Photo by Pixie, clothing by Clockwork Couture.
Seventeen years ago tonight, I met the girl of my dreams. A few years later, I tricked her into marrying me.
Happy New Year. I hope you get to spend it with someone you love.
We did our big Christmas thing last night, with a huge feast, the traditional live tweeting of A Christmas Story, and the joy of being with the people you love most (which is always a good thing, but seems especially joyful this time of year.)
The kids (who are actually adults, but will always be “the kids” to me) woke me up at 10 this morning, and I was grateful for the extra sleep. It turns out that, even when your kids are adults, you still find yourself awake after midnight wrapping presents on the floor with your wife. Holiday tradition and all that, you see.
While I drank my coffe, the dogs and cats got gifts from Santa in their stockings (yes, we’re those people) and accepted them in the usual manner: disinterest from the cats, and excitement measured in megatons from the dogs. After the dogs retreated to their particular spots with their new chew toys, we opened our gifts to and from each other. If you look really hard, you can see the greatest thing in the world that Anne got me.
While my kids opened their gifts, I replayed nearly two decades of Christmas mornings together. I remembered their joy and excitement when they got a bike or a basketball or the new Harry Potter thing. I remembered being so exhausted from staying up most of the night to assemble something I could hardly see straight, but being so happy when Ryan or Nolan exploded with joy upon opening it. There were bikes and rollerblades and skateboards and basketball hoops and remote controlled cars, and even though all of those things are long gone, the memories we built together on every Christmas Eve and Christmas Day — the joy of being with the people we love — endure.
I’m so grateful to be with my family today, and so proud of the young men Anne and I raised. All I wanted for Christmas was to be with my family, and Santa delivered. Big time.
I opened a Christmas present that was “from Aunt Clara” and this is what was inside:
My wife just gets me.
I’m going to have to make a category for this, if my dogs keep this up.
It was a long time ago, longer now than it seems, when Amelia Pond met a man in her dreams.
And the story that you are about to be told about Doctors and Daleks
is centuries old.
Now, you’ve probably wondered where the good Doctor comes from. If you haven’t, I’d say, it’s time you’ve begun!
For there was a Time War and and many were lost
and no one quite knows just exactly the cost.
But The Doctor is now the last of his kind
and when he was forced to leave Gallifrey behind
with a ride in his TARDIS across time and space
he met dear old Sandy Claws, face to bony face.
I posted this on Twitter earlier this week, because I believe it’s good advice, but about 1 in 20 or so replies accused me of being selfish or narcissistic, or — worst of all — an Objectivist.
I’m not a big fan of getting into “Someone is wrong on the Interent,” but I wanted to clarify a little bit in a way that Twitter does not allow.
What I get out of this quote is this: if there is a toxic person in your life who does nothing but bring you down and hurt you, then you should respect yourself enough to remove that person from your life. Life is too short to maintain toxic and negative relationships.
This doesn’t mean that you don’t make an effort to work on building and maintaining positive, healthy, fulfilling relationships. It doesn’t mean that you don’t make an effort to be kind and generous and just take take take. It means that if you’re constantly “making up” or something like that with a person, you’re not in a healthy, fulfilling relationship. You’re in a toxic relationship, and time you spend maintaining toxic relationships is time wasted that could be spent — invested — into relationships that bring you joy and make you a better person.
Know and recognize the difference between healthy and toxic relationships, positive and negative people, and respect — and love — yourself enough to choose the ones that make you happy and inspire you to grow as much as you possibly can. People who drag you down because it makes them feel better about themselves are not worth your time.
Where I think people may have interpreted this as selfish or narcissistic is in the clumsy wording of people or activities “serving” you. I’d take people out of that portion of the advice and apply it directly to the forehead.
Or, you know, just apply it to the “activities” part and think about where you’re investing your time and energy — your most precious and limited resource — and what yo’ure getting back from it.
Mostly, though, this quote encapsulates advice I’ve given my children and applied to my own life: respect yourself enough to leave a romantic or platonic or business relationship that is causing you more harm than good. To borrow a quote from Green Day: “You can’t go forcing something if it’s just not right.”
This is one of those things that I forgot I wrote, and when I was reminded I wrote it, didn’t believe that I actually came up with something that I think is kind of cool.
Things every person should have:
- A nemesis.
- An evil twin.
- A secret headquarters.
- An escape hatch.
- A partner in crime.
- A secret identity.
What else?
(h/t Fuck Yeah Wil Wheaton)
I woke up this morning to the sound of Anne making the awful noise you make when something you like is destroyed by your puppy.
Anne, being the amazing person that she is, turned this particular troop of lemurs into lemurade:
Of course, I can’t be too mad at Marlowe, because Anne did do this to her while I was out of town this weekend:
I’m calling this one even.
People have been asking me for a T-shirt like this for a long, long time. Like, maybe a year, which is a long time if you’re a caterpillar because holy shit man you lived a whole year? Caterpillars usually live for a few weeks. What are you, some kind of Licherpillar? I cast magic missile!
My friend Joel and I have been kicking this idea around for almost as long as people have been asking for it, and when he put it on cartoon me in a comic, we finally decided to make it happen.
