Christmas Eve lunch break
We have made enough progress that T is allowing himself a nap, WooHoo! The next item on my own To Do List is to clean the kitchen -- he's now finished baking his apple cranberry pies, and prepping his baked ziti dinner pans (these will be cooked later). A couple days ago he acquired some sort of dessert that is in a box in the fridge. I figure providing dessert is overkill, as many of our guests bring desserts as their contributions, and we always have so much food left over.
I will probably go out shopping one more time this afternoon for a list of last-minute items, and a few bags of ice. After that I will clean my bathroom and then shower.
When T wakes from his nap he will likely go into decorating mode, as we still need to decorate the common room (living room + dining room + foyer) and the sun room. I expect T's going to ignore the basement this year instead of trying to turn it into an alternate social space. We've got too much overflow crap down there. But he might decide we need to clean up the Media Cave also, who knows. He's in charge of this event, I'm just the muscle.
We had deli sandwiches delivered for lunch, that's sort of a tradition, that we have lunch delivered on Christmas Eve instead of making the kitchen even messier by cooking lunch for ourselves.
The last estimate for guests that T gave me was between 10-14. He runs this out of Facebook, which I quit 7 years ago. I'm not aware of any of the people I text regularly planning to show up, but it is possible they RSVP'd via Facebook. Most people are out of town visiting family, or have family in town visiting them, so we get the fraction of people who either have nothing else to do on Christmas Eve, or who have other parties before/after ours.
My nephew and his mother are coming, which is a big deal for me :-) Usually my family aren't available. With my siblings we've all long agreed (since my father died) that Christmas is for our separate immediate families, and then we schedule the Bug Family Christmas on a different weekend -- this time it is on December 30.
I know for a lot of people with complex relationship arrangements and big sprawling families, that Christmas is difficult because you cannot possibly spend the same particular moment with everybody, so some people feel hurt and deploy control drama. Ever since I've been with T, we each typically spend Turkey Day with our extended families, and then spend Christmas with each other. My other peeps have always understood this or don't particularly care about Christmas anyway. I wouldn't care about Christmas at all if T didn't -- that first Christmas after my father died it was a relief to me that I didn't have to travel to Newport News yet again to hang out with him and the rest of my family.
My father died in 2002. That became my first Christmas in DC. I spent that Christmas Eve by myself baking stuff for the first time, with mixed results, calling Moose for help three or four times. On Christmas Day I went to two different parties, one in the morning hosted by a couple I was having sex with, and another later on hosted by Moose. For Christmas 2003, I joined KWC and visited his family in Hampton with him. For Christmas 2004, I was about to move into T's Rockville house, so I spent the holidays with him getting ready to move and actually moving. I counted January 1, 2005, as my first official day living with T in Maryland instead of by myself in DC. I'm pretty sure we've spent each Christmas together since then, but I'm not going to check each Christmas Eve LJ entry to make sure. Perhaps there was one or two of the 20 where he went to Seattle without me.
At some point after moving into this house in 2006, we started our annual tradition of hosting an Orphans' Low-Key Christmas Eve Party. The idea was to offer people a break from all the formal employer and family and church and whatever holiday stuff -- here was a place where there would be no gift giving and no judgment, just show up and hang out and bring some food or drink to share if you wanted. Sometimes we've had house guests who helped prepare for the party and spent the night. Sometimes we've had guests who unexpectedly spent the night, which was always OK. Sometimes we've had additional boyfriends who spent the night, I think, although I might be confusing some Christmas Eve memories with our Game Day parties. The hot tub is always available, but not often used on Christmas Eve, as it is less of a gay-oriented guest list than our Game Day parties have been.
Back when we were more likely to have house guests, and when I was younger, the prep was physically easier on me than it is nowadays in my 50s without help. My most important coping mechanism is to limit how often I go up and down the stairs. I plan each trip to make sure I'm maximizing how much stuff I'm carrying up AND down.
