In the end, we didn't have to resort to needles under the fingernails. My older son revealed a little about his life during the final night of his truncated holiday visit with us. He even volunteered the information.
More on that later. After getting home from the funeral on Christmas Eve night, we had some wrush-wrush wrapping to do. My wife and I quickly came to an agreement: We'll wrap the stuff for the kids. For each other, we'll just pull things out of bags and give them to each other--naked. The gifts, that is.
That made the wrapping business go a lot faster. We got to bed at a decent hour, slept a little later than usual (warned the kids first; the extra hour or so of shuteye was very welcome) and got down to the business of opening gifts at 10 a.m.
First of all, my wife gave me my birthday gift: a bag of root beer barrel candies. I like root beer, if you don't know.
Then off to the other stuff. I'll spare you the play by play. The kids got various games and DVDs. David got the Simpsons Season 8 and Shrek 3. Phil got the Looney Tunes Collection 5 and an anime DVD disk, "Paprika." There were other things; this is what I can remember.
I got two anime DVDs from the "Basilisk" series. A DVD about the early Beatles, Pete Best era. A book about a fictional interview with Groucho Marx. And some fleece socks; nice, colorful, warm and comfy. Ordered them myself, for my wife to give me. I've been wearing nothing else since! On my feet, that is.
My wife must have been [I]very [/I]good. She got a Disney True-Life Adventures DVD, a Monk Season 2 set, a pair of IMAX movies and some Tom and Jerry cartoons. She likes Tom and Jerry.
She also got a pair of blouses. One she had seen before, since she tried it on; the other was discovered when I visited Fashion Bug just before Christmas and saw a dark blue, long-sleeved blouse with "sparklies" all over. She is a sucker for sparklies. Unfortunately, it was a little too small, so we'll take it back and exchange it for the next size up. She also got a Fashion Bug gift card. So she made out like a bandit. (She also had one last gift, which came out later.)
We visited my mom that afternoon, but, frankly, we were all feeling a little tired. Phil was in a good mood but wasn't being very talkative about how his life is going. He can be too damn inscrutable at times! My mom noticed and was disappointed. It was, after all, the first time they had been together in a year. She asked me to try to learn more before he leaves.
Wednesday night was his final night with us: He left Thursday morning. Late in the day, he let the cat out of the bag. David had left by then, so it was just my wife and I--and she was getting tired.
Phil hasn't had a girlfriend for quite a while. And he's 31. So we have no grandkids yet. Recently, he registered with eharmony.com and has been sounding optimistic about the results. He told us (during the Wednesday night talk) that he had been seeing someone for the last month, but he wasn't sure what was going on: She had told him that she needs to back off on it for the next month because she is a substitute teacher while also taking college courses; too busy.
We agreed he should talk it out with her to decide whether he should hang in there while she considers herself out of circulation. My thinking is: She's not going to be studying and correcting papers ALL the time; she's going to need some time to relax, and they could see each other then. All he needs to be is a low-maintenance boyfriend for a month. Didn't seem so difficult to me.
Maybe not to me, but it apparently was for her. He called back Sunday afternoon to say that they had met and and agreed to break it off for now--she's just too busy. He sounded disappointed. I said, well, at least you have closure on that and can move on. He agreed.
Sometimes I wonder whether it's that high a priority with him. What he is into now--passionately--is improvisational comedy. He is taking classes with a Second City-type group in the Detroit area and has been accepted in their next/more advanced program. So he's happy about that.
That ties up most of the loose ends from the holiday season. On New Year's Eve, my wife and David and I are going down to visit my mom, have dinner, do a little shopping (It's time to stock up on cat food again!) and see a movie. We were watching some trailers on my laptop earlier today, and "The Water Horse" looked interesting.
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