HAPPY HOOLLIDAAAAYS

My school has a Christmas tree. It's REAL! It smells like Christmas in the lunchroom.

hello, people who experience time!
I'm in an unreasonably good mood today, compared to the unreasonably bad mood I was in last week.
I'm taking advantage of this happy mood to make a happy post about HOLIDAYS!
Normally, in my cynical, negative mind, I avoid things like Christmas music and holiday cheer....UNTIL DECEMBER! And now December has arrived, so the Christmasing may commence.
Anyhow, I thought I could explain to you my various thanksgivings with my various relatives.
In the thanksgiving with my mom's side of the family, Barrett (younger cousin) and I formed a cult. That is what we do for fun. Initiation to our cult involves saying the silliest thing you can think of with a completely straight face. The first person to laugh gets pepper sprinkled on their head. We are unsure of why this is.



In the second thanksgiving with my dad's family, there was a lot of small relatives. Eventually I got close enough to them to tickle their bellies and dash away. Also, I helped my aunt (this is Artist Aunt, by the way) decorate the tables. They looked like this:

So freaking fancy. I spray painted those leaves. And tied those napkins up with cute little bows. YOU CANT STOP ME NOW!!! I'M A TABLE DECORATING FIEND!!!

I spent the rest of the night listening to Welcome to Night Vale and texting John silly things about the small relatives (the funniest was when one of them was sitting on the Button-tufted ottoman and was asked to name it. "Button pufteb otoboo!")

Christmas traditions:

We have this log with holes drilled in it and 5 candles sticking out. This is called the yule log. Each Sunday leading up to Christmas, we light a candle and sing a Christmas song. Last Christmas, we discovered that Artist Aunt and her family didn't have a yule log! So daddy made them one and added a sarcastic little note about "Official Pederson Yule Logs"

In art we have been working with glass. It's pretty great! After spending far too long on making the designs, we have finally been able to go into the back classroom and work on things. We score the glass first to get all the molecules lined up, and then use running pliers to break the piece apart. I am horrible at cutting glass. The scoring tool always goes all over the place, and when I try to use the running pliers, I usually wind up crushing things and getting shards all over the place. I cut myself on one of the shards, and it wasn't convinced that not bleeding would be a good idea.

Despite all that, my statement at the beginning of this paragraph "it's pretty great" still holds true. I love working with my hands, and since we all pretty much know what we're doing, Mrs. Bell doesn't have to stop us that often for instruction. I tried to make a G for Gwen using negative space, and the dark blue strips around it fired into a sort of silver color. And since the kiln temperature was 1400 degrees instead of 1450, they came out like cookies, you know, the edges were smoothed down and melted, but were still raised. We're going to fire it again at 1450, which will make all the bits of glass fuse flat into one smooth, even cookie. Maybe it will get rid of the silver, maybe it won't. We don't know.

I wish I had a picture for you, but it doesn't look that great yet anyway.

In other news, John the star guide buddy has convinced me to join the robotics team. I will let you know how that goes.

I tried cooking an artichoke. It was fun to make, but it tastes really weird. At least we can say that I tried something new.

I'm still not convinced that pugs ate a good idea.

8 and a half year old burrito unicorn. His name is Pablo. We really miss him.

John found this and texted it to me. I wonder if I could make a burrito unicorn out of felt?

Yes. I go on adventures with book characters.

Her.

She sees all.

She wants all.

Bow down to Her.

ALL HAIL HEERRRR

and bring her gifts

This is something I would do.

I can't remember people's names. There are several people named "Beard Guy" and "Yellow Baseball Hat" or otherwise I just use their last name, if i know it. There are at least 2 Colberts. I can not differentiate them.

wow that's horribly misspelled. high five, all misspellers! BUT THIS IS SO CUTE

That 1% of teenagers who like country music all go to my school. It's awful. I'm sure I've already told you all about sitting on the bus with the soul crushing sound of pop-country. It inspires my inner serial killer.

Despite that, There is some country I will tolerate. For example, every single dwarf song in The Hobbit or Lord Of The Rings has been read by my dad to the tune of Ghost Riders In The Sky. Johnny Cash is ok.

I also like Neko Case, which is ...sort of countryishmaybe???