I think T experiences more physical pain than I do from the party prep, but he's more motivated to endure it because -- for whatever fucking reasons, he's highly motivated to put on this party and to put on the best fucking party he possibly can. But I feel at some point we'll be too old for this tradition. But maybe we won't be living together that much longer anyway ... my MRA is less than 3 months away now, and his is 13 months later.
I will probably go out shopping one more time this afternoon for a list of last-minute items, and a few bags of ice. After that I will clean my bathroom and then shower.
When T wakes from his nap he will likely go into decorating mode, as we still need to decorate the common room (living room + dining room + foyer) and the sun room. I expect T's going to ignore the basement this year instead of trying to turn it into an alternate social space. We've got too much overflow crap down there. But he might decide we need to clean up the Media Cave also, who knows. He's in charge of this event, I'm just the muscle.
We had deli sandwiches delivered for lunch, that's sort of a tradition, that we have lunch delivered on Christmas Eve instead of making the kitchen even messier by cooking lunch for ourselves.
The last estimate for guests that T gave me was between 10-14. He runs this out of Facebook, which I quit 7 years ago. I'm not aware of any of the people I text regularly planning to show up, but it is possible they RSVP'd via Facebook. Most people are out of town visiting family, or have family in town visiting them, so we get the fraction of people who either have nothing else to do on Christmas Eve, or who have other parties before/after ours.
My nephew and his mother are coming, which is a big deal for me :-) Usually my family aren't available. With my siblings we've all long agreed (since my father died) that Christmas is for our separate immediate families, and then we schedule the Bug Family Christmas on a different weekend -- this time it is on December 30.
I know for a lot of people with complex relationship arrangements and big sprawling families, that Christmas is difficult because you cannot possibly spend the same particular moment with everybody, so some people feel hurt and deploy control drama. Ever since I've been with T, we each typically spend Turkey Day with our extended families, and then spend Christmas with each other. My other peeps have always understood this or don't particularly care about Christmas anyway. I wouldn't care about Christmas at all if T didn't -- that first Christmas after my father died it was a relief to me that I didn't have to travel to Newport News yet again to hang out with him and the rest of my family.
My father died in 2002. That became my first Christmas in DC. I spent that Christmas Eve by myself baking stuff for the first time, with mixed results, calling Moose for help three or four times. On Christmas Day I went to two different parties, one in the morning hosted by a couple I was having sex with, and another later on hosted by Moose. For Christmas 2003, I joined KWC and visited his family in Hampton with him. For Christmas 2004, I was about to move into T's Rockville house, so I spent the holidays with him getting ready to move and actually moving. I counted January 1, 2005, as my first official day living with T in Maryland instead of by myself in DC. I'm pretty sure we've spent each Christmas together since then, but I'm not going to check each Christmas Eve LJ entry to make sure. Perhaps there was one or two of the 20 where he went to Seattle without me.
At some point after moving into this house in 2006, we started our annual tradition of hosting an Orphans' Low-Key Christmas Eve Party. The idea was to offer people a break from all the formal employer and family and church and whatever holiday stuff -- here was a place where there would be no gift giving and no judgment, just show up and hang out and bring some food or drink to share if you wanted. Sometimes we've had house guests who helped prepare for the party and spent the night. Sometimes we've had guests who unexpectedly spent the night, which was always OK. Sometimes we've had additional boyfriends who spent the night, I think, although I might be confusing some Christmas Eve memories with our Game Day parties. The hot tub is always available, but not often used on Christmas Eve, as it is less of a gay-oriented guest list than our Game Day parties have been.
Back when we were more likely to have house guests, and when I was younger, the prep was physically easier on me than it is nowadays in my 50s without help. My most important coping mechanism is to limit how often I go up and down the stairs. I plan each trip to make sure I'm maximizing how much stuff I'm carrying up AND down.
I think T experiences more physical pain than I do from the party prep, but he's more motivated to endure it because -- for whatever fucking reasons, he's highly motivated to put on this party and to put on the best fucking party he possibly can. But I feel at some point we'll be too old for this tradition. But maybe we won't be living together that much longer anyway ... my MRA is less than 3 months away now, and his is 13 months later.