Joyeux Noel!

Well this has been the strangest Christmas of my life.

My apartment decided that after all, it would rather I did not have internet there, so this is coming to you from my neighborhood Starbucks once again. I managed to Skype my family from V's apartment, which is always lots of loud, confusing fun. Skyping with my family works like this: we miss each other about 12 times, until somebody finally answers. Then dad props my mom's tablet on the counter somewhere where I can look out onto the hectic glory of my parents' kitchen, and those who wish to talk to me can wander by and say hello. 

"We live in the future!" my dad will exclaim.

"I'm like one of those moving portraits in Harry Potter," I respond. "Would you like any cryptic advice?"

It's a wonderful system, and believe it or not, does actually manage to make me feel, however momentarily, like I'm home with my loved ones. Particularly when they all cram into the frame at once, as is our custom. 

Well while my heart was baking cookies and drinking wine with my family on Christmas Eve, my actual body was at V's with her friend and this friend's aging mother. V introduced me, adding of course, elle est americaine.

"Oh!" cried the lady (I really can't remember her name) "j'adore les americains!"

Oh. Well, good then. She added, by way of explanation, that without the Americans, none of them would be here. Ah. Well, thank you? Uh... you're welcome? She wasn't kidding. She repeated it every twenty minutes or so, as we passed around cheese puffs, escargots, and prawns. At every lull in the conversation, or if we happened to be left alone for a moment, Madame took the opportunity of assuring me just how grateful she was to America that they weren't taken over by Germany after all. 

"Ah oui," said V after the fifteenth time or so, "Gracias America!"

Well ma'am, anything I can do to help. They left at around 11:00, Madame in her huge fur coat obviously. I love little old Parisian ladies, with their delicate little shoes, enormous furs, tiny little dogs and cigarette balanced between their little wrinkled fingers. 

V and I finished the champagne the next day and that was Christmas. Well, technically anyway. Tomorrow my honorary sister/personal Father Christmas arrives in the person of one Katherine E. Newton. 

I. Am. So. Excited. 

And not just because my parents are sending her with a second suitcase full of stuff for me. (Summer clothes, a Christmas gift, books, etc.). So I'm going to have my own personal Christmas tomorrow with her. If Love Actually taught me anything it's that you're supposed to spend Christmas with the people you love. I wonder if I can get a Christmas tree real cheap...

So to all my dear friends and family, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and God Bless the USA!