Today, we are actually watching lame holiday cartoons and stringing popcorn and cranberries to decorate the girls' dorms with. Why are we doing this? There was some little bit of holiday related angst the other day for a few people, and I'll admit, I was a part of that because I'm not entirely used to not being at home for it yet, though it's the second year I've done it in a row.
Obviously, I don't regret my choices, or being here, and most everyone in my little immediate group is glad to be here too, and say it, it still feels like, I don't know, like we ought to be finding something to focus on other than nostalgia and missing people that they might or might not be seeing for a while, so, a project designed to find things to do for other people right here was born!
I think this is actually helping a lot, even though I don't know that I am ever going to include popcorn as part of the process again. Stringing popcorn is, as no one ever tells you, one massive pain in the ass. The animated mice from the current special we have on, are, I swear, going to appear in here any moment, bouncing around eager to have been provided with their meals for the next...conservatively estimating...about three months or so. Not that it isn't worth it if it helps though, right?
Admittedly, this special is pretty stupid. An angsty geek mouse who wears glasses and Harry Potter scarf about thirty years or so before that happened and his friends wrote a letter to piss off Father Christmas, resulting in everyone being depressed because he returned their mail. It IS prompting some interesting discussions though, things about belief, about what really matters to people, even though we're a bit more secular than religious over here. In fact, noone's brought up religious beliefs as something so far, which is interesting, and better in terms of conflict avoidance.
What this HAS turned into, along with the project, is more of a look at how to go from being a good kid who made mistakes or was confused to a member of society who uses and focuses on using those good things to make life better. All things considered, it's a pretty productive day AND the girls are going to have some lovely decorations this evening.
And here's a song in this thing that fits what my point in this was. As the badly animated ginger family is singing, "even a miracle needs a hand" about how people need to work together to make these sorts of things happen. And now they're talking about how it's not enough to be sorry but you have to try to fix the things you mess up.
Who knew a last ditch cheer up attempt and animated MICE was going to go over so WELL?