Two Weeks Till Christmas: Game On.

I have just emailed my final paper for this semester. It's two days late. It's inordinately under-researched and ill-thought-out. And I do not care, not one tiny little bit. Not anymore. All that matters to me right now is that it is, for better or worse, complete, and that means that I have finished this week, which with its combination of overwork and undersleep and sad news and sad events, was impossibly longer than it ought to have been.

Last Sunday - exactly a week ago - was the Family Engagement Party - which went off wonderfully and fantastically and was just very jolly altogether. And, on a serious note, it offered everyone there the chance to meet or see someone for the last time. And, without getting too mushy or sad or too into details, it was very humbling and wonderful to be able to, fate working as it did, make that possible.

But I am writing in Graduate Student Way, which means with lots of commas and words bigger than they need to be. And it is 3:27 a.m. on a Saturday night. And I am tired.

But, for the first time in at least two straight weeks, I do not have to wake up to an alarm tomorrow. I can sleep late.

All of which to say: all the necessaries required before I could get Christmassy are done. Done. DONE! I can SLEEP. I can therefore begin to be coherent and cheerful in a way that I've largely been faking for a while now.

Bring on the cards and shopping and wrapping and I will fa la la with the best of them.

This is not to say that the sad things have gone away. There is this new sadness, and there is last Christmas's sadness still there. But families are there for each other and I firmly believe that everyone involved in both cases is going to be okay.

Christmas, please begin.