Stockings 2000

I never can sleep on the night before Christmas... but I'm pretty tired right now, so it shouldn't be too terribly difficult this time. I've been tiredy a lot lately, might be part of it (could be diet? (I gained 25 pounds over the holidays so far, already. I'm not fat, I'm chibi,)) but what it probably is, mostly, too, is that I woke up at 3:30 this morning to put finishing touches on some giftwork Alex is getting from me.

You know what also helps, though, with being all tired and being gonna-go-to sleep-at-a-reasonable-time? Usually it's Santa that fills our stockings up with stuffers, but this time we're getting stuff(ings) for each other... It's always been a tradition in the fam that the stockings get taken down from the fireplace, when filled, and put at the feet of our beds, which has of course always kept me anxious and awake for the Kringly moment when that takes place and I get to see what all I got... but this time I guess it's not so suspenseful, and it looks like they're just going to hang there without moving...

There was one other year, at least, where the stocking normtine was broken from. Christmas Y2K. There's a VHS tape, labeled with a film title and G rating by the hand of a 10-year-old Andrew, Tis' the sesson to be jolly. Apparently, as Mom explains in the video, that year the stockings were out hanging under the lip of the kitchen island because, we'd always been confused in previous years, apparently, washing up rushing out to what was then the living room (before the expansion) completely skipping over our be-bed-footed stockings and always wondering where the heck they were... I guess we switched back again after that year...

Mom looks so much younger in these 16-year-old videos, it is true, but also so much more haggard. And, strangely familiar, as if I'm viewing, not a ghost but the opposite thereof: men want for their wives their own mothers, all the qualities they admire I mean of course, but in my case, (every/the)one I think might be The One, it's absolutely terrifying but that's exactly what Younger Mom looks like.

But, anyway. Christmastime. That's purty exciting. Enough to wear you out in time for a long winter's nap.

Annual Christmas card for you tomorrow.