When I am at my parents’ house this Christmas — admittedly, it’s 40 minutes away, I could go there NOW — I must remember to reclaim my copy of LOTR. Actually I might go there next week to go shopping with the sister to acquire presents for the masses. (Can’t they all just buy things for themselves, give them to me to wrap and pay them back for them, then we’ll all pretend the charade involved Santa and we’re all happy? Sigh. It’d be easier if we had a budget that made purchasing presents that make people truly happy possible. But no. They’ll just get somewhat appropriate gifts that I think they need but they in all likelihood don’t.)

Back to things I need to do: Mainly, steal lots of books from my bookshelf at home and my sister’s, but mainly LOTR. I realized I haven’t read LOTR (non-nerds: The Lord of the Rings) since… since… oh wow… 2002. Yes. Winter 2002. I really need to reread it. (Annalisa, I won’t ever beat you or your brother with LOTR knowledge; I could kick your ass with Star Wars trivia, though, or in the matter of Great Important Theorists of Literary Things. But only because those obsessions came first, chronologically. If they asked me a question about LOTR on Jeopardy though I could probably “Who/What is…” the hell out of it.)

Also. I need to not be neurotic this holiday season when it comes to being home. I’m not home much. For those of you who don’t know, I probably have been in my parents’ house for a collective two or three weeks since August 18, 2003. Which, as my nerdy digital watch tells me, was 1,578 days ago. That’s a maximum of 21 days out of 1,578. That accounts for about 1% of the last 4.3 years. I’ve been home 1% of the time. That sounds accurate. I wonder if I’ve spent more time with Bryan’s family… I won’t calculate that. Anyway I will be relaxed and fun and not attempt to have an Alpha Female confrontation. (There was a minor one at Bryan’s family’s Thanksgiving that I didn’t write about: Bryan’s aunts are all Alphas, as am I, and his mom is a self-admitted non-Alpha and she was the hostess, though all but one of the aunts had turned off the Alpha switch — even his grandma turned it off — anyway!)

So no Alpha dominance battles, no neuroses… Yes. Calm. It will be good. Church will be good, too — Christmas Eve’s candlelight service at St. Matthew’s. The one time of year that I really don’t mind being in a church. So long as the pastor doesn’t get all Jesus-and-Mary on us again (my family and I completely agree on this odd point: we like “God” more than “Jesus” in terms of terminology. How weird is that? It also helps the somewhat Jewish Bryan feel a little better). Despite the irony that Christmas sort of is specifically about Jesus… but never mind. It’ll be good.