Feliz Navidad Azul

I know it has been a while since my last post (13 days, actually), but I have a good excuse: the dog ate my homework. Not really, but the power adapter on my laptop went out, my desktop is on the fritz (it generates kernel oops like there's no tomorrow, even memtest died on an unexpected interrupt: the motherboard is failing), and I was out of town for Christmas. I have, however, revived my old Inspiron 1100 (the crapiest of a crappy series sold by Dell) through the power of Fedora Core 12 and am using it as my home machine for the time being.

You can call me a grinch, but I really do not like Christmas. I don't like anything about it. It would be very easy to make this post about why Christmas sucks so incredibly hard, but that's not what this post is about. The past few (nine) years have been turbulent, to say the least. This year my goal was to be more positive. Instead of tearing down others' rosy perceptions of this season, I wanted to celebrate it in a way that was meaningful to me. I have to say that while the basis of this resolution was already fermenting in my head, it was solidified when Bob snapped at me for being so negative, having been driven over the edge when I attacked Christmas. It was a wake-up call that I desperately needed.

One of my biggest beefs with Christmas is the rampant gaudy commercialism. Not having any money anyways, I bought no one gifts and received none in return. And that's fine with me. Even if it sounds weird, I am actually happier having received no presents: my best gift this year was that I got to spend a few days with my best friends. To sully that with cheap consumerism would be to slap a pricetag on the priceless. (In the interests of full disclosure, I did receive a box of See's candies from my parents a few weeks ago, but I think that was a combined birthday/Christmas gift.)

Christmas Eve was a bit comical. My friends, Carrie and Ashley, and a mutual friend, Johnathan, went to Ikea to look around for a bit (they also had Swedish meatballs, per their Ikea tradition, and I had lox, which is my Ikea tradition). I bought a stuffed toy weasel, whom I promptly named Yuki no Itachi ("Snow Weasel"), or "Itachi-san," for short. The name comes from the fact that it had started snowing outside. Our plan was then to see Avatar in 3D at a local Imax at 3pm. But, when we got there, the showing was sold out. All the Imaxes in the area are on the same showing schedule, so the next one we could get was at 7pm. We headed to Johnathan's place in the Plano area and stayed there until it was time to go to the theater. In Dallas, snow never really causes a problem because it doesn't stick. But it was sticking anyways. When we got out of the movie, the roads were all but impassible. It would have been a 45 minute drive to Carrie and Ashley's place, assuming all the roads were open. Rather than returning that night, we stayed at Johnathan's place and drove home Christmas morning.

On Christmas Day I sent some Christmas texts and called family members, but I could not summon the strength to make extended calls or texts. That is, there are a bunch of people from church whom I meant to call and did not. The day was more exhausting because of spending the previous night without meds or my CPAP. Even though I felt a little anxiety and psychological strain from the holiday, it was very manageable.

Much of Christmas Day and the next we all spent watching Bones (Ashley got one of the seasons as a gift) and I returned to Lubbock today. Now that I am not constantly bombarded with other people and activities, the emotional baggage of Christmas past is starting to catch up to me. I feel like I haven't solved anything, only delay the frustration, anger, guilt, and countless other negative emotions. But perhaps these feelings are immutable and the best I can do is bear the ill while concentrating on the good.