So right now I should be making a grocery list. Instead, I’m doing this stream-of-conscious writing thing. The kids are upstairs napping and/or having quiet time, there’s football on the TV, the dishwasher’s running and there’s talk of putting up the Christmas tree later today. We’re not actually going to be home on Christmas this year — attn thieves: don’t bother stopping by. nothing worth lifting here, unless you’re into large stores of stale cereal and 10-year-old, 27-inch televisions. — so we’re putting up the small faux tree again. I don’t mind that so much (I say now; I’ll probably mind once it’s up), but I would like to go out to the Christmas tree farm again this year and get a wreath, at least. It’s a rare year when we actually are home on Christmas, so I’m not sure why not being here is precluding the live tree. Maybe I just don’t want to spend the money on it.

Is it like that, in your family, where some people are the hosts and the rest are the hosted? Our house is a fine size for the four of us, but it does get crowded when we try to have a lot of people over. Particularly if they’re staying the night, which is usually required for our family gatherings since neither my family nor Rockford’s live in our town. I’d love to have a guest room or something some day, but for now the guests either sleep in Poppy’s room (and she sleeps in ours) or in the living room, on the futon. So we usually go to someone else’s house, where they’re better equipped to have sleepovers.

(And the futon? That’s another issue altogether. Another thing on the list of Things I’d Like Some Day: Some grownup furniture.)

I really ought to get to that grocery list.

Rockford, Poppy and I went ice skating today with Rockford’s sister and the cousins. I like ice skating, but I’m not very good at it. I’d like to take lessons, if there were anywhere to do that near us. (I’m pretty sure there isn’t.) Rockford does not seem to like ice skating. He skates like a robot. Poppy liked the fruit snacks they sold at the snack bar.

Next in Nichole vs. Winter Sports: I think I’m going to go skiing with Perry Mason and his lovely wife.