Sometimes people don’t really get my attitude about relationships. They either don’t understand how I can have been with the same person for five years and not want to get married in a Very Special Pretty Princess wedding and start having babies right and left, or they don’t understand how I can have been with the same person for five years and still not be even remotely bored. But here’s the thing. Last night I was in just about the crankiest, shittiest black-raincloud-over-my-head mood you can imagine. I don’t know why, because I’d had a really good day, but then I just crashed hard and was tired and sad and hating myself and hating the world and wanting to go jump off a cliff. (Conveniently enough, we live right across the street from a cliff now. Fortunately I couldn’t find my shoes so I couldn’t leave the house to jump, because who wants to die with wet dirty socks on?)

So I sniffled at Len for a while and then went into the bedroom and curled up to watch the end of the Julie Andrews version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella that PBS was airing last night, figuring I should leave him alone because I knew he had some really important and time-crucial work things to do, plus a lovely brand-new guitar to play with. But then all of about a minute and a half later he came in and curled up with me and watched the rest of the movie even though he doesn’t really get musicals, and made fun of the ridiculous hats with me, and then when it was over we turned the TV off and just lay cuddled up together for a long time talking about silly things because he can make me laugh even when I feel terrible. Some of the cats came and purred in my ear, which didn’t hurt either. And then after a while he got up and went out into the cold gray rainy night and brought me a big thick chocolate milkshake, and I sat on the sofa while he worked and I drank every drop of the giant milkshake while reading aloud from the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas manual, and by the time I was done the world seemed just a little better, and I decided to live another day after all.

So, I don’t know, maybe other people are right and that is really boring. Cuddling and laughing and watching movies you don’t really like just so you can hang out with the person who does like them, and purring cats and a partner who knows without being told that a chocolate milkshake cures at least 80% of the world’s evil, and will brave a cold Pittsburgh night to go get one, and share your glee when you discover that one of the GTA voices is Samuel L. Jackson. Maybe I’m supposed to be tired of that after all these years, or longing to move on to weddings and babies, but really I think it’s just about perfect and I can’t imagine wanting to trade it in for anything. Except maybe a better version of Cinderella — that one was really kind of terrible. Especially the hats.

Social events do not come easily to me. They never have, really. I used to go to parties and things anyway, figuring it would eventually get easier, but it never did and so now I usually pass. But every so often I feel as if I should push myself out of my comfort zone at least a little, and the party I was invited to last night was thrown by someone I would really like to be better friends with, and also was a fundraiser for a good cause. And it’s good to push myself at least a few steps out of my comfort zone every once in a while, right?

So last night we bundled up against the first real snowfall of the year, and I packed up a big container of the pumpkin-chocolate-chip cookies that Harmony told me how to make that are now a form of crack for me because they are so tasty and each batch of dough makes about a thousand cookies. We grabbed a couple of six-packs of yummy Christmas beer, and headed out to face down my anti-social tendencies. And you know, it was actually kind of fun. We only stayed for a couple of hours, and I wasn’t a social butterfly or anything. There were a lot of people I didn’t introduce myself to, and for part of the party I felt overwhelmed by people, so I went and hung out upstairs with the dogs and a very cute little girl. But I went to a party, and I talked to some people I hadn’t seen in a while and met a few new people and ate some good food, and played with some very cute dogs, and I had fun.

As much as I was dreading it when we set out, I wound up being quite glad we went. Of course, I’m also glad we came home when we did, before I started to get that tired, cranky, people-hating feeling. Because we got home with enough time to spare that I got to watch another of Michael Apted’s Up documentaries, 35 Up, curled up on the couch in my own cozy little house. And then I got to stay up late with Len getting overexcited about the elaborate Christmas dinner we’re going to cook for my parents and forming grandiose plans for what to serve, before drifting off to sleep while he was still tracking down exactly the right recipes. A good evening all around, with bonus puppies even. Perhaps I should do this “stepping outside my social event comfort zone” thing more often. Although then again, maybe not. I do so enjoy being a hermit, too.

(An advance disclaimer — excuse any typos. I am a wee bit tipsy right now, with a few glasses of chardonnay in me that I am washing down with some shiraz. Good thing we’re out of tequila or I might hit the pomegranate margarita mix, which is probably terrible, but which I am dying to try since I am obsessed with pomegranate juice right now. What was this parenthetical aside about again?)

I took down the Christmas tree today. It was a little sad — it always is, the tree is one of my favorite parts of Christmas. Especially now that it’s my tree to be decorated the way I want, instead of having my family’s annual holiday tradition of getting disproportinately argumentative about white vs. multicolored lights. (Let us not speak of the blinking kind lest I be typing all night.) But anyway, I thought Len might like reclaiming the living room from Christmas, and it seemed like a good thing to do before the new year got underway, and also I was getting tired of sharp pine needles poking my toes. So I took the tree down. And you know, it was a little sad, but it is also very nice to see my living room back to normal. And no pine needles!

So, clearly I skipped over all of Christmas here in the journal. Which is probably for the best, because I had a good time with my family and ate lots of great food and both gave and received some excellent gifts, but every time I sat down to write something my head was all “You cannot possibly write about the stupid minutiae of your stupid Christmas celebration when tens of thousands of people are dead in a giant tsunami,” and I wound up a bit paralyzed about writing anything at all. Until now when I am tipsy enough to go ahead and talk about the minuitiae of my life because what can I say about that terrible devastation that other people have not said earlier and better? So there was Christmas and it was good to be with my family, but it is also good to have a house that is quiet and free of sharp pine needles, if perhaps overburdened with leftover candy and eggnog and Portugese cheeses.

We had people over all day yesterday, but we’ve opted for the quiet New Year’s Eve at home, with the aforementioned bottles of chardonnay and shiraz, which is proving to be an excellent idea. We watched a documentary about Armageddon, which seemed thematically appropriate, and made such impressive New Year’s resolutions as “We will have Indian food within the first week of 2005″ and “We will not get married or have any babies in 2005″ and my personal favorite “Sometime in 2005 I will get the rest of the burned rice off the bottom of the new pressure cooker.” We like to challenge ourselves with difficult resolutions that are beneficial to our personal growth, you see. Also with consuming as much naan as humanly possible. I have another vaguely formed resolution about cooking at home more often in the new year, but I’m still figuring out how often “more often” is. And with this deeply informative and somewhat sodden post, I shall end 2004. Perhaps my other 2005 resolution should be “don’t update your journal when you’re tipsy, dummy.”