Gayle Madwin (queerbychoice) wrote,
Gayle Madwin
queerbychoice
  • Mood: festive
  • Music: smoke alarm

Christmas Loot

For Christmas, Santa Susan Claus brought me a wheelbarrow! It is big and red. Santa Susan Claus tried to assemble it for me, but didn't get very far. I said that this was only to be expected, since Santa never seemed to get far in pre-assembling things when I was a little kid either.

Christmas actually almost got canceled this year in our household. For Susan it sort of was canceled. I had a fever of 101.7 yesterday and barely got out of bed all day, so I called my parents to say I didn't think we'd be coming for Christmas. I asked Susan whether she might want to go without me, but she's been getting over a bad cold herself and barely managed to summon the energy to buy and wrap a lot of my presents at the last moment on Christmas Eve. Today I felt surprisingly less sick and didn't have a fever anymore, so I called my parents again and said that I would be coming after all. But Susan felt worse and didn't come with me. Also, we're canceling our plans to drive to Los Angeles and visit her sisters, because neither of us is feeling healthy enough to handle the long trip. I was pretty miserable a lot of the time at my parents' house tonight, because I'm still sick, but I did want to have a Christmas of some sort, and it was clear that wasn't going to happen at home since Susan couldn't get out of bed at all.

I saw the wheelbarrow before I left because it wasn't wrapped, but I didn't open any of my wrapped presents from Susan until I got home in the evening, because Susan wasn't awake to see me open them earlier. Here are the books I received:
  • Isabel Allende: The House of the Spirits (from my parents)

  • Ivo Andric: The Bridge on the Drina (from my parents)

  • Octavia E. Butler: Parable of the Sower (from my parents)

  • Steven L. Evans: Top Trails Sacramento: Exploring Valley, Foothills, and Mountains in the Sacramento Region (from my parents)

  • Peter Høeg: The Woman and the Ape (from Susan's sister Wendy)

  • Glenn Keator: California Plant Families: West of the Sierran Crest and Deserts (from my parents)

  • Matthew Lewis: The Monk (from my brother)

  • Naguib Mahfouz: The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street (from my parents)

  • Sara Stein: My Weeds: A Gardener's Botany (from my parents)

  • Brian Tom, Lawrence Tom, and the Chinese American Museum of Northern California: Images of America: Marysville's Chinatown (from my parents)

  • Amos Tutuola: The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (from Susan)
And here are the CDs I received (all from my parents):
  • Dave Gahan: Hourglass

  • Morrissey: Swords

  • Placebo: Battle for the Sun

  • U2: No Line on the Horizon
I gave my mother a Massive Attack CD, which she had requested because they did the theme song for the TV show House. I told her I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to say that I had given my mother an "ambient trip-hop" CD for Christmas, because that was how I saw Massive Attack's musical genre described online. Meanwhile, my mother gave Susan the Beatles' Abbey Road album, and Susan finds it amusing that she received the Beatles CD while my mother received the Massive Attack CD.

I also received lots of seeds--I wonder whether there's still time to plant some of them this year? I'm sure I'll save a lot of them for next fall, but probably not all of them. Here they are:
  • Western Yarrow (Achillea millefolium var. occidentalis) (from my parents)

  • Dill (Anethum graveolens) (from Susan's sister Wendy)

  • Chinese Houses (Collinsia heterophylla) (from my parents)

  • Echinacea (Echinacea purpurea) (from Susan's sister Wendy)

  • California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica) (from Susan's sister Wendy)

  • Globe Gilia (Gilia capitata) (from my parents)

  • Bird's Eyes (Gilia tricolor) (from Susan)

  • Tidy-tips (Layia platyglossa) (from my parents)

  • Blue Flax (Linum lewisii) (from Susan)

  • Sky Lupine (Lupinus nanus) (from Susan)

  • Arroyo Lupine (Lupinus succulentus) (from my parents)

  • Chamomile (Matricaria recutita) (from Susan's sister Wendy)

  • Baby Blue Eyes (Nemophila menziesii) (from my parents)

  • Black-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) (from Susan's sister Wendy)

And I received a David Bowie Plastic Soul Review DVD from Susan, garden clippers from Susan, a set of five garden stepping stones from Susan, purple gloves from Susan, a pink skirt from Susan, a teal skirt from my parents, a pair of matching Christmas dishtowels for Susan and me from my Aunt Kitty, two baskets containing three cans of gourmet cocoa for both of us from my Aunt Kitty, and a whole box of neat little items like pens and colored pencils binder clips and magnets and stickers and chapstick and a mirror and a car "glove-mop" and candy and so on for both of us from Susan's sister Wendy.

It was an excellent haul. And now I'm going to bed, hoping we both won't be sick anymore when we wake up tomorrow morning.
Tags: gifts
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