rivka

Uproarious parlor games
We're not a family that usually plays parlor games, but between them my brother Steve and my sister Juanita decided it was time for that to change.

So we played Dictionary, which I understand is also sold as a packaged game called Balderdash. One person chose an unfamiliar word from the dictionary (usually after a few false starts met with a chorus of "No, I know that word."), and everyone wrote down an invented definition. The invented definitions were read out loud along with the real definition, and we each voted for the one we thought was real. You got a point for guessing the right one and a point for every person you seduced with your false definition, but we didn't keep very close track of points - we were just playing for the fun of the definitions.

And we played Saint Peter, Saint Paul, a don't-break-the-rhythm clapping game my brother learned in Boy Scouts. We sat in a semi-circle. The person at the top was designated St. Peter, the next St. Paul, the next St. John, the next Number One, and so on until the last person, who had no name and sat in the spot designated as Hell. We clapped at a slowly-increasing pace, and each person said, in turn - and to the beat - their own name and the name of someone else. "St. Peter, St. Paul." "St. Paul, Number One." "Number One, St. John." If you missed a beat or said the wrong name, you were sent to Hell, and everyone below you moved up one chair - and one name. I don't know what it says about us that there were lots and lots of mistakes.

And we played, God help me, The Quacking Game. One person went out of the room, and the rest decided on an action for that person to perform - anything from touching the Christmas tree (my seven-year-old niece) to singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" (my brother) to taking off

curiousangel's socks (me). When the person came back into the room, everyone else began quacking softly. They tried to guess the action they were supposed to perform, with their only feedback being changes in the volume and frequency of our quacking. It turns out that, as a family, we're surprisingly good at shaping.

Incipient blindness
My father's going blind. He has macular degeneration. It was diagnosed more than ten years ago, when the only sign was a tiny blind spot he needed a special grid to identify. This year he gave up driving, watching movies, and reading books and newspapers. Apparently, once you're on the downhill slope it progresses pretty quickly.

We gave him the audio version of Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, which he absolutely adored. He got some other books on CD from my mother, and a nifty battery-powered gadget that slips over the rim of a cup and vibrates when the liquid nears the top, and a tiny powerful light that we're hoping will help him be able to read choir music for a little while longer, and some big high-contrast labels for his computer keys.

Until now, he's been so closed-off and quiet about his poor vision that it's been hard to keep it in mind.

This was the Christmas of Dad Can't Do That Anymore.

Cookies
Six kinds of Christmas cookies, which I suppose is on the low side of normal. My mother baked snickerdoodles and refrigerator nut cookies, using the same recipes I did for our party. She also made nut-free refrigerator nut cookies for my sister Debbie, who doesn't like nuts, and spritz cookies from the cookie press, dyed green and in the shape of little Christmas trees. These are the traditional Christmas cookies I've had every year of my life. It would hardly be Christmas without them.

My sister-in-law's mother sent a tin full of buckeyes, which are peanut butter balls dipped most of the way into chocolate to look like buckeyes (horse chestnuts). Fortunately, I seemed to be one of the only people there who was fond of buckeyes - so I got to eat a lot of them. And last but not least, my sister Juanita made rolled sugar cookies topped with vanilla icing and red-and-green sprinkles in holiday shapes. (Both the cookies and the sprinkles, I fear, were in holiday shapes.) They were incredibly tasty and had to be rationed out.

And these were just the cookies, you understand. There was also a pecan pie, and a chocolate cake, and cheesecake, and a six-tiered gift assortment of high-quality chocolates from my mother's boss, and candy canes. There was supposed to be an apple-cranberry pie as well, but at the last minute my mother decided she didn't have the time. Alas.

I also told

hobbitbabe that I would elaborate on the proof that my parents should've switched churches before now, but that will have to come later.