I'm spending Christmas Eve in the house in which I grew up, in the rooms in which I once lived.
I wanted to figure out some way to tie everything I've been writing together in some way that will make sense, and being here, now, is probably the best way to do it.
Some recent history: the traffic coming out of Chicago this afternoon was terrible. Terrible, nasty, awful. Confused. The Mercedes-Benz handled it with much more calm than I did. The car is just a joy. It's just amazing. Fargo is here with me (I didn't want to leave him in Chicago for the weekend), and he didn't complain at all about the drive up. He found a warm spot on the floor in front of the back seat and slept most of the way up, after first patrolling all of the many windows. For a while he slept way in the back, in the very back of the wagon. The diesel engine seems to make a much lower-pitched sound than the Honda, and I guess he thinks it's a huge cat, purring. He gets to enjoy a nice back-in-the-litter experience.
There was a band of pretty serious snow and ice as I got up toward Janesville, but it cleared out and when I got up to Minneapolis things were fine. The stability of this car on ice is amazing. I can understand why Frieda kept it all those years.
When I got to the house, it was pretty cold, both inside and outside. The furnace is usually kept as low as possible through the winter so that it only goes through maybe one tank of oil, but when I got there, I wound the thermostat up to around 72 and left it there. My parents tended to keep the house cold, and I never liked it that way. It's a big house and it deserves to be warm. While the house warmed up, I brought the things I'd carried up from Chicago in from the car and brought Fargo in. Then it was off to find a grocery store that was still open.
I finally found one -- it was about eight-thirty -- and got some things to make. A small turkey breast (not a whole turkey!), a box of stuffing mix, some snacks, a can of cat treats and a small apple pie. I put them all in the refrigerator, along with a largish jug of California white wine I'd brought up from Chicago (finding a liquor store is sometimes an adventure in Minnesota).
One thing I've never felt compelled to correct is the fact that the cable company never actually turned my parents' cable service off. They stopped billing me, but no one ever actually came out and undid the wire. As a result, I got to pile up some blankets and pillows in front of their huge old television and watch old movies on cable while writing this (on paper), playing with Fargo and trying to keep him from knocking over my glass of wine.
I watched Holiday Inn on one of the old-movie channels. They later made a film called White Christmas in color, but this black-and-white movie is where they actually introduced the song. Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire and everyone. It used to be you could depend on every little TV station playing It's A Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve, but I guess a few years ago they sorted out who owned the copyright and that organization started telling stations that open season on George Bailey was over. I haven't seen that movie in a few years now.
What has happened this year? I wrote some nice things early on. I adopted an adorable kitten. I started playing music actively again. I met a couple of interesting guys. I met a lot of interesting people. I went back to working a normal job again. I destroyed my old car and now have an even older one. And this is the last full year of my 20s. I'll score it pretty much a positive year.
I fell asleep in front of the television in a pile of blankets in my parents' house, with a kitten sleeping on my head.