Sing me a story, laugh me a lullaby

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I was in Grade 3, I think. My teacher read us a story about the Easter Bunny and then finished by going 'that was a great story, too bad he isn't real' or something to that effect. And I went home at lunch time and confronted my mum and she confessed. I remember going 'So the Easter Bunny isn't real? Does that mean Santa and the Tooth Fairy aren't real either?'

Sad days.

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My favourite game when I was little was Labyrinth (that word never looks right). We (my parents, brother and I) used to play it all the time. It was a logic sort of game. At the beginning, everyone gets dealt cards with pictures of various treasures on them, but you can only look at the first card. The board is a maze, made up of rows of tiles with different maze pieces on them (l-shapes, straight pieces, t-junctions, etc.). Every other tile in a row or column is glued to the board, while the others are loose and placed on the board at the beginning of each game. This allows every other row or column to slide, by inserting a free tile at one end and pushing the row until the last tile of the other end falls off, which is given to the next player to use for their turn. The goal is, by moving your man through the maze and using the tile to slide pieces favourable to your intended target, you land on the pieces with your treasure on it. Then you look at your next card and try to get to that one. And after all your cards are gone, you have to get back to the starting position. I hold the record of managing to get all of my treasures in one turn, through sheer luck.

There's a good picture of the game board here. The arrows are the rows that slide. It's funny, I remember that board being much bigger than it actually is. Probably because it was harder for me as a child.

We played that game until it got too easy for me (as the youngest member of the household), then we donated it to Value Village. But it was lots of fun and we always took it on vacation with us.

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Not being clever and saying something like 'a life raft' or 'a cell phone with really good service', what I'd really want is my pillow. I can't sleep on any other pillows but mine. I always bring it on vacation and even had someone bring it to the hospital when I was in it. It's a hand-ticked feather pillow, made by my Great-Nanny Tetreault and it's heavy and malleable and lovely. And I think if I were stranded on a dessert island, I want a good night's sleep for all the plotting and gathering I would have to do to survive/escape.

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Definitely Mrs. Santa Claus. It came out when I was about ten years old. IMDB Precis:

Neglected by her husband during the pre-Christmas rush, Mrs. Santa Claus takes the reindeer and sleigh out for a drive, only to end up stranded in the multi-cultural neighbourhood of Manhattan's Lower East Side of the early 1900s.

It stars Angela Lansbury as Mrs. C and has a delightfully camp Terrence Mann as the baddy toymaker, who wants everyone to have an awful Christmas because his brother stole his toy and broke it when he was a child. The music and choreography is wonderful and to my musical-loving ten-year-old self, it was amazing. And my musical-loving 24-year-old self would happily watch it again. Again.

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That I'm not very grown-up? I've only very recently (at age 24) ventured into the 'grown-up' section at the bookstore, instead of shopping in the teen sections. Mostly because there are so many books in the grown-up section and I get nervous. So, basically, my bookshelf is my collection of Royal Diaries, Dear America and Dear Canada diaries (all of which are mostly there because they're really, really pretty), most of the Princess Diaries books, Richard Scrimgeour, a few miscellaneous books I saved from my teen years, a complete Harry Potter set and the three 'classic' books I own, The Three Musketeers, Around the World in 80 Days and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Even the classics, though unabridged, are from the kid's section of the store. Though The Pimpernel cover is pretty awesome.

Then there are my 'grown-upish' books. A very spotty collection of Nero Wolfe books, a compete Codex Alera and Dresden Files (minus the books out working the cause).

Those are my display books, in the bookshelf that is visible. The one in my closet contains all my geeky collector books, behind the scenes movie stuff and biographies, a few baby name books, plus some Shakespeare (including a very, very beat up version of Romeo and Juliet well-loved during the process of writing a parody for drama club), a couple of Sophie Kinsellas and books I have bought that are waiting to be read.

Most books I don't keep, so it's not a very great reflection on my book choice. I usually read and then donate to Value Village, or pass them on to friends.

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Honestly, there are probably a few people I'd like to replace, but the one who immediately popped into mind is Katie Holmes in Batman Begins. I haven't seen her in a lot of things, so I can't say that she is a bad actress in general, but I really didn't feel like she suited the role of Rachel very well. Rachel is a tough sell at best, she's sort of a Mary Sue (Batman loves her! She's sassy! She is single handedly fighting crime! She maces assailants! She is incredibly young yet somehow the Asst. DA! She's Bruce Wayne's childhood friend!) and I don't think Katie had the chops to make her likeable. The character wasn't in The Dark Knight long enough for me to decide whether I would have preferred Maggie in the first movie, but I was quite glad when Katie decided not to do the sequel. With Christian Bale's perpetual (and in character) dull surprise, I think we needed someone a bit more playful and smiley. Which Maggie handled nicely.

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On Christmas Eve, formerly, we did French-Canadian Christmas. Which is basically réveillon without the church going part. We get together and eat tourtière, sometimes with a bûche de Noël for dessert. Our bûches aren't so sophisticated - we make ours out of chocolate wafer cookies sandwiched in a big long line with whipped cream between them. Then you cover it with whipped cream and put it in the fridge and the wafers get all soft and cake-like. Then you cut it at an angle and it looks like stripes. When we were little, we were allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve, usually something relevent to activities (one year I got a dress to wear to the party we were going to, another year I got Pictionary to play after dinner). Now that we're older, we are more calm about it and can contain ourselves until Christmas morning.

The past few years, though, since Adam and Amalie usually go to visit her family on Christmas day, we've been having our English Canadian Christmas on Christmas Eve and our French-Canadian Christmas on Christmas day.

So tonight, Adam, Ama and possible her brother George are coming for English dinner. Then tomorrow Adam and Ama will come in the morning for stockings and presents and then head out to visit Ama's family in the Torontoish area.