Since my creativity is totally spend rolling up two beeswax tapers (hey-they are two-tone, green and red), I thought I'd ask an obvious question. Everyone must be busy going to parties, baking, shopping and making plans for travel or company. What are your holiday plans?

My daughter's dad is taking her back to Misery, um Missouri, for 10 days next week. So I allowed myself to wallow in my self-pity for awhile, but now I have invites for dinners from several friends. I also thought I'd help out at a soup kitchen. It has nothing to do with making me feel more fortunate. It has everything to do with helping out someone else.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2000

Answers

I'll be driving to New Jersey, to my sister's, for Christmas. Sis is married with two young children, and my mom and aunt will also be there. It's fun having the holiday with little 'uns around, they enjoy it so much. My 41st birthday is on the 23rd, so we'll celebrate that, too.

I'm on my own for New Year's. I don't have an SO or any parties to go to, which is fine, because that means I can drink champagne, eat junk food, and watch the Iron Chef marathon on the Food Network while wearing my flannel jammies.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2000

I usually go home to NJ for x-mas but this year I decided to let my husband spend the holiday with his family so we are staying home. Except this year, half of his family will be out of town, which is like the first time EVER this has happened, and of course it is for the one time in years that we decided to stay home. Christmas Eve will be spent at his parents' house while everyone will eat all sorts of seafood, and I will try not to get sick from just the smell of it (I am allergic) My one sister-in-law will probably stay at our house, along with her behemoth dog, which will probably get into a fight with my dogs. Christmas day we will go back to my husband's parents' house where I'm hoping something other than seafood will be served.

Since everyone that lives in my area never plans ahead, I have no plans for New Year's at the moment. Probably someone that my husband works with will have a party, like every year, and we'll probably go to that.

For some reason, I'm not too thrilled about the holidays this year.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2000

I'm going to Houston to stay with my parents in their new house. (Or, as I call it, based on the pictures I've seen, 'The Monstrosity.' Big fancy and stucco is not my style.) I'm excited to see my family, though.

Then for New Year's I am going out to LA and staying with my e-mail boyfriend, and taking a 90210 tour of LA with Dwanollah. I'm very excited.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2000

Oh, and while I call him my e-mail boyfriend, he's actually a friend I met via a mutual friend who went to college with him. He's not some random person I met online. In case y'all were worried.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2000

scrnwrt, Gwen was a random person I met online, so I wouldn't be worried if you had an email boyfriend you met that way.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2000

My SO and I are travelling south to visit my family, and I'll be meeting my first niece for the first time! I am very excited, as you can see by my credit card receipts. We don't have any family traditions or anything, and right now the plan is to open presents, play games, shop, watch movies, and drink lots of margaritas (not in any particular order). 8 whole days of my family - I'll be the happiest senorita below the mason/dixon line! And my SO is so damn happy at the idea of not dividing up Christmas day between 2 families in a minimum of 4 different houses with stress being the high emotion of the day, which is his usual December 25th routine. It's going to be holly and jolly!

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2000

Me and The Husband-Type Man are sneaking back to the East Coast for a quiet holiday Out Playing in NYC (*sniff*) and Boston. We just didn't want to deal with the chaos of the round-trip-to-SD driving trip with the stop in Orange County and the screaming nephews and the dinners and the gift-buying and all that... we just want to be alone and relax.

But after that, ihen it's back home to formally dedicate The Lounge with a NYE Retro Cocktail party. And *then* I get to drag scrnwrt's butt all over LA. :)

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2000

Are you trying to say that you don't want to sit in traffic all day, Dwanollah?

We are staying home this year. No relatives to visit with, but my parents are coming out in the begininning of Jan. That will be nice since I haven't seen them since July.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2000

My mother-in-law is coming for two days. eeekk. My mother will show up for a few hours as usual. Various friends will come around on some day or other or we'll go out for dinner. I like my predictably quiet holidays. My brother, my S.O and I sit around on Xmas Eve and exchange gifts and stockings stuffed with crap. Then we eat crap and watch movies.

Last New Year's Eve we had an Iron Chef-style pizza battle. My brother has the apartment downstairs so we had two kitchens and two rounds of battle. We designed score cards and everything. It was very successful. I won cause I made the most decadent and decorated pizza. I made the dough and put pesto in the dough and had 4 types of mushroom and every ingredient was expensive. Okay no one got a tin of caviar to themself or anything... I'm pushing for soup battle this year.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

We have no plans, so far. My husband has talked about going to Vegas or somewhere tropical, since the people we asked to come over on the 25th live an hour away and they don't want to make the drive. I could easily ignore the whole thing but he would be depressed to not celebrate in some way.

Shelly, can we come to Texas to see you?

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

That pizza war sounds awesome! I'm totally going to suggest this to the folks we are spending New Year's Eve with and pass it off as my own idea. Thanks Gayla!

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

We're having everyone in this weekend, the in-laws, friends, etc., so I'm sure that once that is done, I'll be so stressed out from the change in my routine and entertaining everyone that I'll be a quivering mess of nerves and stay in the house until the holidays are over. It should take me until about February to feel like socializing again.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Of course you can, Maggie!

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

nope imjust staying home and cellabrating with ma and my step sisters and brothres. its rilly crazy!!

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Well, according to my charts, we're going to be trying to concieve our next child on Chistmas Eve. On Christmas Eve we'll be sleeping at my in-laws along with, let's see, seven other relatives.

Is it a bad thing to concieve a child in a closet while locked in one of your in-laws guestroom bedrooms closets on the eve of the Lord's birth?

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

The great thing about doing Pizza battle is that you have your panel of judges but there's still enough pizza left for anyone else that comes over to eat. It sounds geeky but it was a good party. We had quite a few people and 4 big pizzas. Doesn't everyone order pizza on New Year's anyway? We'd do pizza battle again but I don't know if we can top the ones we made. One pizza was corn, teriaki nori strips , brown sugar and I can't remember what else. It was actually REALLY good. Another pizza had prunes, cream cheese, mozzerella, sweet potato, and fried onion. It was really rich but also good. Creativity was part of the scoring. I scored big on presentation because I assembled the toppings like a flower and even decorated the crust. Also we had a time limit of one hour to make the pizza and cook it.

-- Anonymous, December 15, 2000

Kathleenc...It's hardly ever a bad idea to conceive a child, but it's just as much fun to practice. Since you've got this planned, can I show up with a cameraman? Think about it. "Kathleenc Conceives!! Film at Eleven!"

-- Anonymous, December 15, 2000