We got all our Christmas cards in the mail on Monday morning – even the stack that has been sitting on the scanner now for weeks, addressed, signed, sealed, and only needing stamps. I ended up swinging by the UPS store on the way home from work last week and buying every last sheet of stamps that they had (which wasn’t many). It seems more than a little odd that a store dedicated to mailing things has been continually running out of stamps this season, and even odder that they charged me a fee above just the stamp cost. But it saved me having to deal with the actual post office so at least there is that.

My mom and my sisters and I had an email-based discussion last week of which of us was going to make which of the traditional cookies and other goodies for Christmas, and I said I would make the gingerbread men. Naturally this was before I came down with this damn cold that simply will not go away, so the cookies are still not made, and as the number of days between now and Christmas dwindle rapidly I am wondering just when the heck I am going to fit in a few hours of rolling out dough. I *want* to make them – these years it’s the only Christmas baking I ever get to do anymore – but I am so tired, and there is so much to do and this cold is sapping every bit of strength that I have to care about any of it.

I swung by the yarn store in Davis on the way home from work today and picked up four new sets of needles because I wanted to make very sure there were not any more obstacles in getting the last of the Christmas knitting done. We will not discuss the two hours wasted fighting with a pattern which has turned out to be written incorrectly; the last hour of which was spent trying to rewrite it all by myself before giving up because the thought of remapping out 80 separate rows of long and complicated directions was making my brain spin. But it is started and I am going to stay up very late tonight to see how much i can get done. I suspect I am also going to stay up very late tonight because with all the coughing and the inability to breathe through my nose it’s kind of hard to get to sleep, but at the very least I can be productive in my cold-induced insomnia.

Happy Holidailies

I am tired and still fighting this damn cold, and annoyed because I do not have the right size needles for the last knitting project that I somehow still need to get done before Christmas. So instead of a new entry, I am going to repost something I wrote on Christmas of the very first year I started this journal, because sometimes it is nice to remember.

Ah, Christmas. The gathering of the families. The opening of presents next to the twinkling lights of the tree. The traditional food – homemade sticky rolls for breakfast, cookies and snacks throughout the day, the candlelit dinner. There’s something very comforting about going home for the holidays and knowing that things will be the same.

Except things aren’t the same. They never really are, no matter how much you want them to be. You don’t wake up at your parents’ place anymore and gather, giggling, with your sisters at the foot of the stairs while your mom fusses with the camera. You wake up at home when the cats stomp on you and insist that you get up and play with them, and then drive over to your parents’ house at a more acceptable hour, when the sun has already risen. You do the traditional opening of the stocking presents before breakfast, but somehow it isn’t quite the same when two of your sisters are missing. You eat the sticky rolls – which are just as good as they always are – but unlike when you were a kid and didn’t care about things like calories and fat, you actually stop when you’re full instead of continuing to suck them down because they are so darn good, and you drink juice and take a vitamin that isn’t shaped like a cartoon character, but comes instead from a bottle that says, somewhere on the label, ‘mature’.

You perch on the couch instead of the floor when opening your presents because your knees like it better that way, and instead of the coolest new toy, you get things like ladders and industrial measuring tapes and books on home repair, and you’re pretty darn excited about it because that’s really what you wanted anyway.

In years past, the whole family has gathered, but now that the sisters are married with children, and one lives in another state anyway, you don’t have that ‘whole family’ thing going anymore, and when the older sister shows up with her husband and son in tow, it’s more like they’re visiting then that they belong here in the first place.

You were once the one who was ripping open presents with child-like wonder, but now you watch your nephew do it, as he carefully tears the paper off and gets excited about whatever is inside each one (“Wow! A box!”). You all lose bets on which toy he will love the most because even though the wagon that your father painstakingly built for him in the garage garners a lot of childish glee, what really keeps him entertained for the rest of the day is the umbrella made by Crayola, with wide stripes of color. And he keeps coming up to you showing you his umbrella. “Jeffer! Grabrella! See grabrella!” and you are ridiculously pleased about how he keeps asking you and no one else to put the cover on, and then remove the cover, and all the while he watches soberly before running off with his favorite gift.

You all sit around the table for ‘lunch’ and eat crackers and dip and cheese, but you know you’re getting older because you worry about the fact that there’s really no vegetables for the meal and you try to limit the number of cookies you cram into your face, even though Christmas has always been the one day that mom and dad didn’t watch what you ate and let you stuff yourself silly.

