This was my first family free Christmas. It was the first time I was not at my parents house, or my boyfriend's  family's house. I went to visit my family before Thanksgiving, but as soon as that was done, I hosted a Thanksgiving dinner with my boyfriend, in our home. It felt really grown up. There is something about hosting holidays yourself that speaks of a coming of age. We were not the only ones to do this, we had San Francisco friends hosting both Christmas Eve and Christmas dinners. I'm not sure why that matters so much, maybe it matters because it seems that we are all growing up together, creating homes and places for others to come to.

I belong to two expat communities: one from Santa Cruz and one from Wisconsin. The Santa Cruz folks are people I know from UCSC and their friends. We have a dynamic, lively, outrageous, kinky, generous, artistic, and loving community here in San Francisco and Oakland. I expect to know these people the rest of my life,  some of them I have known for ten years or more.

Team Wisconsin is a newer group of people I have stumbled into. Theirs is an honest, warm, decent, fun, and hilarious gang of game players, sports fans, dance parties, and awesomeness. I am grateful for those two communities and the way in which they have kept me on my toes, kept me happy, kept me in check, and kept me going throughout the somewhat difficult holiday season. Its hard to be away from my family, but now I have family in San Francisco too.

And besides that, there are the merry pranksters in my life; the people I can count on to put on stupid outfits and roam the streets with me during Santacon. They are people who will put on plays with me, who will DJ with me, who will come listen to the music I play, who will play music with me, who keep me from getting too serious.  Especially the folks from Costco Soulmate Trading Outlet, who always find the trouble and the fun in any situation.

I'm writing this to look on the bright side. To contemplate my good fortune for a minute. The cloud of holiday haze is lifting, maybe just in time for my boyfriend and I to face next year with a clear heads. 2011 had been one hell of a year, but there is one more hurdle to leap before the end. I just remembered that I am supposed to host all these crazy/lovely people for New Years Eve! Shit. I better get to work.