Well, no time for a full post this week, but I don’t want to blow you off entirely. What can I talk about? Hmmm ... how about some reports on how our holidays are going?
- For our weekly family gaming session, my eldest ran a Christmas one-shot: we all played elves (no, not those kinds of elves; those kinds of elves), and we had to rescue Santa, who had been captured by a demon and taken to Hell. At first, Santa was under the demon’s spell, and we actually had to fight him, but we managed to break him out of his charmed state through a combination of non-lethal attacks and appealing to his better nature. I played a mostly-monk (I took one level of fighter, mainly for the fighting style) who used a candy cane as a mace and also punched things. My middle child played a warlock (whose patron, naturally, was Santa) with a celestial bent (so he could heal and flame strike), and my youngest child played a druid who turned into things like arctic hares (for speed) and polar bears (for sheer mauling power). We were 10th level, and we all had complicated backstories of what toymaking department we used to work in before joining Santa’s personal guard, based on which artisan’s tools we were proficient in (for the record, I was leatherworking, the Smaller Animal was glassblowin
g— for ornaments, natc h— and the sprite was a carpenter ... you know, for making blocks and Lincoln logs and whatnot). Best line of the night: Santa pulls a holy avenger out of his sack (my eldest actually rolled that randomly on a magic item table) and runs the demon through; my youngest pronounces “damn ... Santa is gruesome.”
- The super-creepy surveillance elf is gone for another year, thank <insert deity of choice>. We actually tried to avoid having that thing back this year, but our youngest actually started asking about her back in October or so. So, you know ... Santa does what is necessary to please the children. No matter how creepy, apparently.
- We watched one of those old Rankin-Bass Christmas specials on Christmas Eve. We sort of wanted to watch “the one with Snow Miser and Heat Miser in it,” but that’s one of the few that isn’t in our DVD box set. As a next best thing, we watched “the one that tells Santa Claus’ origin story,” because the Winter Warlock is sorta-kinda-the-same-as Snow Miser. Besides: I had just said something about Burgermeister Meisterburger to the Smallies the other day and they both looked at me like I was crazy. So, you know ... they needed the education. I probably hadn’t seen it in a decade or so, but it holds up moderately well.
- My youngest got a stuffed narwhal which is actually a bit larger than she is, when measured from tip (of horn) to tail, and enough Littlest Pet Shop buildings to create her own LPS compound. My middlest got a giant Nerf Fortnite dart (shot)gun and the new Spider-Man game for the PS/4 (the one with Miles Morales instead of Peter Parker). My eldest got a new bedframe (as the old one is falling apart) and a promissory note for a new office chair (we didn’t want to buy one without them testing it out first), or, as they described it when talking to the grandparents: “nothing much, just a couple pairs of headphones and a toothbrush for my dogs.” Being an adult sucks, apparently.
Although the pandemic has meant fewer trips out to visit friends, we were never going to travel for the holidays, and it’s rare that anyone comes to stay with us. Or even to join us for Christmas (Eve) dinner ... my brother has come over a couple of years in the past, and I think we hosted my best friend and his wife at $lastjob once, but that’s about it. My brother has moved on from wife-with-family-in-LA to wife-number-three, and my friend moved back to Florida to be near his family, so we’re used to spending the holidays “alone.” I put “alone” in quotes, though, because there are 5 of us humans her