Not so merry

My brother and his 17 year old girlfriend were beaten up by Raider fan thugs Sunday night at a Jack in the Box near the stadium. My brother was jumped by three men and hit from behind, and was knocked unconscious. When he came to, he was being kicked in the face. His girlfriend was thrown across the room by one of the guys, and then beaten up by two girls. The Jack in the Box employees did nothing. They didn't try to break it up, they didn't call 911. The assholes took off and no one got a license plate.

My brother and his girlfriend were taken to the hospital by ambulance. They're going to be okay, but my brother's cheekbones are fractured in two places. I am so furious right now I can't even stand it.

Christmas Tree Jr.

This is Tree Number Two:


Beautiful, glorious 10 foot tall Tree Number One dried up and looked like it would spontaneously combust (very un-glorious), so out it went. It wouldn't be Christmas without a tree, and this is the best we could find on December 20th. It's a sad Charlie-Brown-Christmas-ish tree and I cringe when I look at it, but at least it's still green and has pliable branches.

Sorry Julia - looks like you'll have to plant three trees to compensate for my Christmas deforestation.

Vegas

T-3 days. We're hitting the strip for my birthday. This is the room we reserved.

First Santa Visit

We took Hayden to see Santa on Sunday.



We were lucky to get this picture. A split second later, he threw that stuffed animal on the ground. I guess he doesn't accept gifts from strangers.

He didn't cry, he simply and politely said no when asked if he wanted to sit with Santa. I consider his independence admirable!

I saw that the average San Diegan spends a total of $200-$500 on Christmas presents. How is that possible? I practically spend that on wrapping paper (and sadly, that's not that much of an exaggeration). Who are these people? They're either financially struggling, cheap bastards, or are above the commercialization of the holiday. I'm definitely not the thriftiest person in the world, and since I'm not religious, it is about the gifts, the tree, and lights for me. Personally, I can't say that Jesus is the reason for the season...it's more like Fashion Valley is the reason for the season. I'm an indulgent consumer directly contributing to the decay of society.


But, shopping is fun.

From the Part-ay

I wasn't in a picture-taking mood, so there are only a few.

A few of the table setting. I didn't get a chance to take any pictures before people started digging in.







And a couple of Nicole, Becky, and me late late late after everyone else had gone home. Don't ask me what we were doing...I don't remember.

my computer is dying. i'm running in every thirty minutes trying to keep it alive a little longer. rebooting and hoping my desktop will appear instead of the ominous error messages. please hang on little computer - long enough to get a few more mp3s on to cds.

i'd post pictures from my christmas party saturday night, but i can't. damn computer.

It can all break your heart

Having a child is hard - excrutiating. It isn't the chasing after, or the carrying around, or the constant need to be cheerful, or even the twenty-four-hours-a-day of it all. At times, I'm sure my heart will just break. It's simply too much. It's too much pride when he tells me the ceiling fan is shaped like a star. It's too much empathy when he is afraid. It's an overwhelming joy when he sings "Honey Pie" or "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing Mama" to me or says "to town" at the end of "Santa Claus is coming...." It's an unnatural wave of happiness when I see his happy little face in the morning, and hear him calling "daddy....dad?" from his crib. It's too much frustration when he throws the food from the tray for the fiftieth time. It's too much love when he grabs my face and leans in saying "Mwaaa" to give me a kiss. It is just exhausting to feel so much every day. I don't know how much my heart can stand. The depth of it all is something I had never known.

I can't stand the guilt I am feeling right now. At this moment, I feel the worst kind of guilt - parent guilt.

Hayden does this thing where he runs full speed into you. We were playing in the kitchen and he came barreling towards me. I don't know why, but I moved to one side. I guess I thought he would run past me. Instead, he fell face first on to the tile floor. I scooped him up, trembling, but not yet screaming, and saw blood coming from his mouth and nose. I can't even describe the fear. Then he was really screaming - the real kind of screaming. Then I was shaking, afraid he had knocked his teeth out, or worse. Blood and more blood and he wouldn't let me put ice on it. His lip was swelling up as I looked at it. Finally, I called Neil in a panic, planning on taking him to the Emergency Room. Neil said they wouldn't do anything about a fat lip and bloody nose. He calmed down after about twenty minutes. Now he's fine, but that giant puffy lip is my fault. His nose is swollen and black and blue across the bridge. And I feel like the worst mother in the fucking world. (Mom, if you're reading this, sorry about the "f-word").

Aside from the tile incident this morning, the last few days have been a whirlwind of insane preparations. Shopping, tree, lights, papers to be written, work to be done, cards to be addressed, on and on and on.

Our tree is up and if I had a minute to think about it, I'm sure I'd say I feel Christmas-y. Hayden doesn't quite get it, but he does understand there is now a tree in our house, and the ornaments are to stay on the tree (kind of). We tell him Santa is coming and he looks out the window for a car. Seeing him hanging an ornament on the tree the other night was truly a highlight of my life. Tears and all. It's like seeing a vision you've had in your head forever magically materialize - and in the cases of babies and marriage - my experience has been that the reality is even better than the imagined. How often does that happen in life?

Here are a few pictures from the tree decorating. My digital doesn't do well in dim rooms, so we all have rat eyes...