The writing is going really fast, I think because it's essentially all plotted at this point. Every scene that I'm writing happens because it *must*, based on what's come before. There's very little left to invent, which is the part that takes the most time, for me. Now it's just tossing words down on the page, stringing them together in a reasonably lucid manner. Figuring that I can make it pretty later, in the fifth draft, or the seventh, or the tenth. (Unless Bob reads it and tells me that it's all terrible, and I should toss it and start over. In which case, I will weep.)
I have a telephone job interview with Gustavus Adolphus (Marissa's alma mater) this afternoon at 1, assuming I got the time zones right. Not nervous yet, but I imagine I will be. Once Jed goes off to work (around 11), I'll get on the ethernet connection and spend some time researching the department, taking notes. I've looked at their web page before, of course, but there have been so many schools that honestly, they're all blurring together now. Notes will be my ally.
After that, I call Kevin, he comes and picks me up, and we go to spend Christmas with his folks. I'll probably go hide somewhere and try to write more this evening, if they don't have other plans for me. Tomorrow we'll have a quiet day (more writing) until dinner time, when Kevin's folks traditionally go to Christmas Eve dinner with their friends, the Benjamins. I've been a few times before; nice group of people. And then Christmas Day. If I remember right, it's stockings, then breakfast, then larger presents? They have a sequence.
I find the ritual charming. My family didn't do the whole stockings thing, which I think is a real shame, because it's great fun opening lots of teeny tiny little presents. Of course, my family also often had something like thirty people at Christmas, which makes for something of a different dynamic. If we got through the mad frenzy of small-child-present-opening with all of our limbs intact, we called it a good Christmas. :-)
My family has a sequence too, though we’ve had to modify it as the kids get older and move out. But once upon a time it was:
Christmas Eve: Open 1 present for each child. Was always a new pair of jammies. Children put on jammies and pretend to sleep.
Christmas morning: Parents/Santa had blocked off living room so that the kids could walk from the upstairs to the parents room without seeing the tree. Pillows were brought. All kids lined up in age order, covered their eyes with pillows and were lead to the living room. Tree & Presents revealed.
Stockings were collected. “Elves” & Papa distributed the gifts. All stockings opened. Then presents in reverse age order, though shared [there were four us] presents were opened first.
Clean up wrapping paper diaster area.
Breakfast.
Go to relatives for MORE PRESENTS!
My family’s basic sequence is stockings, breakfast, big presents too. If we’re in Indiana (which hasn’t happened in years) then we drive to a relative’s house for Xmas dinner (served around 3pm or so) and possibly more gifts (though they’re usually small, token gifts).
When we were kids Santa used to lay out a huge display of unwrapped toys in front of the wrapped presents spilling out from underneath the Xmas tree. So that sequence was:
– Squeal and run to toys. Play with and compare loot. Name then introduce new dollies to one another (there was a new doll for each of us every year).
– Stockings
– Be coerced into eating a cinnamon roll. Pester grown-ups until they give up on their coffee and sit down. Fight over who gets to be the elf (distrubute the presents) this year.
– Distrubute presents. Unwrap with wild abandon. Get fussed at by relatives who missed you opening their gift. Repeat.
– Xmas dinner
Ah, the holidays!
My family mostly argued every year about the best way to do things. For many years, most of us would go to midnight Mass on the 24th, and then would come back and theoretically each open one present then. But I don’ t think that second part happened much, because half the kids couldn’t make it through the Mass and were fast asleep by the time they got back home. Of course, the older kids who had stayed awake didn’t want to wait until the next morning, but they were usually overruled.
And then the next morning, there were arguments about whether to have breakfast first, and then about whether to go around one by one (which takes a very long time with that many people), or pile up presents in front of each person, or just do random free-for-all.
And at some point, there were too many people and it all got too expensive to buy presents for everyone, so the adults did Secret Santa among themselves, and the older cousins did Secret Santa among ourselves, and we kept the immediate family presents for opening later, when it was just us around, and only the very little kids got to open lots of presents in front of everyone. That’s mostly what we’ve settled on, the last few years.