Post-Christmas Blues

It's too bad that N does not have school tomorrow (Monday). She's got the post-Christmas blues, when none of the presents she got for Christmas is quite the thing she wants to play with, and she doesn't really want to play outside, but she doesn't really want to play inside either, and nothing anyone suggests sounds like any fun.

R's got a similar problem, which is that he's spent the past five weeks agonizing about it being the holiday season (a time of great angst and depression for him), and now that it's over he's left with nothing to agonize about so he doesn't know what to do with himself. But he's going back to work tomorrow for one day, which will be just about right for him, I think. Enough to get his jitters out and then come home again for some more vacation. ;-)

As for me - well, we had two days' worth of very pleasant visits from friends & relations, and now today I am enjoying just not doing much of anything. Which Z & C enjoy as well. But "not doing much of anything" is absolute torture for R & N. Which is why they're feeling antsy.

I am currently sitting in my favorite chair, wearing my new slippers, listening to my new iPod nano, and inhaling the fumes from my new Himalayan salt candle-holder. All of which would be just a little more peaceful if R were not irritated with me for not wanting to go walking in the rain with him, and if N were not ringing the doorbell (the door is unlocked, so this is entirely unnecessary) to complain to me that it is raining.

I am ignoring them both.

The question of when to take down the Christmas tree is what I am currently pondering. I think I'd like to take it down some time in the next couple of days - before C & Z go back to school. If I wait till they leave, it will be sad when I do it, plus I won't have their help.

So it would seem to be a no-brainer, wouldn't it?

~Cheers

Chappy Chanukkah!

So it's the first night of Hanukkah, also Yule and Solstice and, coincidentally, four days till Christmas. And around my house we're pretty laid-back about it all. Which is nice.

I spent a good chunk of today getting the holiday cards written and addressed, except for a few for which I still need addresses. I scrounged up enough stamps and return-address labels so that they can even be mailed tomorrow - I think this is the first time in many years that they've gone out this early (i.e. before the end of the year). Z made a few cards for special friends, from scratch, and they are lovely. C loaded a mess o' CDs onto my computer for me so that I am now listening to Kitaro as I type, yay! N played outside with friends all day, and is now sleeping the sleep of the just. And R worked on various tasks that had been calling his name. The four of us (minus N, except when she and her friends came in for refueling every so often) kept each other company cozily most of the day, and it was truly gezellig.

I've been doing a lot of soul-searching the last few days, and have discovered that there are two things greatly lacking in my life. One is people: I never - really, never! - see my friends any more. It's been six months since I last saw my two close friends here, because of busy schedules and difficult lives. And the other people I know around here are more acquaintances and colleagues than friends. I need to change that. Not sure how to go about it, yet, but this absolutely needs to change. I have good, special, dear friends in far-flung places, but I need more people about me here, where I can see and touch them. I've always been a very people-oriented person, and yet somehow I have ended up a virtual recluse.

The other thing lacking is a soundtrack. I used to play music all the time, but our stereo system is old and fading, and I need something I can take with me on the run. This is why I've asked for an iPod for Christmas/Hanukkah. It's not just a fun little techno-toy - it's something I can carry about from room to room, can go to sleep to, can listen to when out walking. (I won't wear it while driving, though, I promise.) All three of our kids have mp3 players and love them, and they were enthusiastic about my suggestion that it would enhance my life. And the kids are going in on an iPod for R for Christmas, too, and loading it with a sleeptime playlist and a brisk-walk playlist for him. They're very excited about it.

So: people and music. That's what I need more of, and that's what I hope to add more of to my life in the coming year. I know, it's too early to blog about the new year. As far as Christmas is concerned, we've already done one of the traditional holiday rituals. Yesterday we watched both of the "Batman Animated" and the "Justice League Unlimited" Christmas episodes to get us in the mood. The scene in which Superman tries to use his x-ray vision to peek at his presents, only to find that his parents have wrapped them in lead-lined paper, inspired N and C to go to our tree and start shaking the presents underneath to guess what might be in them.

"Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg . . . ."

~Cheers!

