Oh, it HAS been a while.

Merry belated Christmas. Happy almost New Year.

It's that weird in-between time when all the Christmas decor goes on sale and the stores put out flower displays and start promoting spring, but you're still bundling up in your winter coat and the cold spells have just barely begun.

That was a really long sentence. It was meant to sound poetic.

But seriously, that's how it feels.

Christmas was an uneventful affair...I spent the Eve with Cal and the actual Day with my dad. I think we watched Netflix. Then my dad fell asleep and I picked up Chiara so we could watch the Doctor Who christmas special together (literally the entire reason I purchased cable for the TV).

We didn't go to visit Mommy. I think it would have been too much. I hope she understands.

I got a onesie with feet for christmas (yay!) and a package of blank canvases to draw on. I also got a really amazing mug with the letter E on it.

It's the 28th today. I was out working with Cal and when we were done, he put a location in the GPS and set it to start, saying "it's a place I've been wanting to check out."

I didn't ask questions because, well, that's kind of how we roll. It's not like he's going to take me someplace ridiculous...I dunno. There's a lot of "do what you want" and "meh, okay, no biggie" in how we interact. I guess the way people who have been friends for nearly a decade act (summer 2017 will make ten years) kind of sums us up.

Well. I assumed it was going to be a restaurant because I had been talking about food...but guess where we ended up? Canarsie....at a lawyer's firm that was COMPLETELY decked out in Christmas lights and decorations and moving figures and just..so...cool!

Not what I expected at all. And we literally had to drive a good half hour out of our way, deeper into Brooklyn, to get there. What's really nice though, is that in my own mind, I had been wanting to find a house like that to look at. My mom and dad and brother and I used to go and look at a house that was decked out in Christmas decor when I was very small, and I remember it.

That's the way Cal is. Random nice things, when you least expect it. Like showing up at my job with a box of Oreo cookies on my lunch break. Or bringing me lunch when I was really sick, with cayenne pepper added to it because I had mentioned that I knew cayenne was good for colds. Showing up on my doorstep with Dunkin Donuts breakfast before work one morning. And this.

It might be kind of silly, and it's also NOT what I started this blog post intending to write about, but wow, I'm realizing that that meant a lot. Not because like, aw, it was a romantic thing. Nah. Not like that. It was really sweet, but it's more like, wow, I really wanted to see a house like that, and I got to see one. Memories...old memories, with new ones added now. I can feel that that's going to make this Christmas be one that actually stands out in my memory, and there are very few that do that.

There's the year when I got the Tina doll toy set that I had wanted, and my brother got a soccer ball, there's the year we were decorating the tree and Simba (my kitten) was walking around underneath it..my dad had borrowed my uncle's huge over-the-shoulder video camera that year. Then there's 2006, when my dad, mom and I found our way to Rockefeller center on Christmas Day, and looked at the tree, and Carol of the Bells by the Trans Siberian Orchestra played deafeningly loud throughout the streets...and it was like you could feel it in your bones.

Honestly...those are the only three that stand out as true memories.

This has ended up being a really nice blog post, and I want to keep it that way. It's nice. For the first time in a long time, I feel content.

=)