christmas eve at ours: not for the faint-hearted

this year we've been too busy to put up the christmas tree, so the wine fridge is happy to stay in its place. and i've been holding off writing christmas cards, somehow there's a terrible inertia to doing so, i have a feeling i won't be able to pen significant stuff to anyone this year, so why bother? decision: am cutting down my 100+ christmas card list to about 20+. i will get down to writing them LATER.

first alarm: someone calls me from an obviously bustling office, i hear fax machines and photocopiers beeping all over the place. i'm going for lunch at anthony bourdain's les halles, the menu's just been emailed over to me. it's starting to feel surreal, like living someone else's life. i go back to dreaming, where a weird image takes over my mind... my family's bought a new place overseas, we've migrated and i'm being stalked by an eerie doorman. i've left my school academic records back in singapore and am forced to return to get them back.

second alarm: i awake to the sounds of my mom getting hysterical: the porridge is boiling over! i haven't finished wrapping my presents yet! take the clothes out of the washing machine, i don't want them to soak too long! mental reminder to self: photocopy academic results JUST in case. my mom's blasting, where's the christmas book of songs? see, way back in '98, i typed out around 20 christmas carols and gave them nice backgrounds and images and everything and collated it into a booklet and photocopied about 20-30 books so we'd have something to pass around during christmas carol singing. and now mom says she's lost it, she doesn't know where it is. she looks at me: is it okay if i park you over at aunty audrey's today, can you churn out a whole new book in 2 hours?

cut to horrendous mental picture of me hunching over computer at kim's place furiously typing

nonononoononoo. i hurry downstairs to meet dad's car with my lazybumsbro and pick up dad's office presents and a huge pot of curry for later. there's about 5 bottles of wine as well, which i help mom pack into the wine fridge (which, by the way, is ALSO stocked with daniel's stash of a&w rootbeer, funpacks of m&ms, and bottles of gnc vitamins - don't ask.) aunty audrey calls to say that we left the books over at her place from LAST YEAR - how quickly time has flown! see, 6-7 months won't be so bad, you won't even know i'm gone!

mom tries to clean out the second fridge (i have THREE fridges, one for food to be cooked, one for junk food and medicine, one for wine) and digs out mooncakes (?!!) and a huge mrs. field's cookie (the kind that's as big as a cake).. she asks daniel and i to break up the cookie as it is taking up too much space. daniel and i refuse to and prance around the house singing renee olstead's breaking up is hard to do... no wonder we drive my mom crazy.

i open the suitcase we just bought, a mint-green antler biggie. i throw in random items: boxes of contact lens solution, a fleece blanket from ikea, my pencil case. there's plenty more space. don't know why i've left it till now to start packing... it's like a sort of disbelief that i'm leaving i guess. and sharon's already finished packing and last night told me that she was trying to close the suitcase.. !!!! i haven't done anything yet, oh wait. i've finally managed to get the nus doc's signature on my health form... if i run into complications over there in pennsylvania i'm positively going to scream.

meanwhile. it's christmas... somehow i don't feel quite christmassy this year, and i know why but that's something i ought to keep to myself. i'm not going to put any sort of christmas list out here about what i want... i can't think of anything i really need anymore (except money hahaa $$) so yeah. pretty content with knowing i'm gonna go somewhere else for a long while. so that's it.