Had a heckuva good Christmas this year <33 Our whole family got together, and we sang Christmas songs in my Grandpa's huge living room with my uncles playing their guitar and bass and me playing my violin. It was SO much fun with everyone singing along!

Got some wonderful presentses; candles, a new pocketknife, tights, a hundred bucks (all in one dollar bills lol), earrings, books, AND SONY VEGAS PRO 9 8DDD /JUMPS AROUND

Hope everyone ate lotsa pie and played and had a ball!

Going to see Sherlock Holmes tomorrow, I hear it's totally badass :D

I think a little Christmas picspammage is in order ♥

( Zoro makes a dang good reindeer, I'd say )

Merry Christmas everybody! :DD

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

Mmm kay, so I clicked on this movie and got ready for some cutesy Christmasy animated short, WRONG DDD: Don't watch this unless you want to be creeped out to the max. I KNEW THERE WAS A REASON I HATED DOLLS. Worst part is that this lovely, happy music still plays when all the scary shit has gone down. /hides under blankets

This is what the kids (Sam, 18, and Francine, 12) have been doing the past two days--making and decorating gingerbread men. You will see that if we have any artistic talent, then it doesn't translate well to cookie decorating! We have fun, though.

This is a yearly tradition. We've been doing it since Sam was three or four, I think. It was a tradition in my family too. But we have the best recipe for gingerbread ever, so the cookies are really very tasty.

( Gingerbread men )

I think every year is different for me. In general, the holidays make me feel happy and light-hearted, but if I'm having trouble, feeling depressed or tired, then I can get stressed, and just not feeling that "holiday happiness" can add to the general sense of gloom.

Last year, for instance, I was completely overwhelmed and had to push myself to get through the basic shopping for the kids and my mother-in-law. I didn't put up the tree, and we didn't even have a whole-family Christmas celebration. We ran away to Tucson, where my father-in-law and his wife live.

This year I challenged myself to "do the right thing," because I felt like not having a holiday gathering just wasn't a good direction to go in. But my husband wasn't on the same page and wasn't too happy that I suddenly invited everyone over on Christmas Eve. Note to self: talk to husband before planning big parties. Seems obvious, doesn't it? Anyway, we got over that hump, and today I'm in the middle of proving to him that he won't be left to do all the cleaning. the kids and I are busy cleaning the parts of the house that didn't get done a weekend or two ago, when we did our first big cleaning push. So instead of just hating the cleaning, I feel like I'm doing something good for our relationship.

I'm feeling nostalgic, too. I think it's hard not to. I'm remembering my mom and what fun Christmases were when I was growing up. There was just something great about how she did Christmas! We had all these old ornaments that we crowded the tree to hang, throwing handfuls of aluminum tinsel to drape from branch to branch. And there was always lots of holiday baking.

And every Christmas Eve, she'd sit down with us and read the story of the wise men coming to find Jesus, and she'd read Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory."

Of course, there were some really awful times, too. But if I start thinking about those, I might cry again.

Well, I've thrown myself aboard the Hetalia bandwagon that I was diligently trying to keep away from, per the goal I had to lay off getting into the popular shows and pay more attention to ones that not everyone knew about. Ah well, so much for that. I blame Finland and Sweden for being too damn cute! Seriously, that pairing hit me like a ton of bricks.

I have to admit, the hype around the show had me a bit sceptical, but I'm really starting to admire it, especially because it takes such a laid back approach to world politics, which is a nice breath of fresh air compared to all the seriousness that goes on all the time. Try as I may, I can't help but think of countries as people now. Which makes World History a heck of a lot more interesting, I tell ya!

You know what I just realized is probably the best kind of fanart around? The stuff that's drawn for a certain manga by a different mangaka than what we're used to. IT'S HOLY CRAP WICKED. JUST LOOK AT THIS.



Hrrrr Sanji you just jumped 200 points on the hot meter...

Now here's a subject I can warm up to! Some of the questions I only have boring, simple answers to, but this is a subject I've thought a lot about and also had experience with.

Basically, I'm a very honest person. The main reason I'm so very honest is because I'm too lazy to lie. I can't bear the thought of having to keep track of what I said to whom. It just sounds like way too much stress.

Oh, and the guilt. I don't want to live with the guilt.

So I started out being a "cards on the table" type of gal. And there was really no getting around it when it came to my love life, because I was still dating my old boyfriend when I started dating the man I eventually married and am still married to, so he really knew who I'd been sleeping with * laugh* I also got him to tell me his whole love history early on. I thought that was just what you did! I was naive! But it hasn't really caused any problems.

But I've come to realize that even with sex and romance, complete honesty is not always the best way to go. If you slipped up and had an affair and you really regret it and feel committed to your partner, I don't think it's necessarily a good idea to confess. If you have to confess to move on, that's fine! That's what you need. But really, it's not necessary to hurt your partner with that knowledge, as long as you know that you are committed.

Of course, there is a problem, in that superficially, someone who has strayed, regrets it, and isn't telling his or her partner because they don't want to create unnecessary pain looks exactly like the person who strayed and has every intention of straying again and doesn't regret it a single bit. But the honest person and the cheating person know inside themselves which one they are, and that's the important thing. You live by your own ethical lights, that's just how it is.

And of course there are all those other situations where you absolutely should not tell the truth--about other people's clothing, appearance, significant others, and the list goes on. You definitely do NOT need to tell you girlfriend that you suspect her husband of cheating. Just stay out of that!

And last of all, you should never tell a child the truth about Santa Claus. That's one very valuable lesson I learned. Children actually believe in Santa for a good reason. They are entitled to that magical belief for as long as they can hold onto it, and playing along with it is NOT lying! Did you hear me? It is not lying. It is allowing your child to experience something deep and precious that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives and hand down to their own children. It's a powerful myth that imbeds itself deeply in the soul, and it's a positive one!

So--don't think you have to tell your child because keeping the secret makes you a liar. Don't think you have to spoil their magic because "all of the other kids know the truth and will make fun of them." (That's one bullshit rationale I heard from a colleague, and I wanted to smack his smug face).

Don't even tell them if they ask you. I made that mistake. My son asked me, and I asked him if he really wanted to know, and he said yes. And I told him. And he cried all night.

When they ask you say, "What do YOU think?" or "What reasons do you think show Santa is real or not real?" Let your child tell YOU whether Santa exists or not. You'll be happy you did.

If my husband read all of my e-mails from the last month, he'd probably just feel confirmed in how truly silly I am. A lot of my e-mail is chat with my scanlation partner about what stories we want to do, and kind of oohing and ahhing and patting each other on the back.

On the other hand, on occasion I have reason to give a friend a lift on a bad day, and if he read those e-mails he might think, "She did a good thing." He doesn't necessarily let himself get in a position to let me prop him up that much, so he might be surprised at how supportive I can be.

Also, reading the scanlation e-mails, he might be impressed at how my partner and I get business done. He might be surprised by that side of my life!

Oh, I see from reading other people's contributions that the question might be the fall-out from the invasion of privacy. I wouldn't be too fussed. I'd be rather charmed that he showed that much curiosity about me, because believe me, he doesn't seem to be very curious!

ADG's mother passed away the other day. Yes, she was a little old lady but it still came so far out of left field as to be shocking.

Ye gods, I will be so very happy to see this year come to a close. New Year, please bring me a decade of at least semi-good things (I'll even take moderately boring at this point!).