Happy New Year, Cope Street!!

I don't wanna seem like I'm, you know, a massive brag, but my life is pretty awesome at the moment.  Pretty flippin' awesome.  Not flipping.  Flippin'.  With an N.  How you like me now, English teachers?  The answer to that question is 'We don't like you at all, you illiterate moron'.

So Christmas in two weeks, huh?  I haven't done any Christmas shopping yet.  Woops!  Sorry.  You'll have to excuse me for having a full time job and a life!  I'm kidding of course.  The real reason I haven't done any shopping yet is because I am too lazy and too poor.  You are all getting hugs for Christmas.  As long as you initiate them. 

Christmas shopping is hard, especially if - like me - you are a complete moron.  I keep thinking of stuff to buy for my Dad, going to the shops to pick it up, and then forgetting what it is.  So I go home.  Then I remember again.  So I go to the shops, but by the time I get there, I've forgotten.  Home.  Remember.  Shops.  Forget.  Home.  Remember.  Shops.  Forget.  God dammit!  Dad, you owe me a $70 petrol voucher. 

The one thing I definitely have enough energy for this holiday season is Alex and I buying our very first tree as a married couple.  I mean, um, as completely platonic room-mates.  I love Christmas trees.  I love everything about them - the smell, the lights, the decorations, the presents underneath...and most of all, the fact that at the end of January when it's dead and brown and smells like the inside of a ski-boot, I can throw it over my balcony and completely inconvenience all our dickhead neighbours.  Happy New Year, Cope Street!!

When I was still living at home, the whole Christmas-Tree-Decoration phase of the holiday was always left up to me.  Mum, Dad and Catherine would literally leave me at home by myself for 4 to 6 hours in order to do it.  Of course, what I really mean by 'leave me at home by myself' is 'I kicked them out so they wouldn't get in my way'.  This might seem cruel, but it was really in the best interest of Christmas.  My sisters method to tree decorating is similar to the fashion in which a blind person might assemble a pavlova - you can see that she's trying, but in the end we just wind up with raspberries and meringue everywhere.  As for my parents, well, they aren't much better.  I'm convinced my Dad thought tinsel was actually edible at one point.  Really, it was just safer for me to take care of the whole thing, and I was more than happy to do it.  The only problem is that now I've moved out, and they have no choice but to do it themselves - a thought that fills me with equal parts terror and amusement.  It's the same emotion I experience when I let myself think about the idea of Santa Clause for too long.  I mean, how do YOU feel about a fat guy and his pet deer breaking into your house at 2 in the morning?