And then when your older sister leaves and the house is suddenly quiet, you look at your mom who has been quietly miserable all day with a nasty cold and you tell her that if she is wanting to cook some huge dinner just because she thinks that you’ll be disappointed, that you won’t be, and you’d rather just do leftovers or something. So instead of the traditional holiday meatloaf and mashed potatoes and baby peas served on the fine china, with grape Kool-Aid served in the ugly green pitcher, you all pile into the car and drive around all of Solano county until you find the one place that is actually open on Christmas and you join hordes of other hungry travelers over burgers and fries and shakes. So maybe it’s not festive and it’s not by candlelight and instead of the dulcet tones of a brass quintet playing holiday tunes on the CD player in the other room, you hear the din of a short order cook and the snarling tones of the woman behind the counter who is making it painfully clear that she would rather be anywhere but here tonight. You joke about how your last Christmas dinner at ‘home’ wasn’t the traditional one and how it will scar you forever and you’re sure to need counseling (all said tongue in cheek when your mother dithers out loud about how this is just not what she had in mind) until your mom finally realizes that it’s okay, you really don’t mind at all, and that what matters more than the presentation and the food itself is that you’re laughing and eating together and having fun, and that’s what’s most important anyway.

Happy Holidailies

That cold that I have been doing my best to postpone finally caught up with me. I left work early yesterday because I could feel it kicking in, and when I woke up this morning I could barely drag myself out of bed. The rest of the day has been spent pretty much repeating the same scenario over and over. I would nap for a few hours and then drag myself out of bed to check my email, or eat lunch, and the ordeal would be so incredibly exhausting I would have to go right back to bed and sleep for a few more hours to recover.

When I emailed my coworkers to let them know I wasn’t coming in, one of them responded with a joking “are you sure you just haven’t finished your Christmas shopping?” Ha – I wish that was all this was. Unfortunately, however, I suspect that if I’d tried to do anything as strenuous as, say, driving a car today, I likely would have made it to the store and passed out in the parking lot. This is just one of the reasons I am glad that we do most of our Christmas shopping online.

Tonight was the annual caroling party, and Richard noted at one point today that this should have come as no surprise, having both of us home on this day, sick and exhausted and sneezing. Tradition has it that one of us is always sick, thus rendering us unable to go join in the fun. This has been going on for years, so why stop now?

At 11:30 this evening, I woke up from yet another nap and felt as if something had finally changed. It is the first time all day that getting up does not feel as if it takes the same amount of energy as it might to run a marathon. I’m finding it a little amusing, in a desperate sort of way, that it took until I really *should* be sleeping for me to finally find the energy to remain awake and alert.

I suspect that this rare burst of energy will not last very long, but I am going to take advantage of it while it’s here. There’s a sink full of dirty dishes to deal with, and bills to pay, and one or two more Christmas cards to sign and address (assuming we can track down those addresses), and oh, some last minute Christmas knitting to finish, assuming I can get that far. There may be a few people who get unfinished presents or IOU’s for the things I was hoping to make, considering that I have now lost two evenings to being sick (last night and all day today), but I think they’ll understand. And I am keeping all fingers and toes crossed that being sick this early in the week means that by the time the weekend rolls around I will be completely better.

Happy Holidailies

Dear Santa,

I know for the past few years I have asked you for a real live baby dragon. Okay, last year I agreed to forgo the baby dragon if you would just bring me a Finisher (which you did not, by the way). But this year I am going to pass on the baby dragon, and the self-cleaning house, and the dark chocolate that makes you lose weight and, also world ambivalence. Because this year, all I really want is for you to bring her back.

I know I’m asking for the impossible. But there has been a big huge hole in this house since she left us and sometimes, when I am alone in the house and I am curled up in a chair and I let myself think about it, sometimes I still cry.

All the other cats are friendly and affectionate and we love them all dearly and I would not want to have lost one of them in place of her. But when she left, she took a big piece of my soul with her. Someone told me once that they believed that if we are very lucky, we will have a pet this is truly a part of us; a pet who is our external self in furry form. And since she has been gone I have realized that that’s who she was. She embodied all the attitude and bitchiness and annoyance that builds up inside me all the time, except that she could let it out without saying or doing something she would regret later, tearing around the house, muttering under her breath, lying in wait to smack a person or a cat before running off to do it all over again.

I miss her. Oh, how much I miss her. This house is not the same. And the hole she left behind doesn’t seem to want to go away.

So please, Santa. That’s really all I want. Just please find a way to cheat death, just this once, and bring my little girl home.

Happy Holidailies

I woke up last night to the sound of rain pounding on the roof, and sure enough, this morning there was quite a lake in the backyard. It’s been raining on and off ever since, although not nearly as hard. Turns out the rain has been working its way down south and west, since Richard’s parents unfortunately had to drive through it on their way up to hear our cantata. I’m glad, at least, that they came for the morning one, because I would not have wished the trip home in such dismal weather, especially in the dark, on them. They may not have gotten to hear the extended version of the cantata, which we only did for the evening, but the morning version (which was during the church service and thus has the bonus factor of not requiring any ticket purchase) went really well, so they didn’t miss much.

