At Home & More Food Memories

Late Christmas Eve.

The tree lights are set to alternate between flicker, spastic, and no-I-will-not-stop-for-directions. The fire's almost burnt out. We're all sitting in our living room, and my parents are reading books while my dogs sleep and the cat (who isn't lost) snores. Renaissance Christmas music echoes around the room. (Not my choice, I put on The Best of the Smoky Robinson & The Miracles' Christmas Songs and my next album choice of John Denver & The Muppets got vetoed. So what if I played the tape on repeat the first 18 Christmas seasons of my life and it can't hold a tune now? It's the nostalgia that counts.)

My life could not be more boring. But at least I'm not in Los Angeles! NorCal totally kicks butt.

We had a Christmas Eve dinner/family gathering earlier tonight over at my mom's stepsister's house, meaning I had to endure an hour of "Oh, Julia! I haven't seen you since you were this big!!" and trying to come up with yet another witty way of saying, "Nope, I guess it's been awhile... who are you again?" until I had enough wine so that it just came naturally to me. My step-aunt has six kids, all of whom are grown and have kids, and almost everyone was there which brought the total number for the evening to near about four million, half of whom continued to spend a good portion of the evening marvelling at the fact that, no, I was not the same height as I was when I was seven. I felt ridiculously over-dressed as I wasn't wearing jeans, and spent most of my time trying to stick next to my mom and the white wine, hoping I wouldn't have to talk to the masses of step-cousins my age I've never met about things like cars and and laying down carpet in trailers and Timbaland and Hollister clothing and other subjects I know nothing and care nothing about.

Still, the sticky toffee pudding I made for the evening went down well and everyone was lovely and friendly, so I shouldn't complain.

I always find being at home incredibly boring, even though I am in fact in one of my favorite places in the world. Once I get out into Oakland and San Francisco and even small downtown Alameda or hang out with friends it's awesome; I suppose it's just being stuck in my house with few options that drags things down. I love this place, but none of my high school friends are around here and the college friends I have up here I see all the time at rugby. Which, in a way, brings me to the second part of my post... more food memories.

Saturday my parents and I went to see The Hard Nut (imagine if The Nutcracker was turned into a 1960s comic book and then back into a ballet -- brilliant) and afterwards went to the House of Chicken and Waffles in Downtown Oakland. When my two pieces of Southern-style fried chicken, biscuit, and grits arrived, I realized I hadn't had fried chicken or southern cookin' of any kind since I left Baltimore -- about 2 1/2 years ago. It was a delicious and emotional experience. I felt sorry for the waiter who had to clean up the pile of snotty napkins I left behind.

All my griping aside, tomorrow is Christmas and I'm not in Los Angeles, so things are pretty good. Traffic isn't too bad (then again I don't have anywhere to go at rush hour), I can get places on my bike without fearing for my life, and I live reasonably close to a few BART stations.

Merry Crimbo, all. x