Christmas Time Was Here

Reasons Why This Christmas Has Been Pretty Awesome:

1. Joey got Mallory to bring Caedmon* over on Christmas eve.
2. Jimmy and Joey came back on Christmas day for presents and such fun.
3. I'm an awesome gifter.
4. So is everyone else.
5. Mom said "Let there be pumpkin pie," and so there was. And it was good.**
6. The roast was delicious. Even if Mom forgot to cut the net off.
7. Joey and I sat outside during the sunset making use of the artistic talent that seems to run in the family.
8. While Joey and I did arts, Samia and Jimmy made use of their musical talent.
9. I got the complete series of Firefly on DVD.
10. Even the most awkward moments was pretty fun.
11. After everyone left, Jim, Mom and I watched Fried Green Tomatoes.*** I cried like a baby.

Reasons This Christmas Was Not Awesome:

N/A

*Caedmon is Joey's son. He's over a year old, and Mom has met Caed once before this. This was Samia's first time meeting him. It was a big deal.
**Samia and I made the pies. Because we love pie.
***My gift to Mom. I kinda gifted myself on that one.

The Pity Suit

Yesterday I went Christmas shopping with my mother.

I could go on and on about how horrific Christmas shopping is, or how much I hate commercialization, or how tiring it all was, but the fact is, not a one of those things would be true. Well, not in such a way as to make the day itself feel horrible.

Shopping was easy. We were nearly completely finished after only a few hours. Commercialization is sad and leads to the spending of exorbitant amounts of money if you're not careful, but it didn't exactly make it hard to find the right gifts. And yes, I was tired by the end of the day, but I think that was mostly because I stayed up until five in the morning (as I do most nights) and woke up at 9:30 AM as opposed to my usual one or two in the afternoon.

The thing about yesterday, though; I felt bad. Not just bad. Kind of pathetic and slimy.

You see, of my mother's four children, I am the only one without a significant other. Samia's practically married. Joey has a girlfriend who manages to put up with him somehow (as far as I know; that boy never tells us anything). Even Jimmy managed to find someone he could stay with for longer than a couple months. Hell, he and Megan have been going out for, what, almost three years?

And then there's me. The youngest daughter who has never even had a potential girlfriend. Or boyfriend for that matter.

"Well, they'll be getting an extra gift from their girlfriends-"

"And boyfriend."

"So I figure you should get something extra."

I naturally rolled my eyes, but while we were looking for Samia's gift, she told me to try on a suit. And then to try on a shirt that matched it. And then she bought it for me.

She spent the rest of the day trying to get me to pick out more clothes or items that I wanted. I gently said no. And then I tried to explain how pathetic it made me feel, aside from the slimy feeling I always get when I buy things for myself on Christmas. And she kept asking.

"I don't want pity gifts!"

"They're not pity gifts. They're equality gifts."

It wouldn't have bothered me so much if she'd just gone and bought me things without telling me. I want a surprise on Christmas just like everyone else. It would be a much better distraction from my gaping romantic void than a pity gift.

I'm sorry. Equality gift.

The funny bit is that it wasn't as big a deal as I make it out to be. With the exception of a moment in Barnes & Noble where my mother frantically shooed me out of the music and movies department to go find something for Joey (for all intents and purposes, I'm pretending she didn't do any such thing), the day was very calm. There was a lot of walking and going back and forth between stores looking for the right item at a reasonable price, but we arrived too early in the day for the Christmas rush (apparently nobody in Austin wakes up before noon), so we had no reason to run. For a Saturday at the mall less than two weeks before Christmas, it was actually pretty awesome.

Angels

Lately I've been keeping myself up long hours. In general it hasn't been for any particular reason. But I've noticed I go back to the same project every couple days.

The project I refer to is the invention of a language which I haven't given a name yet. I've gotten further with this language than I've gone with any other, and it's evolving pretty steadily and in its own way. The punctuation is a bit modified (as you'll see), and I'm working out the grammar as I go. Mostly, I'm trying to keep it simple enough to be easily learned.

Here is some bullshit text I made up as an example:


Then we've got some transliteration:

|zegey satethep zeny akyel arages pesat| |baraz'egs varyta, tey arages| |tey arages pesat zegeysathep, selel mamep'egs [God] saoga| |[God] eyna|

I haven't thought up a word for "God" yet. I may just throw props to Phillip Pullman and the concept of "Dust." Except it's really hard to approximate the word "Dust" in a language that doesn't use D and considers the placing of two consonants side by side an illegal move. Maybe... Nope, can't do that. Also, Phillip Pullman hates God. I guess that wouldn't work out real well.

Anyways translation, right? Literal first:

People believe many angel are perfect. Tell to truth, they are. They are perfect people that worship, able love to God best. God only.

And then:

People believe angels are perfect. To tell the truth, they are. They are perfect worshipers, able to love God best. God alone.

Infinitives are fun.

I got it in my head to do a language around the same time that Paul ordered me to make up a religion. I figured I may as well go all out. And I probably will use it to that end (though whatever I come up with, I'm not going to call it a religion), but I've been thinking of putting it to another use lately. A story I've been thinking up that involves aliens, life interference, and the no-return policy on human abduction.

Now that I'm finished with registering for school and junk (yay!), this is pretty much all I do.