One year ago: the flea market at Kitano temple, concluding with a brief surprise hailstorm; gorging at the all-you-can-eat pizza and curry lunch buffet at Shakey’s; Wall*E with Japanese subtitles. Because I was in Kyoto, remember. The Japanese observe something like Christmas, after a fashion, but it was up to me to make it feel a little more like the holiday back home. Which I did with a single short strand of Christmas lights from the 100-yen shop (actual price: 500 yen, if I recall correctly; for some reason, there are no cheap Christmas lights available in Japan), a moderately successful batch of eggnog, and a screening of A Child’s Christmas in Wales with friends Sean and Tom.
Today: frost on the front lawn in Burbank, California, which counts, by SoCal standards, as a white Christmas. Cinnamon rolls liberated from pressurized refrigerated tubes and baked for a breakfast alone. (Roommate Tim is here somewhere, but has only appeared to wonder aloud whether Carl’s Jr. is serving breakfast at this hour on Christmas Day.
I thought about going to church, but I don’t belong to one at present. On the one hand, Christmas morning is an ideal time to drop in on a congregation of strangers. On the other hand, meh. So I’m having my sweet rolls and coffee, and marveling over the assortment of edibles that my father sent down from Washington in a flat-rate Priority Mail box. Mom contributed a pair of those gunmetal-grey mirrored magnets that clack together with a compelling zippery sound. The parents are with sister and brother-in-law outside of Fairbanks this morning. I was invited to join them, but not knowing, when the plans were hatched, what my work schedule over the holidays might be, I declined. I imagine the assembled family is colder right now than I am. On the other hand, they’ll eat better today.
Cold? Cold was riding down the I-5 to Anaheim on my scooter the other night. Legal, but not recommended. Quite terrifying, in fact, but exhilarating. And gratifying to know what happens with the throttle on that machine open all the way. (70 mph is what happens. I think I could improve that a little by losing some weight.)
I am one trip to the DMV away from being 100% legal on the scooter, by the by. I spent last weekend rolling around a parking lot in Westwood on a Suzuki 125 about as old as me, in a motorcycle training course designed to make me a better rider and to waive the DMV’s skills test requirement for licensing. It was tiring but fun, and entirely worth what it cost. Downside: now I want a bigger motorcycle. (Not the one I rode in training, which actually had a smaller engine than my scooter has, despite being a heavier bike.)
Work was more or less madhouse right up until more or less the end: I stayed a full day on Wednesday, despite the office having officially closed at 1:00. There were things yet that needed doing, and I was hoping to pull off a Christmas miracle by getting a piece back from the framer and into the hands of FedEx for an overnight shipment. It didn’t happen. Not the only customer disappointed this Christmas, I’m afraid–but for the most part I think we were able to keep the modest promises we’d made.
My employers are just terrific for a good number of reasons. Here’s the latest. One of the bosses stopped me in the hall on Wednesday to announce that, although it’s not company policy to do so, I’d been working so hard that they’d pay me for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Then she gave me a hug.
I’ll work two and a half or three days next week, although I expect they’ll be pretty slack shifts. Most people will still be out of the office; we’re only opening because our website says we will. I’ll ship a few things and do some cleaning and organizing, and then retire for another long weekend.
Well, that was more than I expected I’d write on Christmas Day. What I expected to write was nothing at all. But I’ve been very, very quiet here lately, and have felt, as always, guilty about that. The pace of things really is going to change come January, though, and I hope I can carve some spaces for writing out of that change.
I mailed no Christmas cards this year, and have yet to watch a single Christmas movie–though I expect to have changed that before bedtime tonight. I haven’t eaten very festively–making an exception for regular doses of chocolate wrapped in bright foil–and have listened actively to very little Christmas music. But I did string up a good number of lights around Casa Lima here, and have been in a generally merry mood, going out into the world and observing that people, by and large, continue to be made just a little happier and more gracious by the spirit of the season. So it feels like the first Christmas in many years that hasn’t slipped by almost without my notice.
I look forward to more and better to come.
where do you work that it’s not customary to play employees for work they do?? worrying!
No, no–you got it wrong. (Or, very possibly, I misled you.) What isn’t customary is to pay employees for what they don’t do. I didn’t work Christmas but did get paid.