Linguistic specificity aside, it feels pretty much like home right now. Last night I went to our local Barnes & Noble with my mom to finish off the Christmas shopping list. Once back home, my dad distributed glasses of eggnog with brandy (fantastically delicious - makes me want to get into brandy more) and we delved into unwrapping the ornaments. My mom has a tradition of seeking out an ornament of a new material each year, one for each of my brothers and I, to add to the collections to eventually give to us. Each year I hang the golden snowflake, the sheep decorated with buttons, the pumpkin-seed poinsettia, the cork reindeer, the flat felt snowman, and so on... along with a variety of ornaments handcrafted by yours truly from preschool, elementary school, and craft projects with my mom.
This morning, after extracting myself from the blankets atop the air-mattress bed that now lives in my bedroom with surprisingly less difficulty than one might expect, we had a nice breakfast with our whole family. A mug of Earl Grey tea accompanied mine; I'm still hoping it will mostly take care of my daily caffeine quota (normally fulfilled by coffee).
I've been lounging on the living room couch ever since, still in pajamas and wrapped in a fleece blanket. The couch is awash with (occasionally blinding) sunlight. The warmth and comfort is precious right now - enough that I've kept on delaying getting dressed and wrapping gifts for the past few hours.
