I stopped being productive around 7pm. Since then, I’ve just been downing the pear juice my boss gave me for Christmas, listening to sombre music, and trying to draw something. It’s hard to sleep without Andy.

Well. Incase the two foot snowfall, the over-populated malls, the unabashed playing of Mariah Carey in public places, the soprano in the pew behind you belting out an imaginary descant to Angels We Have Heard on High, or the calendar didn’t clue you in: it’s almost Christmas.

Provo does not plough snow. Provo, a town at the base of mountains famous for their snow, in a state who puts GREATEST SNOW ON EARTH on their license plates, DOES NOT PLOUGH. No sorry, that’s not entirely true, sometimes they do plough, they just don’t grit afterwards. So essentially they just pack the ice down on roads more and glaze it with a watery sheen which turns into a death trap overnight. It’s as if snowfall surprises Provo year after year, and in the absence of grit, it’s occupants are forced to slide around a gridsystem of roads pretending that they are in control of their vehicle. They didn’t even grit State Street. You know, the large road going up a relatively steep hill to Orem? So no wonder I saw a Geo Metro slipping backwards down the hill. Kind of reminds me of last year when I saw an old Nissan Sentra doing exactly the same thing.

Snow also exacerbates the effects of Provo’s terrible drivers. Yesterday, to avoid a truck who seems to have SLAMMED ON HIS BRAKES on an ICY ROAD, I ended up gunning my engine to get out of the way, and surrendering to the road’s icy cambre, landing my car flush with a no-grip curb. Took a couple men to pull my little car of that drift.

All t his snow means that those monster trucks that ride my hatchback-bumper are 10x scarier, since they slide (rather than screech) to a halt, inches from my rear window. It’s those very same drivers who fail to put their lights on in a blizzard, continue to drive at 50mph on University, blow red lights, and stop signs. I kind of feel like I’m playing slow motion Frogger, with more serious consequences, driving around my neighborhood.

Curses, I’m complaining again. Come on though, I don’t have a Christmas tree, Andy and I are in different states, and the only friend I have left in Provo is Moses: I’m allowed to be a total scrooge.

Since September 2006, there have only been two occasions in which I have been Andy-less: once, when I was in England for a week longer than he was, and again for a night, when Biery was in town and they went camping. I’m not used to being Andy-less anymore. He’s been in PA for a few days now, and I’m still six days away from seeing him. Lest someone reading this takes my longing to see him again as an indication that we spend our evenings together composing love ballads for each other and bickering lovingly about who’s called Schmoopy, let me explain why it’s such a travesty that he’s not here right now: I miss his company. Who else is going to play Connect Four with me, beat me five times in a row, and play on without complaining of boredom? Who else is going to give a customary gag on their toothbrush while we’re brushing our teeth? Who else is going to hate on Fox News and Keith Olberman with me? Who is going to drag Moses away from me when he gets in a foot frenzy and starts doing that crying/pupils dilated/eyeing up my toes routine?

Since he’s gone, nighttime has turned into a potentially daunting prospect. It did not help that I came to that last realization while watching a History Channel programme about a creepy, murderous gang based in New Orleans. On my own. In the dark. The news is probably more adept at fear-mongering than the History Channel, but suddenly the house-noises seemed suspicious to me. Moses, and his dust-watching just looked like he was seeing into another realm, and I was positive, for fleeting moments, that the creaky noise correlating with the central air coming on was infact a crazy murderer creeping up the basement stairs. Those are just figments of my imagination of course, but the Mexican men who were trolling towards my porch steps last summer are not. Either way, tonight I am turning my house into a Home-Alone style Housetrap.

Urggghhh

I like Coldstone’s Creamery. I specifically like vanilla, mixed with raspberry sorbet and two brownies. What I don’t like about Coldstone’s is the sizing. They’re labeled things like “Gotta Have it” and “Me Likey”. Ok, not really “Me Likey” but close. Reeaallly close. I half admire the individuals who ask, unabashed, for a “Gotta Have It, Chocolate, with three Reeces Peanut Butter cups mixed in”. Once or twice I may or may not have experimented with humiliation by preceeding my flavor request with a muttered “Love it”, but really, why does the size of my ice cream portion have to correlate with how much I like ice cream? I’m not trying to get miffed about Coldstone’s advertising forcing me into proclaiming how dedicated I am to the ice cream I order, (in the same way that I think it’s weird that Sony puts “MY FIRST SONY” on all their kids toys, like they’re meant to get more), I just feel really stupid saying “Gotta Have It” since it just makes me think of tacky mums indiscriminately grabbing at J.C. Penney sales items.