This morning also marked the last day of the church food drive. It was the last morning to collect food, and I am so very, very glad that we do not have to make more scarves for the final pile of donations because my team donated so much I think I would have had to make possibly up to ten more scarves and I think that would break me. I am so amazingly sick of making scarves.

My knitting mom and I passed out the 27 scarves we had so far, which ‘equalled’ the 2700 pounds of food donated, and got 27 people to come up to the front as a visible indication of just how much the church had accomplished. Even though I would probably cry from having to make the scarves to match it, it would have been even more fun to bring up a crowd of 40 people, since final totals stand at just a bit over 4000 pounds. But considering the aforementioned scarf-knitting-overload issue, I can live with this teeny little disappointment.

We all went out to lunch (Richard’s parents and sister, my parents, and Richard and I) and smashed ourselves into a booth that wasn’t exactly large enough to contain us, because the restaurant was crowded. Luckily we all get along well enough that being smashed into a restaurant booth only means we have something else to joke about, so it was fun. Then Richard wandered off to do some Christmas shopping and I headed off to a bakery in Vacaville for some much needed knitting time with one of my knitting groups. The group keeps growing and we are definitely not quiet and sedate, but no one ever seems to mind and in fact this time there were some surprise free pastries and also a reporter from a local paper who showed up and amused us all by rather clearly demonstrating that he had absolutely no clue about anything to do with knitting at all. But he was very nice and friendly and took some pictures, and showed appropriate enthusiasm and amazement about all the very cool things we are all knitting.

It is a very good thing we did manage to get to Costco yesterday after all, because one of the things we picked up was a huge pack of Airborne, and at one point this afternoon, shortly before the evening concert, I felt as if I was some sort of pusher, passing out huge chalky orange tablets to everyone who sidled up to me and said “I hear you have some Airborne”. All of us in the choir have been more than a little paranoid about getting sick.

This evening’s performance went well too. There were glitches – amusingly, not the same as this morning’s – but those are always to be expected and the audience seemed to enjoy the whole thing regardless. And now we are done with choir, at least for the year, and I am done with scarves (at least for the year). And as lovely as the cantata was, and as much fun as it was to sing it, and as much stash yarn as I have managed to plow through making all those darn scarves, I cannot even begin to describe how very glad I am to be done with both.

Happy Holidailies

We had all these grand plans of how to get things done this morning; plans which mainly involved getting ourselves out the door and off to Costco to pick up stuff for the food drive at church and at my office, and also get breakfast, before zipping back to the church for the two hour practice with the instrumentalists. However, when we got to Starbucks we managed to get in line behind a woman who ordered a few million drinks, and then also proceeded, I am pretty sure, to take drinks that were not hers (this included my drink, naturally) when she was collecting her huge order. We also ran into a few other choir members, who noted that Costco would not even be open that early, even if we could manage to get there and back, and so instead of zipping off to do a quick power shopping trip, we instead sat in Starbucks and ate our breakfast in a leisurely manner, and chatted with our friends.

The rehearsal with instrumentalists (5 string players) went surprisingly well. These rehearsals are usually optional for the choir, but most of us have caught on that if we would like to have any hope of figuring out how to get our notes from those accompanying us before we actually perform, it’s best to give up a Saturday morning, show up for rehearsal, and use it as one extra day to see if we can finally nail the pieces down.

It was two hours, but it did not feel as if we’d been there very long at all before suddenly we were done and it was time to eat lunch and rehearse a few extra little bits just because we were there, and finally, head out. Richard and I swung through Costco on the way out of town because I knew this was the only chance we were going to get all weekend, and then we were finally on the road down to his parents’ house for the yearly trimming of the tree.

It was a nice, cheerful afternoon. We managed, somehow, to get every single ornament on the tree (and they have a *lot* of ornaments). I took advantage of any non-trimming time I had (including the drive there and back) to work on knitting, because tomorrow is the last day of the food fight at church where I have to have scarves to measure the progress of my team, and I am still woefully behind. Richard’s mom fed us dinner and also experimental pie, and my sister-in-law showed off her latest knitting accomplishments, which include a purple penguin, a snowman which inexplicably has buttocks, and a pre-felted messenger bag.

We are home now and I am determined to finish off this final scarf and then toss everything into the washing machine because I suspect that the people to whom these scarves will be donated might appreciate them more if they were a wee bit more cat hair free.

Happy Holiadilies