Frozen Nowhere

Inevitably sometime around this time of year SOMEONE asks me what I might want for “Christmas”*… and I always draw a blank.
 
I’m 35 years old now. No one gives me gifts (for the most part) anymore… I don’t have a husband to give me presents, and my family has pretty much decided that anything I want I can damned well buy myself. So I don’t usually get gifts anymore…
 
When I was younger I used to always have a list of things that I wanted, from the small things like boxes of paperclips (I was always an odd child) to grander things (like adventures) it was an ongoingly updated jumble in the back of whatever journal I

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So while the older kids snored, the younger girls were VERY aggitated. There was much kicking and flailing about, whining, crying, tossing, turning and repositioning on the bed. First they were positioned in between RGG and I, but their restlessness made them fuss louder as they were kicking and flailing and flipping over on each other.

Then we tried a position with RGG, RGG’s daughter, Me, Girlchild… so that the girls were shielded from each other by me. The problem soon became clear that RGG’s daughter didn’t want to be next to me, and she didn’t want to be next to GirlChild and she didn’t want to be on the other bed. RGG and I didn’t want to disturb the

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Immediately upon finishing her pizza G announced she was going to go start her car. I cleaned up after the kids, made sure everything was put in garbage cans and such, wiped up sticky children-types, and tidied up as much as I could, then I went out to start MY car (which hadn’t been plugged in since noon, and at that time the temperature was dropping) and RGG’s car as well, to keep them from freezing up. RGG’s car (SUV, really) started quickly with no protest… so whatever he and his father had done to his battery had done the trick. 
 
My car, on the other hand, was patently NOT IMPRESSED with me and refused to start, despite my frantic attempts to get it to

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Can you tell that I am crazy about this guy? I mean, right from the first time I met him in person (since we had talked online, due to family circumstances and schedules, for a month before we met, and I had already really clicked with him that way so I knew that at the VERY least we’d be friends… and I am glad that we are friends and MORE now), and we clicked right from the start. I have been so much happier with everything since I met him, and now that I think that we are committed to only seeing each other I feel so much more relaxed in my life too — I like who I am now, and I

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So… we settled in the room for a bit. Since i had spent 2 days wandering the city and not managing to hit either a Tim Hortons OR a Starbucks (even though I waited for my parents outside Tim’s for 15 mins!) G and I decided to make coffee while we got everything in order. I realized, pretty quickly, that I had forgotten GirlChild’s bathing suit at home… along with the toothbrushes and toothpaste and hairbrushes… and my contact things… so I turned on the tv for the kids, found a kid show, and trundled off into the absolutely terrifyingly COLD weather to pick up the remaining stuff from my house.
 
I grabbed everything I thought I could possibly

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