What you can't see in that picture of our little holiday corner is our new dreidl ornament and the sweet fortune cookie ornament that I got on Saturday.

I am still having a hard time getting into the holiday spirit this year. It was fun buying the "tree" (it's really a rosemary bush, shooosh) and decorating it, and now the nightly menorah lighting has been fun and serves to remind me that we are at the end of the year. This cold cold weather LA is having is also reminding me now. The warm weather and sun had been hypnotizing me.

First of all, I'm not really working, so it's not like I'm excited to get a week off. Secondly, I'm not really working so I don't have tons of money to spend on presents or anything. Thirdly, plane tickets were outrageous this year so we never bought any to go visit my family and that was stressing me out. I got some good news on Sunday when my dad called to say tickets had dropped to around 200 bucks round trip, and so now we're going to Kansas City from the 24th to the 31st. Yay! It's nice to have that settled and off my back.

Thinking about presents now has reminded me of what I think is a hilarious tid-bit about my dad. When my sister and I were kids we lived with my dad and would have Christmas with him and then over at my grandparent's house with them and other family members. To those of you with two parents, you probably never thought about what single parents open on Christmas. You know, because your dad got your mom presents and vice versa and then you probably picked something out with them, or made them something cute in school for them. Well, my dad would have just had our homemade stuff and nothing else to open on Christmas (however, my mom would often take us to get him something to put under the tree, and he would do it too even though they were divorced. It tended to be a sweater from Venture or something).

Yet! He would always have a bunch of things to open. Books and electronics and clothes, and they always said they were from santa just like our presents. Fair enough. One year I started to get suspicious when he got a stereo. I can't remember ever totally believing in santa either. Certainly not enough to remember any horribleness of finding out santa didn't exist and wasn't real. Maybe my sister remembers something about that? I only remember knowing Grandma was santa (and still is, in writing anyway) and that was that. So this guise of gifts from santa wasn't going to fool me for long as it was, so this stereo had piqued my interest.

Anyway, I questioned where the stereo came from and he just kept saying santa and laughing it off. Well, later when we were older and he had a girlfriend and bigger Christmases, it was revealed that he had bought himself presents all those years and wrapped them and put them under the tree and labeled them. It sounded a bit ridiculous, but did make a lot of sense and that way he did always get what he wanted. The fact that he would talk about how great the gifts were could maybe be considered ridiculous, but it did make sense.

Then! Like 4 years ago I was home for the holidays, my sister was there, my dad was there with his girlfriend and Mike was there. We are all opening presents and my dad opens a stack of books that he is oooohing and ahhhhing over while I assumed his girlfriend had gotten them. Then she made a comment about Mike and I having gotten them... wait a second, who were these presents from? Dad's answer? Santa. Then he starts laughing, and that's when we all realized that he had bought himself a bunch of books, wrapped them and put them under the tree and wrote "To Hossein, From Santa" on them. At this point my sister, the youngest at the time, was 21. I guess old habits die hard. At least it's a habit that cracks me up endlessly.

And now here is a series of candy making photos that was pretty fun and adequately delicious:





Happy Holidays!