Christmas in October

This morning when I woke up, everything was covered in a light layer of snow. It looks oddly a bit like a spring snow, since everything is lush and green, but the trees are actually too lush and green for spring, so...well, an early fall snow after a quite wet summer, I suppose.

Ed and I spent essentially all day together. We had lunch out, and on the way home stopped to rent a movie. I mentioned my desire to buy a Wii (which I shopped for but didn't buy the other night, unsure whether I really wanted a Wii more than I wanted the $300 I would spend, including games), and he said, "Want to get one on the way home?" So we went to Best Buy, where I got the console and Mario Galaxy, and he got an extra set of controllers and the Metroid Prime Trilogy (for us to play together).

At home, he checked out some things for work and I hooked up the Wii. The smell of the plastic, computer parts, styrofoam wrapping paper, etc., reminded me of Christmas. And it was a Christmasy day outside, with snow still visible on the trees. I said this to Ed, and he said the day really felt like Christmas all the way around, and somehow his saying it made it so. The rest of the evening really felt like we were living outside of normal time, the way that holidays sometimes do. We didn't give any thought to shopping or chores or homework or any weekend tasks, just played with our new toy. And watched The Triplets of Belleville.

Buying the Wii was also a kind of budgetary triumph. I currently put some money aside every month that I'm officially allowed to spend however I want, but that I have to conserve one month of to cover budgetary excesses. After a few months of doing this, I had more than enough to buy the Wii and the game without hitting this month's savings at all. It's the first thing I've bought with that money. I feel really good that the plan worked out, then.

Ed kicked my ass (unsurprisingly) when we played Metroid Prime - he had played the game before and I had not, and I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to do anything properly while he blew me up a lot of times. But later I got to play the regular game myself and start picking up some skills. (But damn, kids, that game is kind of hard.) After Ed went to bed, I started playing Mario Galaxy.

It was really fun and great to take a day off from life and spend it playing with another kid. (Plus we're having a sleepover!)