christmas blues II

the previous post (see below) was written before the big present-opening splurge which just happened. as one who was up until midnight, ho-ho-ho, i have to say that it was unusual that i could wake up, at about eight, and have time for a cup of coffee and to write that anti-materialistic diatribe/rant before the splurge. ultimately everyone woke up and we got right down to business.

as i was saying before, the remarkable thing about this christmas is two foster children, eight and nine, who really had no idea what to expect. a seventeen-year-old also had no idea. another seventeen-year-old has been throuugh it many times and was excited for all it meant to her.

but the one seventeen-year-old foster kid wanted to spend the night with his girlfriend, and did. texted me in the morning for a ride. i went over there, and sat twenty minutes waiting for him to answer the text. i'm here, i said. hurry up, your sisters are. waiting to open presents. no answer. maybe it was like one of those times i waited half an hour, no answer, because he'd gone back to sleep. summon me and then go back to sleep? anyway i didn't have the twenty minutes. of all the days in the year to take an hour out of my life, ten to fifteen to go over there, ten to fifteen to come back, and a half hour to sit there looking at my phone, waiting for no reply, wrong day. everyone wanted to open presents. i turned around and went home.

our own son, twenty, is holed up in a trailer three miles from town. we ended up not making arrangements with him, as he has two or three kids staying there and we didn't really want them all to come around. these guys can come open presents when they're ready i guess.

leaving all that anxiety, broken-family angst aside, let's just exxamine the present-opening splurge. the two foster kids seemed to get a huge windfall from the foster-care side and had what you could call a wrapping-paper frenzy which is like a shark when it smells blood. they were satisfied and will have plenty to do for days. that's kind of like it was when i was growing up - parents buy a day or two of peace as kids dig in to every imaginable game/doll/toy/puzzle. i was miffed when a couple games actually went unopened one year because 1) kids didn't get along, or 2) their ages were too split apart, or 3) they were just too into media, not about to sit around with siblings figuring out some new game. ok that was it for games for a few years, but now as i said is our chance to start over. these kids eight and nine can play a game together, i'm sure of it. not sure they will, but i'll at least give them a chance.