The dogs have discovered the joy of shelling and eating walnuts on my livingroom floor... M managed to cover the whole house in pine needles when bringing in the Christmas tree he got from the grocery store. I'm feeling strange again at the moment. My left hand has apparently left town for Christmas, and this afternoon I managed to fall down the stairs. Also I'm losing words again. I hate that. The ones my brain supplies to fill in the blanks are invariably wrong. And I don't realize it's happening, and get cranky when everyone falls about laughing. They're getting used to it, though.

At the grocery store, they have a young man outside guarding the Christmas trees. He told us politely that we needed to go inside and pay for a tree, then come back out and pick one. Inside, the cashier said, "We had to post someone outside because people were just helping themselves to the trees and not paying for them." Yup, that's the Christmas spirit for you.

If you ever read my diaryland ramblings, you'll perhaps recall that I don't really like Christmas. Every year I feel myself getting more and more intolerant towards the whole thing. I've mused in the past that it's something to do with working retail and being tired of everyone looking to shop themselves into a coma... I don't have anything against Christmas itself, I just hate all the fuss. It seems a recipe for disaster, so much anticipation. I think I'm against the preparations rather than the day itself.

Apparently my purchase in Vancouver (The Eminem Show) has confirmed me as the world's most bizarre mother in the eyes of my 11 year old daughter. "Did you buy it?" she asks, with horror in her voice, "None of my friends listen to him, Mum, he's a... disgrace." "I think he's funny," I reply, but she says, "I'm really worried about you..."

"somebody you'd give a lung to be..." --Eminem (I like the image of giving a lung, for some reason.)

Exam written. Successfully, I think. Choose three essay questions out of five and I'd anticipated three quite nicely. Good when that happens. Then a nice quiet journey in the dark and rain of Vancouver, and I'm home again with no need to study hard again until finals next time. I picked up my new course materials for the distance education for January, and looked it over on the ferry. Looks interesting. Going to bed now. Sweet dreams. :)

jodi, the other day, was talking about how sick-making it is when grownups talk gibberish to babies. At the risk of sounding smug, I never did. Never referred to myself in the third person. Never called anything a ba-ba or a soo-soo or a wee-wee. In consequence, I ended up with three kids who were interesting to talk to by the age of four. I remember a long and involved discussion about the meaning of life, and the possibility of reincarnation, with Kirsten before she hit kindergarten. We took Ian to a store one time and the cashier tried to talk to him in that saccharine silly voice, and he turned to me and said, "Why is she talking to me like that?" Luckily she was too busy cooing to hear.

On the flipside of this, though, is that my kids are always incensed when adults don't treat them the same way we do: like adults. Kirsten is having a hard time in school this year because she's got a girly-girl teacher who likes their art projects to be childish. Kirsten doesn't have the slightest interest in gluing rocks onto a paper plate to make a river bed for paper salmon. At the moment, she's feigning sickness to get out of something, I'm not sure what. I haven't asked. I figure, if she feels she doesn't need to be there, she's probably right....

tomorrow, my last final exam. I've studied too much, I think, I've been dreaming about court cases. R. v. Delgamuukw, and the impossibility of provinces extinguishing aboriginal title... wheeeee. The trip to Burnaby's a bit silly, bus to the ferry terminal, ferry to the Mainland, bus to downtown, skytrain to Production Way, bus to SFU... write exam, do trip in reverse. I managed the whole thing coming back on Friday in 3 1/2 hours... I reached Granville station downtown at 6:04, and the only bus that gets to the 7 pm ferry leaves at 6:06 from out front of the Hudson's Bay, so I had to run up four flights of stairs, and arrived breathless just in time to board the bus. Then the bus dropped me off outside the ferry terminal at 6:49, and they stop selling tickets at 6:50 -- they actually closed the door to the passenger walk-ons behind me. Since the exam I'm writing tomorrow isn't finished until 6:30, I'm thinking it won't work....