The Day After Christmas

Today is the traditional day to just lounge about and play with our Christmas toys.  Although with Nana in the house, that was not entirely possible.  As usual, we took turns doing things with her, which usually means just sitting down and watching something on television that might interest her, or taking her out for a ride to do some chore that's somewhat needed but in fact the whole purpose is to get her out of the house for a short while and give the others at home a window of quiet.  Her mornings are especially difficult, as she still refuses to eat or do anything more than wander around in circles and then go back up to her room, muttering about this or that.  Then she stays in the room about ten to fifteen minutes, and then comes downstairs to repeat the process.  As a human being, one may feel obliged to help or cheer up or console, but that only drags the other person into the same dark hole for a time, and thus there's this place of feeling callous, which brings about guilt that more can't be done, but more really can't be done, or at least by us, and there's no other options, so here she is, muttering, crying, not wanting to eat, and telling everyone who offers her something that "she's fine," which means, "No, I don't want food, I don't want to sit there, I don't want this or that."  She's miserable, and of course we've been along for that ride now for four hundred and seventy-five days, unable to go anywhere or do a lot of the things we like to do.  The idea of Mom and I actually spending time together is a dream.  Camille has offered a "babysitting" night where Mom and I can go out to eat on an actual date together.  We got a gift card that Camille made up for us that said all that, and we both nearly cried. 

One show that's brightened her up a bit, and the rest of us too, is a show called "Nailed It."  It's a holiday-themed season of a cooking show where supremely inexperienced contestants attempt to recreate a nearly impossible culinary masterpiece.  The end result is hilarious, and Mom and Nana were enjoying watching the epic fails for a few episodes.

Meanwhile, Maddie and I got some boardgames time in, playing a new game first, "It's a Small World," which I just got for Christmas.  After that, we did a Star Wars trivia game, which Maddie enjoyed so much that we'll be playing again soon.  It was so great sitting and playing board games!  I miss that.  "It's a Small World" is a great game visually, and it was fun to play, although we found ourselves having to get up and circle the table and the board game frequently to look for different Small World characters.  In the end, Maddie won that one, and she won the Star Wars trivia game too, actually.  That game was going on and on and on, simply because each time we rolled the dice (it's an R2-D2 that makes noises and randomly gives out a number that tells us how far to move), we could never land on the spot we wanted to, and then had to answer more questions just to keep moving forward.  Some questions were ridiculously easy, and then other questions were so left field that I didn't even know the answers, and I thought I pretty much knew it all.  Still it was fun, and like I said, Maddie wants to play again later this week.  We may couple that with another board game.  I was organizing a bunch of them downstairs and there was a longing to try out a few more.

We were starting to put away the clothing and toys from under the tree today.  Maddie was trying on some of the clothing she got, and she was testing out this miniature printer she got from Aunt Rebecca yesterday.  It prints out images from a cell phone. So she was testing that out, making prints here and there.  

I briefly started reading a new book on Ulysses Grant.  We were organizing the board games and movies downstairs, returning a lot of the Christmas movies to their proper place on the shelves.  We have SO MANY of them now.  This year we got a few more, and in fact I'm not quite done watching Christmas movies this year.  This week is that sort of twilight time for Christmas, where you can still go see lights or listen to Christmas music or even watch Christmas movies.  Mom got a few new movies for Christmas, and we might watch one or even two. 

We had Chinese leftovers for lunch today, and it was a pretty big meal actually.  In fact, there's still wonton soup left for another meal upcoming.  

Tonight's movie was "Ron's Gone Wrong," which everyone enjoyed.  We did not have a fire roaring in the fireplace for this one, as the temperature is in fact pretty warm outside.  And we've had all kinds of interesting wildlife right here near our house.  We had a loose cow right in front of our house, and about five houses down, a porch camera caught sight of a black bear.  Mom put out some new feeders we got for Christmas, and the birds are going to work on the suet feeder there, and our squirrels are at the plate in the front yard, enjoying some sunflower seeds.  It feels like spring, but the weather is supposed to change rather violently this weekend.  We'll see how that goes.

Tonight we were reading the next book - book eight - of the "Kingdom Keepers" series.  We'll be barreling through this one too.  The gang is all back, with most of them a bit reluctant for a new adventure, but they're in for one anyway, at least for the next three books - four, if you include "The Syndrome."  Maddie and I will be reading these a bit into the new year, and might even be done just in time for the latest release to be published.  

We prayed tonight, and we went to bed, or at least we went to our bedrooms to read for a bit before falling asleep.  It wasn't that bad of a day.