strangers with bjork

Madeline Kahn
(1942-1999)

She was hilarious, wasn’t she?

Wow. Check this out:

I had just sent off The Mighty Kymm’s Christmas present using her amazon.com wish list, when a box arrived from Amazon for me yesterday. I assumed it was something that I had bought for Eric, so I went into the other room to open it.

It was a Bjork CD. One that was on my wish list. I went over to Eric and said, “I think I got a gift that you meant for me.” He looked at it and said, “I don’t think I ordered this for you.” I checked the “from.” It was from David, a Squishy reader. I was so shocked! So, thanks David, for sending me my first Squishy Xmas gift. I was quite surprised, and I think Eric was a bit jealous. I hadn’t even mentioned on the site that I had one, I don’t think, so David must have been intuitive and punched pamie@pamie.com into the wish list finder. Very clever.

I only wish I had known ahead of time so that I wouldn’t have opened it until Christmas. It wasn’t wrapped, so I knew what it was right away. It is sitting under my tree right now, and I’ve told myself I can’t play it until Christmas. That’s how my mother would have made the rule if she was at my house. If you find out about gifts early, you still can’t have them until Christmas.

I’ve gotten quite a bit of my holiday shopping done, though. I’m proud of myself. I never do this. What I think will happen though, is I’ll keep buying little things here and there that I find and end up spending twice as much on Christmas than I usually do. This is because I really like buying gifts for people. I think I like the “giving” more than the receiving.

No, I like the receiving. I do.

Maybe it’s a tie.

Okay, Holiday Card traders, whoever sent me their address using the e-mail address: anonyours@crosswinds.net, it’s not working. I’m having a hard time sending you my return address.

That was pretty much my weekend. I wrote some letters, I watched some movies. I napped. I spent three hours on the phone with my mother. I talked her through online shopping. “What’s an Earl?” “URL?” “Yeah.”

Eric hugged the Best Buy Guy at the store. Eric loves nothing more than a big giant foam mascot that he can high five and hug. I think he likes how the mascots don’t talk, but they are so happy to see Eric that they’ll hug and slap a complete stranger.

I love Eric’s love of mute mascots.

I never stepped foot in an airport or airplane. I never fell asleep in a car. I didn’t drive out of town. Eric went to San Antonio to watch the UT game, but the thought of driving out of town for the fifth week in a row just didn’t appeal to me. I pretended I was one of the cats, and the three of us just sat really still for a few hours in a row. It was great.

I saw South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. I saw Being John Malkovich. We had so many good movies this year, didn’t we? I haven’t even seen everything I’ve wanted to see. I find this all very exciting.

We rang in Hanukkah with a gathering of friends at our house Friday night. We played Cranium while I tried to keep our newest friend Martha from stealing Cal.

Sunday night I threw ‘Tis across the room. “That’s it! Enough! I don’t care anymore!” I rarely don’t finish a book. You have to understand that usually I feel guilty about not finishing a book because I’ve already invested time into it, or it could get better at any moment and that I really ought to keep giving it a shot since so many other people loved it, but I just couldn’t take this book anymore. I couldn’t take the whining and complaining and the “Oh, she left me because she’s tired of me talking about my horrible life and being a drunk.” I can just imagine these women looking at this Pulitzer Prize winning author now and thinking, “I don’t care. He was a miserable, insufferable, cranky man.” I didn’t care anymore if he got a good job. I was tired of hearing about his “piss holes in the snow” eyes. It was great when he was a little kid in Angela’s Ashes and he just wanted something better and couldn’t wait to grow up, but as an adult he was just whiny and pissy that the world didn’t turn golden when he got to America and he wasn’t allowed to eat pie and drink from a glass bottle when he went to see Hamlet. Well, neither am I, buddy, so suck it up and shut up.

So, now I’m reading Fight Club. I am Jack’s sense of familiarity.