I was going to rhyme the word Great with 2008, and then I took it a step further and half-heartedly attempted to rhyme the word GRATEful with 2008. I’m scrapping the entire attempt at being tacky, and I’m just going to list a few things from 2008 that I’ve been or am grateful for. In no particular order:

• Andy. He’s the main all singing, all-dancing reason why I love life.
• Moses. For being the only cat I know who doesn’t think he’s better than everyone else.
• For being able to go to the Temple with Andy.
• Grape Vines. You made the short walk to church so much more aromatic.
• The gospel. For the covenants I’ve made and the perspective it gives life.
• Conditional Green Card. It’s not actually green, and it’s conditional, but seriously, without it I would still be cleaning houses, nannying demons, and keeping the thermostat at 56 without it. Actually, USCIS officials would be escorting me on the first boat back to England.
• Laser Eye Surgery. Sweet, sweet 20/15 vision after being something like 20/400 my whole life.
• For Utah remaining dry through the fall. I hate raking wet leaves.
• Our car never blowing a tyre on the freeway and sending me careening out of control off the I-15. It’s a legitimate fear.
• Marriott Man, for letting us swim in the hotel pool last summer, and emboldening us in our pool sneaking this last summer.
• My dad sending money to us for pizza and my mum sending those topshop goodies when we were having a rough few months.
• Living in a safe neighborhood.
• Park City Roger Man. For selling me a class bike with a Cougar colour palette and answering all my obtuse questions about road bikes.
• Professors like Andy’s Dr. Carter. He’s probably the most intelligent man I’ve met, and somehow so humble.
• Fake Mexican and Fake Chinese food. Costa Vida and Rice King will always have a special place in my heart and it’s foreseeable triple bypass.
• Nu Skin. So glad they hired me.
• For Andy’s mum, anticipating my heat-seeking needs with the electric blanket and space heater. I used that heater for about 60% of 2008.
• For Andy spray-painting the mailbox black, so our house didn’t look so much like the abode of preschooler anymore.

Andy and I have an ongoing debate about what superpower would be better: flying or teleporting. Bear in mind that the flying would be almost Superman calibre; flying wouldn’t tire you out, you could hit mach 5 speeds, and you couldn’t freeze at high altitudes.
I think that teleporting would be better. If I could teleport, I’d be like “Excuse me while I teleport to Tokyo on my lunch break” and pop, I’d be gone. See, if I had to fly, I’d have to walk outside of my building and then zip off, and it’d take at least 20 minutes to get to Japan which is almost half my lunch break. Additionally, I would have mad Hide-and-Seek skills if I could teleport. Flying would probably be more satisfying, and the aesthetics are more obvious, but still. Flying somehow seems like more work since I can’t fathom which muscles or areas of the brain would be used to propel one through the air like that. Teleporting just requires a determined thought, duh.

I just forged right through December without really realizing it was December. Since I don’t write the date at the top of my work, send Christmas cards to everyone in my class, or spend the last week of the school term watching films instead of having lessons (I’m purposely forgetting about Lunchtime Discos), I seem to have forgotten about how seasonal the month of December can be. It’s a combination curse of living in a student town and being downright lazy. I feel like when I was younger, the mix of being in Christmas choirs, nightfall at 4pm, having a tree up, and all the Christmas themed wordsearches I had to do in German, made for a really festive run-up to Christmas. This year, and the past few, have just been a blur of either finals, or work deadlines. I hit the first of December and the thought of advent crossed my mind, then the month started hurtling by. Next thing you know, I’ll hit Christmas Eve like a brick wall. Next year will be better. Which brings me to New Year resolution number one: enjoying every day and making the most of it without doing the whole “it’ll be good when _________”

The fact those parents couldn’t even stop at Adolph and just had to throw ‘Hitler’ in there is an obvious and despicable bid for attention. Unfortunately, the attention it will draw their child is probably going to be negative.