Stuff and the Christmas Party and a nice, generous panic

It’s my last day of work before Christmas and I’m rather short of things to do – I’m reading my way through the various things in my reader and twiddling my thumbs and fantasising about all the things I can do this weekend and next week. Mostly I am fantasising about tidying my room and embarking on the Great Summer Declutter, which I imagine will enable me to lie around and luxuriate in a big room of emptiness. These are strictly imaginings though, as my room is not big, and no matter how much stuff I get rid of I will still have MOUNTAINS OF STUFF. I think I’ve rather stopped loving all my bits and pieces and become mostly overwhelmed by all of it. When I was living in Australia, I came back to New Zealand on a month’s holiday and saw Dad’s new house for the first time. In the second bedroom he had stacked what felt like hundreds of enormous plastic boxes full of paper (the ones with lids that clip on and wheels on the bottom) and I imagined them all collapsing on him one day and Dad being crushed and suffocated by all of his STUFF. And this is how I’ve begun to feel about my own stuff – in fact, I’m thinking about it now and beginning to give myself an anxiety attack (the stuff is crushing me!). Maybe I’ll just hire a dumpster and empty everything I own into it and when I move to the Boy’s house I can just take my bed and bicycle and skates and sewing machine and overlocker and my collection of Crown Lynn Tam O’Shanter crockery and my nanny’s tea cups and my books and – [insert stuff-based panic attack here]. In other news, today I had a Toastie and peanut butter toastie, which is pretty much the most awesome thing in the world. Katherine documented the whole thing from ingredients to delicious consumption so more information shall be forthcoming. In other other news we had our staff party last night and it was pretty average. There was no real food, only nibbles, so I was forced to make friends with the wait staff in order to secure enough nibbly bits to constitute my dinner. Then I ate a hell of a lot of White Christmas and felt a little ill, although that could have been all the cheap méthode champenoise. And what’s the deal with White Christmas anyway? I don’t even think it tastes good; I’m just strangely compelled whenever I see its vegetable-shortening-self glistening with glace cherries, and I go into a kind of childhood sugar-based excitement and stuff my face. This one time when I was a kid, I was at this family thing one of the boys who was there thought it would be funny to drop a piece of White Christmas into the open mouth of his sleeping brother. Sleeping brother choked on the White Christmas and didn’t think this was funny at all and we all had to go home early because he was crying. Christmas is awesome. Nostalgia is awesome. Last day of work is awesome. White Christmas and cheap méthode champenoise are less awesome.