So, for the first Christmas in, um... um... six or seven years I think, I have had a friend visiting. This - with 2.5 feet of snow, a hot tub, several games, my puppy, family, brolaw telling an excellent sheep joke via phone, sister describing the consistency of haggis, and dad hitch-hiking for the first time in his life (on my suggestion) in order to get out of his snowbound house - made the holiday for me.

You know, I try to usually block out how challenging it can be to always be a single within a larger unit of pairs, the bachelorette running and jumping on the couples in excitement over the stockings, the one often down a peg in any discussions or arguments, two to one. But having someone visit on a day that means so much to me (not because I'm religious, or want lots and lots of gifts, but because I'm a monger for tradition, for small rituals of community and affection), well, it made the icicles glisten and slide, the first Christmas snow since I was quite young, and me not spend a moment fretting about myself for the sheer pleasure of fretting about another. And Herald liked eating the ribbons.

I feel a little guilty because I got to have NM here at the last minute not because of long, happy plans, but because she had shittycrap going on with her family. However, I'm refusing to look too hard at how the reasons for my happy windfall also involved sad strife for her. Afterall, sometimes the ends do justify the means. Does that fit? It seems like a stretch. I don't care. No sir. (Well, I do...). Nevertheless.

Maybe one day I will have twenty bazillion friends lined down the table with me, at my place on Christmas (because I'll be financially able to have my own place), eating lots of amazing different foods, including foods that have been chosen simply because they sound pretty, like baklava and sashimi and paella, that I have provided (because I love to provide pretty-sounding food), with people who have traveled by choice with no life strife because I adore them and provide pretty food, and oh, they adore me too.

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Gift horses actually have fine teeth, quite frequently.

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Plus I've been doing some pretty freakish great Tarot readings. It still looks a bit pathetic because I have to look in the book for ten minutes before giving the reading, but in the end, I'm fairly good at this. Economic struggles this next year for us all, Temperance being primary for me in dealing with my Bville past, "The Drive to Create Something Brilliant and yet Honest" being the stumbling block for N's dissertation progress, etc. Maybe this is my real career?