Well, this isn't so bad after all....

Well, it's Christmas. Sort of. I find that this time of night/morning is always most confusing to assign a date to when it's the night/morning of Christmas Eve/Christmas. I mean, if it were any old Friday night/Saturday morning, I could call it either Friday or Saturday and not think twice one way or the other. But it being THIS Friday night/Saturday morning makes it more conflicting. Because if I say it's Christmas then I feel like I'm jumping the gun and internally will become more excited than I should be, as I still technically need to sleep before it can be "real" Christmas, therefore jump starting the adrenaline and getting my hopes up for something that I still have a couple hours before I'm able to experience. Kind of like a trick on myself. I'll tell myself, "Bri, it's Christmas!...buuut you still have to go to sleep before you can experience it." Then the other part of me goes, "WHY DID YOU GET MY HOPES UP IF I STILL HAVE TO WAIT?!?!?!?!" Then I'm just angry.
However, on the other hand, if I try to trick myself into not being excited by saying, "Chill out Bri, it's only Christmas Eve...." Well, then I can't help but notice that the date on the computer screaming, "12/25/2010" begs to differ, and then the other part of me says, "Are you stupid? If it was REALLY Christmas Eve, that would say '12/24/2010' ...I'm not gonna fall for your stupid tricks. I'm not five." Then I'm just angry at myself for thinking I could trick myself that way. See, it's a lose/lose. This is my struggle every year. Granted, this entire headache could all be avoiding if I would fall asleep when it was legitimately still the 24th...but that's not very realistic, now is it.

Anyway, when I started this post I had no intention of going into any of that at all.

What I meant to say was something slightly happy to contrast with my last post about the opposite of something slightly happy.

See, I, myself, personally, don't really get stressed. I mean, if there's something super major intense going on, then sure, I guess I would react like a human being. But then again, if it's something super major intense, I sort of skip the "stressed" stage and hop straight into the massive breakdown stage anyway. What I'm saying is, I don't cause myself stress. The thing that causes me to be stressed is other people's stress. I am a big victim of emotional contagion. So with this Christmas being the first since the demise of my parent's marriage, I was worried because everyone was worried, and I anticipated being really stressed because the build up to this day has caused a lot of people stress already so I figured the actual day would be one colossal wad of stress puke.
I went to the Christmas Eve service at RBC (well...Gracespring...whatever...), my mom and sister went to one in Grand Rapids, and my brother and his girlfriend, Amber, went downtown or something. Mine ended way first so I was just sitting at home for a few hours waiting for everyone to arrive... and when they did, within 2.7 seconds upon their entry, I knew I would be able to tell exactly how the rest of the weekend was going to go.

This is sort of how I saw it happening in my mind: *people arrive.... people are not happy.*

This is how it happened in real life: *people arrive.... people are happy!*

Some people talk about how when their expectations meet reality, it depresses them. See, people get their hopes up, and then they are let down. But for me, I set my expectations so exceedingly low, that when they meet reality, I can't possibly be more depressed than I already am. In fact, I was discussing this with Kaitlyn just today. We're both pretty sure that we are the smart thinkers in this world, because "if you set the bar low enough, the good things are surprises that are only increased to way super extra good, and the bad things aren't disappointing because we already called them happening anyway." It's pretty much a win/win. That logic was tested for me tonight, and it was proved to be valid.

So far, I've spent most of my time listening to my brother gab about the Elvish names he made up and the villages he's visited so far on Lord of the Rings Online, the enormous "super awesome" police lego set that Amber got him that he can't wait to turn into "a machine of death" for when he plays Brikwars, how much he likes his superhero pajama pants and his Transformers t-shirt, the Star Wars emblem he painted on his pick-up, and the like.
He's 24. And he's one of my all-time favorite people in the whole entire universe.
 
We also watched A Christmas Story (as semi-tradition) and Star Wars Episode III (not as tradition at all, but a very fortunate result of channel surfing), and played a clever little card game.

Here's my favorite quote for the night:

Justin: "It's already 2am, let's just not go to sleep."

Bri: "Yeah, let's just stay up all night drinking vodka..." (note: this was a joke based on previous conversations of the night.)

Mom: "Hey don't even talk like that!...the vodka is for the morning."

She is really going to hate me for posting that...but at least it's not on facebook. And the whole point is to say how cool it is to have a mom who still makes jokes about topics that most people wouldn't make jokes about given the knowledge that she contains. And plus just because she's a mom. Moms don't make jokes like that but mine does, and I think it's cool. Soo. What I'm saying is, I'm pretty blessed to have the cool people in my family that I do.
(Alyssa - you count as apart of the cool people in my family, I just didn't have an outstandingly blog-worthy story to tell about you from tonight. Sorry.)

Anyway, I'm pretty blessed. That's all.