"Puff the Magic Dragon"

My husband hates this song. My daughter and I are quite fond of it, though. I saw Peter, Paul and Mary performing live some years ago, and this is one of the highlights. When they sang, everyone sang along. To pretty much everything. It's one of my visions of an ideal world.

Feeling warm and cozy this evening, having spent the afternoon and early evening with members of the extended family, on my mom's side. We do this every year, usually around this holiday weekend. It's gotten fairly hectic and crowded since my generation starting working on creating the next generation (thank goodness we're a little slow, I'm one of eleven grandchildren, but so far there are only six in the next batch). I have missed it some years, including last year, and Christmas isn't the same without the strange and fun theme gifts being thrown across the room (this year it was beach towels, as well as the ubiquitous scratch and win lottery tickets), absent cousins calling up to be harassed about not being there, all in a very small suburban house. I think there were only about 22 of us this year, we had a few folks unable to make it.

I have more fun with my cousins as the years go by. I'm a bit older than most of them, and in retrospect it feels like I've been waiting a long time for everyone to grow up and play with me. In the past we've gone out later and gone bowling or roller skating, but this year a significant chunk of folks had to head home. I do miss the days of all of us piling in the van, when, as eldest, I took the opportunity to grill everyone on their progress towards certain milestones of growing up: first kiss, first date, other firsts which shall go unnamed here. What is said in the van, stays in the van.