merry christmas, baby

it's christmas eve day, and so far i have managed to avoid and/or miss most of the traditional christmassy stuff. at least, most of the american mass marketed christmassy stuff.

i did have a quiet minor meltdown in a 1087 AD cathedral in braga, portugal, when we went there for a christmas chorale concert last week. our team sat huddled with hundreds of locals while a university choir of about 100 or so sang traditional portugese christmas carols (in portugese, of course) and a few selections from the messiah. two of which kind of pricked at my heart and forced me to breathe yoga-style and stare at the floor to keep from crying. Yale held my hand and i tried to stop hearing mom's alto among the singers.

it is strange to realize all of a sudden that i don't need to take pictures of all the old churches because i'm not going home to show them to mom. she always liked to see my travel pictures, and was particularly interested in things like monuments and churches - photos that i started taking only for her, since i don't typically particularly care about those things. and i didn't need to search high and low for a wind chime to bring her. i always used to bring her pretty windchimes from where ever i travelled.

but when we finally got home last night at 12:30 am (delays, lost luggage, 3 flights, etc) and i saw the stack of christmas cards for me on my bed, i had to tear into them and put them on the wall immediately. i wanted to play my christmas carol cds before i went to bed, and went through the pile of presents in the corner to be sure that i had everything wrapped and ready to go for today. poor Yale went home and only got about 4 hours of sleep last night, so when i called him just now he was still delerious and cranky. i'll go pick him up in a few hours, and hopefully he will be able to get to sleep a bit early tonight. and we will have a lovely christmas with our families.

right now i feel hungry and tired and sad that Yale is so wiped out. i wanted him to be able to have a lovely christmas with my siblings tonight, but that is not looking so likely when he is sleep deprived and jet lagged.

it was great to travel with him, and we had a really really fab time in portugal. i highly recommend portugal as a travel destination. the habitat build went ridiculously well, and he and i had a couple of extra days to sloth around portugal and eat too much and drink port. glorious.

and now we are home, and back to real life. we will have a week of sillyness this week, with my work's generous week off between christmas and new year's. it will be great. we will watch TV and work on wedding plans. he is awesome, and i cannot wait to marry him. getting to put my engagement ring back on after 2 weeks without it was a superfun christmas present to myself.

merry christmas, baby