Maybe I'll settle down. Maybe I'll just leave town.

So, Christmas alone in New Zealand. This will actually be my first Christmas completely alone.

Last year, I went camping with my partner... and hundreds of other people. (The relationship ended abruptly thereafter, due in no small part to the aforementioned camping and my disdain for same.)

The year before, I had just arrived in New Zealand to follow my heart after another broken soul and the holidays were a blur of 'meeting the folks' and settling into a new country.

All of the years preceding were spent with one of my own families - either the one I was given by birth or the 'urban families' I made for myself in Baltimore and then Palau. I've got no urban family here in New Zealand. At least not yet.

I'm prepared for the worst. Tears. Self pity. Whining. I hope to be pleasantly surprised.

Thanks to technology heretofore unavailable to me, I will try to video-conference in to my bio-family's Christmas do as they hold that most hallowed of holiday events: the back-stabbing frenzy of gift exchange known as Chinese Christmas. Why it has such a potentially racially offensive moniker has never been satisfactorily explained to me. One can only guess. I blame my grandmother.

Still, it is fun and I am looking forward to being a part of it. Even if the technology fails me (touch wood) I've got an agent to act on my behalf. She is five foot three (and a half!) of pure temerity and meanness. I should know, she raised me. She promises to be ruthless and I plan to hold her to that.

But because I live on the other side of the world in tomorrow-land, that doesn't get me through Christmas day.

I have been invited to a Christmas orphans collection of expats on the day (aptly named Chrimbo?), but I can't decide whether that sad gathering will be more or less pathetic than sitting home alone. Probably less, but only because of the wine.

I've recently decided to go, if only to introduce them to my signature recipe for au gratin potatoes. Hint: it's the bechamel sauce that makes it art. Because why have something that's totally fattening, when you can make something that is incrediby fattening? This year, I'll be piloting a gluten free version, which means that finally it really will be my recipe, instead of the one I cribbed off my mother and called my own. I will also be introducing New Zealand to the 'poinsettia' - a cocktail of champagne and cranberry juice. Only they don't know what poinsettias are here, so I had to rename it the 'pohutukawa' (the Kiwi version of a Christmas tree with bright red blooms).

I have decided to take the accompanying New Years Eve ennui off the table by travelling during that period. I will be embarking on a road trip up to Poor Knights island in Northland to do some diving. The drive is about eleven hours and the Kiwis keep telling me that is the longest drive ever. Having made the trek from Atlanta to Dallas year after year in the back of a Chevy Citation, I kind of scoff at them. I'm actually breaking the trip into two days, a move I'm sure my father would have called 'soft'.

Poor Knights is a marine reserve that Jacques Cousteau reckons (reckoned, anyway, before he took a dirt nap) is one of the top ten dive sites in the world. I've been diving in Palau, so I'll be the judge of that. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Since I've got a new (to me) convertible, I'm looking forward to the drive almost as much as the diving. I plan to stop in pretty much every small town that strikes my fancy. On the way, there are towns with comically large gum boots, towns built entirely of corrugated tin, towns with glo-worms and towns with geysers. I think that is absolutely fantastic. Especially the gum boot. I'm hoping to be able to climb inside.