Gone away is the blue bird

The rest of Christmas Eve was dominated, in the early part, by bunny_hugger's brother cooking up a minor storm of pan-fried noodles. He does a lot of cooking for Christmas and that makes his mother worry that he spends all his time visiting home cooking meals. He insists he loves doing it. I believe him. He also made Christmas Day dinner, noodles with Alfredo or pink, Alfredo-based, sauce. Also we ate a lot of cookies and I ate even more peanut butter fudge which was so dangerously good. So much peanut butter fudge. And we played Betrayal at the House on the Hill a lot, until quite past midnight.

This was the first Christmas since bunny_hugger's parents' dogs died --- they had been sickly for years, and finally succumbed a few weeks apart in October and November --- but it felt weird to not have them there. I kept worrying about setting food where the diabetic pair might scarf it down, or that I might walk into one by accident. bunny_hugger's parents were shattered by the dogs' dying, although they are recovering. But it's still hard for me to adjust to. It left me with a premature chill of what it'll be like the day our pet rabbit dies.

That's enough grimness. Christmas Day bunny_hugger spent in her Stitch kigurumi, and I in my red panda suit, so we probably looked the most Classic Christmas Day. And we're still trying to figure out when everybody got up because as best we can figure the timing out, I must've used the shower at the same time as either bunny_hugger's brother or his girlfriend, and I'm pretty sure I didn't do that. But we can't figure out who got up when otherwise.

And bunny_hugger's brother took out her guitar and led us in a couple rounds of Christmas carols. This despite his suspecting at least some of the chords in the songs were wrong. And our agreement that some of the words were wrong. Also that Christmas carols get really weird in their third or fourth verses. Also that there's no guessing, when I start singing a song, what note my voice will settle on as the designated note for that song. But all that doesn't matter as long as you're bravely carrying on through the deeper verses of ``O Come O Come Emmanuel''.

Trivia: The Harlem Globetrotters' first team journey was to Hinckley, Illinois. Source: 1927: High Tide of the 1920s, Gerald Leinwand.

Currently Reading: Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe, Marin Rees.