Home, after the holidays

Is it really Sunday already? Is my vacation really already half over? That sound you no doubt hear is my mind mid-boggle.

So I hope you had as lovely a Christmas and/or weekend as me. I spent the holiday at my sister’s house in Maryland, where she and her husband had decided to host this year’s celebrations. This seemed only fitting, since he’s originally from Maryland, with nearly all of his family still living there, and they both came here to New York for Thanksgiving.

So here in New York, we exchanged most of our gifts on Thursday night, Christmas Eve Eve, if you will, partly because my parents’ definition of “not too many presents” is maybe different than some people’s, and we weren’t going to have room for everything in the car. I’m not complaining; my parents are more than generous, and they gave me some lovely gifts, including some DVDs, a very nice sweater, and a new jacket. (I also got a swanky new iPad case from Heather — who, it should also be mentioned, renewed my subscription to One Story for me.) But there was no way we were going to fit all of those wrapped presents in the trunk of the car.

We also had to bring our quite large dog with us, his pen and food, gifts for everyone else (including my sister, her husband, and their dog), some food for the party — where there was much too much food, as it turns out — and two days’ worth of clothes. We decided taking two cars wasn’t the best option, despite the extra space it would have given us, since our dog Tucker isn’t exactly calm, and we thought it was better to have three people with him, to keep him from jumping back and forth on the five-hour drive.

So I sat in the back with him, and my knee became his frequent head rest.

The trip went by fine, though, with almost no traffic along the way. That Friday night the seven of us — me, my parents, my sister and her husband, and an aunt and uncle they’d also invited — had dinner out in Bethesda, and then we returned home or to the hotel. Tucker was staying with my sister for the two nights, which I think he found a thoroughly disorienting experience, not least of all because this may be the first time he’d ever actually seen a cat. I’m still not sure if he knew what to make of Sebastian, my sister’s cat; though obviously fascinated by it, it’s quite possible he thought it was just a very large squirrel, or a very interactive toy. (Sebastian, meanwhile, eyed Tucker with complete disdain.)

On Saturday, we hung around the hotel until the early afternoon, when we drove over to my sister’s house for a ham dinner. Many of my brother-in-law Brian’s relatives joined us, including his sister, her husband, and their dog. Tucker was equally fascinated by Layla, and continued throughout the evening to get near her, but she wanted nothing to do with it, and mostly cowered in the corner of the room. (And with three dogs and thirteen people running around, it’s little wonder that Sebastian didn’t put in an appearance all day.)

Then it was just a question of way too much food, good conversation, more presents, and finally heading back to the hotel. I capped the evening off by watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I’ve sort of been re-watching lately, on my iPad. (The image quality, it must be said, wasn’t always great, but it seemed a whole lot better than the alternative — All About Steve on HBO, or trying to sleep through that movie, while my mother watched from the next bed.)

We left early this morning, picking Tucker up from my sister’s and hitting the road before 8 o’clock, in an effort to beat the snow that was being predicted. And you know, we almost did. We got home before the real worst of it, if nothing else; right now, it’s still pretty awful out, whiteout blizzard conditions all around, and I’m not even sure it’s worth shoveling until it levels off. It’s altogether likely I won’t be the only one around here with tomorrow off from work. Not exactly a white Christmas, but definitely a white day-after-Christmas.