Holiday Gift Suggestion #1

Over in his fabulous corner of the InterWebs, Il Duce has come upon a serious contender for Toy of the Year, but for the past couple of years, whenever I've needed a little sure-fire pick-me-up, this treasure has been my go. Just the thing for the tot one wants to scar for life!

Although, truth to tell - that Green-Lipped Cannibal Bear is pretty damn horrifying.

And both more or less sum up my holiday mood at the moment. Our weekend jaunt was amusing enough - and certainly involved enough Holiday Cheer to float a battleship - but mostly what it did was remind me that when it comes to Things That No Longer Amuse At My Age, large parties full of people I don't know and don't really care to know rank pretty high. Although one of the parties was held at the home of friends-of-the-Mister's-friends that has to be one of the most fabulous/horrifying McMansions I've ever encountered. Really; it looked like it had been attacked by a full season's worth of HGTV programming.

My main takeaway from that experience was to wonder how it's possible to fill - and generously fill, believe me - something on the order of 7,000 square feet without managing to possess one solitary visible item that betrays any sense of personality or the slightest trace of aesthetic interest. It was as if a slightly dim cousin of Pier One had been entrusted with decorating and had done so in the dark.

Well, we may not have a house with two breakfast nooks, a four-story floating staircase, and a 25-seat home theatre*, but by God what we do have is chockablock with individual touches and personal memories. Chipped, battered, and sometimes quite beyond repair, but without question our own (and all too often my grandmother's before that).

But home we are, and while we saw absolutely nothing of Atlanta or its environs, we did manage a fair amount of lazing about and a great deal of fun, not all of it at the expense of our erstwhile party hosts. And now it's on with the rest of the holidays.

About which, in terms of my own reaction - well, I really am pretty much with the Devil Giraffe.

* Which really didn't bear too close an inspection; the most prominent DVDs on display in the nearby Media Room were a box set of Mad About You and what looked like the complete works of Titan Studios, which seems schizophrenic at best.