Everybody has gone home and I sent most of the food home with them. Nobody got sick, nobody cried, nobody broke anything, everybody seemed to get along, and everybody still appeared happy by the end of the day. I did give out a few Tylenols, but that’s only to be expected.

Well, I always expect it, anyway.

I suppose they might have been smiling because they were so pie-bound their faces were frozen, but I like to think they were all smiling because they’d had a good time in my home.

My only regret is that my Tumorless Sister didn’t get a chance to wear her turkey costume because all the homemade bread had been delivered the day before. Darn. Next year, TS.

And now, it’s officially time to think about Christmas. It’s my favorite time of the year, this “before” time, the building up, the anticipation, the planning, the traditions, the decorations, the list-making, the preparations. . . I love all of these things.

I read all of these articles about “holiday stress,” or “How to get through the holidays without killing yourself or someone else,” or “That Holiday Stress/Mess/Disaster/Difficult Time” or “Holiday work, work, work, groan, strain, nightmare of a time,” etc, and I’m genuinely amazed, because there has never been a Christmas in all of my life that has caused me anything like that. Oh, sure, we’ve had hard times, no money, illness, sibling misunderstandings, etc, but the Christmas preliminaries are a time of great joy to me. I love making lists of names, and planning what to make or get for them, and finding these things in creative ways (ways that do not involve me getting up at the asscrack of dawn and going to a mall or any other such labyrinth of horror and bucking crowds of insane people and punch-drunk toddlers who were torn from their cozy cribs that their parent might save twelve bucks on Legos) ; I have other ways and they work for me!) (No, I am not a cat burglar.) I utilize the internet.

I mean, do people not understand that almost all of the Black Friday ads have been running online since Halloween? Hah, as if I would leave my bed before noon when I didn’t have to, for ANYTHING!

I mean, for a chance at a Nintendo Wii for $79.00 on Amazon, oh hellzYAH I’ll tune in and keep checking!

Stand in line at 4 a.m., three hours before the Best Buy doors even OPEN? I find even the suggestion amusing in its totally non-amusing manner. There is nothing I could ever want badly enough to make me do that.

In fact, today was the first Black Friday in my adult life wherein I left my house at all, and I didn’t leave it to go shopping. I left it because I had a hot date with a blog-friend. That’s right.

Mamacita and RightWingNation had themselves some steamy Mexican lunch today. Interpret this as you will.