...Or whatever moon holiday they celebrate in France

I hate that my mom has put the dishes of Christmas candy on the self-same counter where my computer lives; I've already begun the process of eating, like, all of it. It's 9 a.m. This is gross.

Last night, we watched the episode of Grey's Anatomy wherein Meredith gets her appendix out and, in a morphine-induced high, joyously refers to Derek, Finn, and George as "all my boyfriends!" I feel kind of like that.

Neko's in town (cue Monica: "Who's Neko?"), and on Thursday, he joined me and Pigeon for one of my pin-up calendar photo shoots, then for dinner and Pigeon's last-minute Christmas shopping. He looks much older, and has a new, respectable haircut, but is still the same oversized child he's always been. It was refreshing, walking around downtown San Diego poking each other, laughing at things that shouldn't have been funny (as well as things that should've been - we were in Urban Outfitters after all), flirting like a couple of 10-year-olds. He's also got a serious girlfriend now, but doesn't seem at all changed for it, which is good, because I don't think I would've known what to do with a Neko with monogamy issues. At the end of the night, I gave him a hug, told him it was good to see him and that we should talk more because he always makes me laugh, and then drove home thinking, "Damn. I should've kissed his cheek."

I picked up Lui from LAX on Friday, and he took so long getting through customs that by the time he walked through the gate, I no longer had the energy to run over to him and jump into his arms like I'd planned. He's here legally now, and has until March 20-somethingth to marry me so he can stay. It's a good feeling, knowing that we're nearly through all the government red tape. I think things will be much easier once we're actually married, too: now I have the option of worrying about there being no turning back, but once we actually do it, there's just no turning back. It'll be a fact, rather than a looming deadline, and that just seems so much easier to handle.

We spent the better part of Christmas Eve with the girl-who-I'm-pretty-sure-sent-Lui-that-email (I'll need to come up with a good name for her), as she goes to our church and sings in the choir with us. Since I can't prove she did it, we're still being friends with her, kind of pretending nothing ever happened, and kind of not telling her anything. Example: at one point that night, I left the room, and Lui made some comment about me being a pain in the ass sometimes. Later on, I left the room again, and [Girl] reassured him, "I didn't say anything to Elle, about you calling her a pain in the ass." Como what? Like that was a big secret? But I digress.

Christmas day was really nice; Lui was thrilled with the Sea World Trainer-for-a-Day package I got him, and the calendar also went over really well, twice. He tried to make me promise I wouldn't show the pictures to anyone, surtout W, but I told him I couldn't make a promise that I might not keep. I'll do my best, but I don't ever want to feel like I'm not allowed to be myself. And myself flashes her scantily-clad body around to people who will tell her she's hot. I told him if he tries to stifle the personality he fell in love with in the first place, we won't have anything left. But that I'll do my best not to hurt him. Theoretically, I do see the fine line.

Hopefully it will be better after he meets W, which is probably going to happen today, seeing as how I got suckered into picking him up from the airport this afternoon (and by "got suckered into," I mean "offered"). I'm really excited though. Stupidly excited, even though I know now that it probably isn't going to "go there," since when I tried to ask W, over IM during the height of the calendar crisis, to speculate on what might have happened between us had I not left the country that one time, he refused to have the conversation. "Not now, not ever," he'd said. Further proof (if a bit disappointing) that he's a good guy. But if nothing is progressing, then certainly nothing is changing either, because when I said I hoped we could stay the kind of friends where we can flirt and tease and joke around, but still always come back to the reality of my being in a relationship, he said simply, "I want that." And so I'm already entertaining the idea of, in a few weeks' time, asking him how hot it is to know that there's a married woman out there who totally has a thing for him. Now, I repeat: I wouldn't ever cheat on Lui - even if it comes down to the very last layer of resistance, which is thinking about how much it would break my heart to ever hurt him, that's more than enough to make me keep it in my pants - but I think these little fantasies and flirtations are healthy; they remind me that I'm young and virile and sexy. I know not every married girl thinks this way, but I do, and I'm not alone.

Oh, and to top it all off, I had another dream about Piano Man last night (cue Monica: "Who's Piano Man?"). Not the usual, "we're trying to be friends and it's us against the world" dream, but an actual dream, where we were fucking upstairs at La Paloma, and it was really good, and we made some pact to meet up and do it once a year, for old times' sake.