In bed at 3 o'clock in the morning for the second night in a row and am feeling just as alert and wide-awake as I did this time yesterday.
Tonight my best friends came over and we drank mulled wine and ate way too much food. We gave each other Christmas gifts and baked treats and little handmade treasures. We talked and laughed until late. Our old jokes are still successful, but we continue to add stories, share experiences, and find common ground to string our decades-long friendships out even longer, year upon year. I sometimes think that we are not at all the same people we used to be -- that we've all learned and moved forward (or sometimes backward) and adapted to be a completely new set of people. And we're still friends, even now, after all of that adaptation. It's like being part of a family in that you really have no choice but to accept and rely on these people. It is a love we will always share.
After the food had been eaten and the presents had been given, we all gasped and gathered around the living room window to look out at the street as new snow fell out of the sky. After we'd just had a discussion about how disappointing it will be to have a brown Christmas this year. It felt like we were in a movie.
And now the dishes are all done (a miracle I had the gumption to do them tonight and not leave them until tomorrow, a mess of crusted-on remnants and wine-stained china mugs), and I've unplugged the lights on the Christmas tree and the strand I'd draped across the top of the piano. I've brushed my teeth and put on my coziest pyjamas and have crawled into bed.
It has been a most excellent winter's night.
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