jerks at Tim Hortons. (Although the Tim Hortons night shift staff get points for asking us for “four hundred and twenty seven cents” instead of for four dollars and twenty seven cents.)

(Important dialogue from the night includes:

“It’s a surprise.”
“Does it involve an elephant?”
“No.”
“You’re lying.”

and also:

“Look, if I’m going to have sex, it’s going to be good sex.”
“That was spoken with the tone of a truly hardened . . . old maid.”
“I prefer ‘Woman of Loose Morals.’”)

And then I came home and mixed myself a pretty strong drink because it seems to me that it’s time for my favourite holiday tradition, one that I call “Alexandra copes with her family by spending the holidays in a state of mild but constant inebriation.” (To wit: Last Christmas, I brazenly pointed out that I hadn’t fought with my teenage sister at all over the holidays, not even once, whereupon she pointed out that that was because I had had a drink in my hand for approximately ten days running. Sometimes she gets points for being observant. She then loses them for being seventeen and too cool for school.)

I also managed to finally finish my Christmas shopping today. One might assume that, since I live in Los Angeles, where one can arguably find some of the best shopping in North America, I would have maybe done some Christmas shopping there. One would be assuming wrongly. Shopping in L.A. would have taken, you know, initiative. The only thing I actually bought in L.A. as a Christmas gift for anyone was a certain Bates Motel keychain that I had to travel about an hour and a half east on the bus to fucking Los Feliz to get for Tanya, so she better love that keychain because I don’t travel an hour and a half that far east for just anybody. I have been living in L.A. for four months and have already firmly established an identity as a Westsider.

Anyhow, the real point of this post was to announce that you’d all better watch yourselves because tomorrow I might be posting something about my feelings, because I’ve just spent a week visiting my wonderful, lovely, fabulous friends, and I’ve been reading this bell hooks book that has managed to both address most of my issues and make me cry in public. So, um, feelings. They’re coming, to a blog near you. Gross.