SEWING

I seem to have put off my Christmas sewing projects till the very, very, very squeaky-last minute. Worse than usual, but I needed to get all the grades in for my courses first (at least, this is what I told myself).

I've now finished 8/11 of the top of a quilt for my niece, and expect to complete the top in another couple of hours. Then I'll head out to Joann Fabrics to get the batting, more black thread and some black yarn for the ties (she's heavily into the Goth scene, so there is a lot of black in this quilt). Home to do the quilting.

Once hers is done, I will get back to the first quilt I started, which was for a wedding present in September (oops). It, too, has a lot of black in it, so I'll be buying PLENTY of black thread when I go out. ;-) I don't need to finish it by Christmas, but I do want to finish it during this vacation break.

And then there's a pillow I want to put together for Z, using two of her old favorite t-shirts that are too raggedy for her to wear any more. She adores them and noticed they were missing (I took them for this project before they could disintegrate any further), and will enjoy having the pillow as a "comfort object" at school.

N was happy this morning: the school district called a two-hour delay, due to icy roads. She enjoyed the extra time with Z, who hadn't really planned on getting up quite that early but was willing to play with her new XBox 360 anyway. She bought it for herself two days ago - the first thing she's ever bought herself that cost more than $20. She is enormously proud of it.

~Cheers!

Are You Ready For The Holidays?

I threatened on Facebook today that I would slap the next person to ask me that question, and I meant it. It implies that there's some kind of competition to get everything bought and wrapped and mailed and decorated - to get all that nonsense out of the way as quickly as possible because it's such a pain in the neck.

Personally, I love the baking, the choosing of presents, the wrapping and, to a far lesser extent, the decorating. (Okay, I detest the mailing and am always happy when that's out of the way.) I find the process, not the end product, to be the Whole Point. For me, "getting ready" means cleaning the house enough to make space to set up the sewing machine, and scrubbing the kitchen in preparation for baking enough poppyseed cake to take to all the neighbors.

Now I've turned in my grades and started the cleaning. Tomorrow I take out the sewing machine.

I am psyched.

~Cheers!

C Day!

My boy is coming home today! Peenoomonia and all. I hope he's not too miserable, but if he still is, best to be miserable at home where I can make him chicken soup and feed him his favorite types of ice cream.

[insert funny N story here]

So R took N to the grocery over the weekend, and one of the items on the list was ice cream, in anticipation of C's return. R asked N what flavor of ice cream C likes best, and N's reply was "ranch."

R, somewhat taken aback, described the basic ingredients of ranch to N, who recanted and described to R the basic ingredients she had had in mind. Which turned out to be rocky road.

Good thing we got that straightened out in time.

[back to original topic now]

C is due in at 4:40. So I am cleaning as best I can, seeing as the house is a total wreck and the vacuum cleaner begins to smell awful after five minutes' of sucking. I'm still working on the upper floor, but hope to get something done downstairs before N comes home (early dismissal today). Then N & I have some erranding to do on the way to the airport.

In amongst the cleaning, I am checking email fairly frequently, as a schism has developed in one of the ten project groups in my learning community, and I am trying to be available to monitor it in case it becomes really dire. The projects are due in by midnight tonight (on the internet). Most of the groups have worked out very well, so I suppose 10% failure rate for the first time we've tried this project isn't too bad.

I am finding that I really miss NaNo - I need to get started on another writing project soon. The updates from NaNo.org keep coming to my email box and I feel really left out and sad that I finished so soon, even though I really needed to. :-(

Then again, there are always the day to day challenges, such as this morning's when I had to figure out what that horrible, disgusting smell was that seemed to emanate from somewhere about N's person. She insisted it wasn't her, it was her backpack, and when I opened it and took a whiff - sure enough, it was! I went rooting around inside and came up with a baggie with part of an egg yolk, from Monday's snack. BLECH.

~Cheers

NaNoWriMo Day 18: 50,292

OMG. It's done. And I feel like I cheated, because I just left Jimmy as a two year old. But I didn't know what else to do, when I discovered that there were three Jimmies (Jimmys? Jimmae?), not one, and I'd had them all mixed up all this time! And The Jimmy, the one I was writing about, was the only one I didn't know anything concrete about! So it ended up really being about Selah, George and Marshall, and family, and all sentimental mush that sounded ghastly.

