Behold, there is my mother, fanning the smoke alarm with a potholder and trying to dismantle it at the same time. Then, frantically, she fils a pitcher of water and throws it all over the fireplace and extinguishes the blaze.

It was a fake log, by the way.

I'm standing in the doorway, stunned and halfway awake.

"What was that about?" I mumble.

"I forgot to open the floo," she says, "so the house filled up with smoke." I cough.

The fake log is now ruined. But we have presents to open, so we, being the overcomers that we are, just turned up the heat and ripped away.

Among other things, my mother gave me a video camera which I have had a love affair with for quite some time and never imagined that I would get. There's a funy story that comes with said camera.

My mom bought it online, and she contacted the guy who's in charge of....whatever, who lives in Brooklyn. She haggled him over the price probably forever, so I got a bunch of extra stuff to go with my camera that he included out of sheer fear that my mother would hunt him down and kill him and his Jewish buddies if she doesn't get it for a good price.

So that was neat. I can take a lot of digital still pictures now, with good quality and not that utter crap I've ben posting up until now.

So! After that we journeyed out to teh suburbs to visit my uncle at his house.

My uncle is the biggest redneck EVER. There is no arguiing with it. He even says it himself. He's owned six pickup trucks in the past three years, has two dogs which my aunt puts sweaters on, wraps Christmas gifts in tin foil, and eats off paper plates no matter what the occasion. And has the accent which gives Louisiana it's bad name. But I swear to god, he's the only person I've ever known to have such a heinous accent. I've been mistaken for being from Manhattan, at which point my uncle asks what country that's in and it doesn't matter because the suburbs of New Orleans is God's Country anyway. There is no need for an Outside World.

I really, really, really don't like my uncle. He calls me "rabbit" and makes me feel like he'll shoot me and hang me on a wall without so much as a "hello."

But I suffered through an entire afternoon in Redneckville, USA then promptly retreated home at which point my father had to come pick me up so we could "have Christmas at his house now."

I consented, thinking it would be for just about an hour, and left for another suburb.

We get there.

I open gifts and squeal over an mp3 player.

Hours pass.

I'm still there.

My mother comes to get me but he says that "we're not done yet." So I explain that I've spent more time at his house than I've spent at my mother's all day and it is her Christmas, after all, so ease up already and pull the stick out of your ass.

He makes her leave, and me stay.

I'm seconds away from filing kidnapping charges.

So another half an hour passes and I proclaim that I'm just leaving and he can't make me stay. So I do. My dad is not known around town for his good temper or his levelheaded-ness, so I'm definitely taking a chance here.

"Don't come back," he says.

"Count on it," I reply, then leave with my mp3 player.

Tomorrow is his birthday, but I don't really know if I'm going to see him. I don't think I am.

So I was realy majorly depressed last night so Jessica and Kevin came over to open gifts. (Kevin gave me teh Worst Case Scenario book and Jesica gave me this little pig, because we sat through her ex-best friend's show, Charlotte's Web, which was absolutely horrible and we got to be really good friends. You know, the pig? Like Wilbur the pig? Never mind.)

So I got a bunch of video and was all happy, and I'm trying to figure otu whether I can put a link to a video that I have on my computer. (Since my camera, after all, is digital.) Kevin makes this face called his "Jonathan Goodman Face" beacuse there's this guy we know who's this actor around town (see my Loopy Night With Alcohol entry) who just has this look on his face that's absolutely hilarious. It's indescribable, but it's so funny I almost wet my pants every time I see it.

Jessica had to go back to work today, but I'm going to visit her at the mall in a little while and blow some cash I got for Christmas.

Happy New Year.

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