And then I was still about a hundred words short, so I typed THE END and added a little postscript about how I came by the letters and journals, and what I did with them, and then thanked all the little people who got me to where I am now etc. etc. ad nauseum, as Bloody E had suggested yesterday. But that tipped me over the top and got it done.

When I tried to follow the directions for scrambling it to upload it to the NaNoWriMo verifier, it just turned everything into "aa aaaaaa a'aa" and so on, and that didn't look right. So I uploaded it normally, figuring nobody would want to steal such a piece of junky writing - same principle as not bothering to lock a rusty old jeep when you park it on the street, I guess. And I assume it verified my word count, but it doesn't say anywhere on the site that I am done, a winner, or anything like that. So I don't know if there is something more I need to do by the 30th of November or not. I've written to Aldy to ask her, and I'm sure she will know.

I have been extremely, deeply unhappy ever since my 50th birthday last April. Being in my 40s was fine, but turning 50 was just not okay. I knew before it happened that it wouldn't be okay, but I tried to prepare myself for it. Didn't help. I didn't want, and I don't want, to be that old. I didn't know why, though till last night: I had promised myself when I was in my 30s that by the time I was 40 I would 1) publish a book and 2) buy myself a banjo and learn to play it.

I didn't do either one. Of course, I did a lot of other things, and I don't regret them. But almost all of them were for other people, and I feel like a failure for not doing either of the two things I wanted to do for myself. I missed the boat and there is no way to go back and do them by that self-imposed deadline.

Don't get me wrong: I am depressed about being 50 and not having learned to play the banjo. But I WAS depressed about being 50 and having wasted a lot of time that I couldn't get back. And when Sept. came and my two big kids both left for college, and suddenly our family of five turned into a family of three, I was very, very depressed. I spent a lot of time sleeping, and just sitting quietly being sad.

So when NaNo came along, and I got really excited, it pulled me out of my depression. Instead of having three-day migraines every one or two weeks, I've had ONE one-day migraine in the past month. I've been wide awake and even had insomnia because I couldn't turn my brain off. I needed a challenge - not a frustration, but a challenge.

And now I've written a novel. And I plan to edit it. And then write another one (I already know what it will be about).

I still hate that I'm 50, and I still am sorry I haven't published anything. And I expect I'll still have days when I battle depression about that, or about my big kids being gone. But this is why NaNo was so important to me and why I felt driven to finish that damn book. And to do at least a halfway decent job on it.

Thanks for being along on the ride.

~Cheers

NaNoWriMo Day 17: 47,007

I need about another thousand or so on Marshall and then I will start on Jimmie. I hope to finish by Wednesday - Thursday at the latest. Woot!

I met again today with two of my writing buddies, Bloody E Read and LadySoul, two LCCC students who've done NaNo before. I wish there were a way to get someone to interview them about doing NaNo - I'm so impressed with them for doing this twice in a row (I think maybe LadySoul's done it more than twice), and they are such neat people! The school ought to publicize this, because it's a big achievement and something really to be proud of. LadySoul has already gotten to 53,000+ but has set her goal at 75,000 this year! Bloody E is only at 15,000 but she did the same thing last year and wrote 25,000 in the last week, so she isn't worried about it.

It really is fun writing with other people, and it's amazing how quickly you get to feeling a bond with them for doing something crazy like this. Of course, I feel that way about everyone/anyone who is doing NaNo - there are so many of us around the world, too! - but even more so about my mother and nephew, and about the two Heathers (LadySoul and Bloody E) because of writing with them.

I also have a mentor through NaNo, Aldy, who has been very encouraging. It helps to have someone who really knows NaNo from having done it and finished. She offered to mentor total strangers, and replied when I emailed her asking for mentoring. Which is amazing and wonderful - see what NaNo brings about!

No more time for writing today, as N will be home soon and I have to teach tonight. But tomorrow will be a big day. I have no commitments tomorrow except to write, write, write!

~Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel . . .