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Sunday, November 29, 2009

Haunted By the Holiday Spirit

It's the end of the Thanksgiving weekend. The leftovers are stowed in the fridge, the Christmas tree is up and decorated and safely out of reach of wagging dog tails, the house is relatively clean, and I'm about as tired as a blonde joke. Seriously, it's going to be an early bedtime tonight.

Before I turn in, though, I just wanted to take a minute to give thanks here, publicly, for some of the many things for which I'm grateful. So here goes, in no particular order:

  • Friends, family, and pets
  • The best job in the universe
  • The best readers in the universe
  • My favorite sports team finally won a game after 3 losses (Let's go Red Wings!!!)
  • My mother's stuffing recipe could makes angels weep in jealousy, and I get credit every year for recreating it at thanksgiving dinner
  • We found the perfect tree in about three and a half minutes at the tree lot, and the people there installed it on the stand for us
  • I've finalized my travel arrangements to head back East to visit my family over the holidays
  • Ghirardelli dark chocolate peppermint bark
  • Champagne, and those darling monks who invented it
  • Cappuccino, and etc. (see above)
  • The sky is scheduled to stay clear and sunny for at least another three or four days
  • My dog loves me, even though he thinks I'm the most boring human on the face of the earth
  • My horse is no longer trying to kill me on a regular basis
See? That's a good bit to be thankful for, and that's just the list that came up off the top of my head. Now, if I can just keep that all in mind as I gear up to finish a book and get all of my Christmas shopping done, maybe I'll be able to stay sane into 2010!

Fingers crossed.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

it's never too early for family drama

I’m typing this at four o’clock in the morning, and I am awake and mobile at this insane hour to catch an early flight to Houston. It’s my first trip back there since my move west a year and a half ago. I’m going to have dinner with some friends, catch up with an old colleague over lunch, and visit the shops I miss most. I’m also going to be attending not one but two baby showers, celebrating my sister’s birthday (yesterday), celebrating MY birthday (Monday), and doing some mother/daughter/sister bonding.

It’s a lot to cram into five days.

But it’ll be fine. I’ve gotten to a point with my family where I am able to just be who I am, let them be who they are, and not get my knickers in a twist (too much) about any of it. It didn’t used to be that way; spending time with my family, with my mother especially, has been historically difficult. Don’t get me wrong – I love my mother. But we have, in the grand tradition of mothers and daughters the world over, butted heads. A lot.

Mostly because we share a lot of personality traits. We’re both stubborn, we’re both in possession of explosive tempers, and we’re both convinced that we’re right and the rest of the world is full of shit. The trouble is, the way we view the world and our priorities have always been vastly different. The result has been a mother/daughter relationship that has been at times rocky, acrimonious, and during the summer of 1994 (what my mother calls the Summer from Hell), downright hostile.

But something changed in the last few years. Maybe it was because I’ve grown more comfortable and secure in who I am as a person, so I’m less inclined to take offense when someone questions me. Maybe it’s because I finally realized that no matter how misguided she seems to be to me, her words and actions come from love, and a genuine desire to see me happy (just because she has no idea what makes me happy doesn’t negate the good intentions). Maybe it’s because she went through a bout of colon cancer last year, and I realized that I only have one mother. And no matter how crazy I think she is, or how out of touch or annoying I find the things she does, she’s still my mother and I want her around for a long time.

Whatever it was, spending time with Mom is a lot easier these days. Comments or questions that used to piss me off now mostly amuse me. If I do get irritated or frustrated, I’ve learned to step back for a second, remind myself that her opinions or needs don’t have to have an effect on my choices, and it’s fine. Plus my sister is there, and we can meet in the kitchen for a midnight beer (water for her) and kvetch about our crazy mom.

I’m looking forward to it.

Monday, November 9, 2009

To Shop or Not to Shop

Seeing as how I have a book to copy edit this week, I figured that this must be the perfect time for a blog post!

There's quite a lot going on at the moment, really. Aside from the obvious (the book I have to copy edit and the book I have to write), it's hockey season once again (Yay!), my horse and I have entered therapy together (it's a long story), and the holiday season is creeping inexorably closer.

I love the holiday season. I love spending time with my family (even if I have to fly to Tennessee to do it), I love holiday decorations, the smell of pine trees, the sparkle of tinsel. I love holiday baking (though I'm not, interestingly enough, all that eager to eat sweet things...I just like to make them), the scent of roasting turkeys, the tastes of hot cider and warm cocoa. But most of all, I love holiday shopping.

Not the kind of shopping that involves driving to a mall and elbowing my way through teeming crowds of people who manage to take all the joy out of the season with their frantic and single-minded focus on getting the best deals for every item of their lists. That kind of shopping gives me hives and makes me consider if it would really be so bad to live the rest of my life as a hermetic shut-in. I love online shopping. My mouse is my friend. And I love catalog shopping, something that the retailers of this world have long since figured out and decided to exploit to the nth degree. Every day now, the mail contains at least 2 or 3 (sometimes 5 or 6) glossy-paged pamphlets from those persistent purveyors of taunting temptation (hee hee...I love excessive alliteration sometimes).

The catalogs work on me with a sort of hypnotic power. One look, and I get sucked in for hours, flipping slowly past artfully posed photographs of things no one ever actually needs but that I find myself suddenly coveting in a way that I'm certain the Old Testament would have included on those stone tablets if there had been just a bit more forward thinking. And somehow, I always end up finding 2 things that I must have for every 1 item that might make a suitable gift for someone on my list. I'm telling you, I'm weak.

Today, I'm up against a clothing company, the National Geographic store, and Bas Blu--the most fabulous bookseller on the face of the earth.

I'm such a goner.

Worse yet, so is my credit card!

Monday, November 2, 2009

election day

Tomorrow is election day, and I find myself annoyed.

Normally, I love election day. Call me a sentimental, patriotic fool, but I enjoy participating in the democratic process. Going into the booth, punching the little button…I love it. I believe it’s not only my right as an American citizen, but my responsibility, and I never miss an election day.

But now that I live in Washington state…well, I’m just not as enthusiastic about it. Oh, I still care about participating, but the process? Kind of sucks. You see, Washington does everything by mail in ballot, which means about three weeks before election day I get my ballot in the mail. I fill it out using a blue or black pen, seal it in two envelopes, sign one of the envelopes so they can verify my signature. Then I have the choice of mailing it in, dropping it off at the 24/7 drop box located near the election office downtown, or dropping it off on election day at one of several drop locations.

I hate it.

I understand that this method is preferable to a lot of people. Most of the folks I work with find it less disruptive to be able to mail it in or drop it off at their convenience. And apparently long lines at the polls were a problem around here. And of course it saves the county money (or city, or state, or whoever foots the bills for such things), because they have to employ fewer election workers to run and monitor the voting. So I get it. I just hate it.

I want to get in my car, drive to the polls, and do my duty. Putting it in the mail feels…well, not special at all. It feels like paying my electric bill, and that doesn’t make me feel all patriotic and righteous. I much preferred the way they ran things in Texas, with early voting available in most precincts, and an absentee ballot was always an option if you couldn’t – or didn’t want to - go stand in line.

Election day should be special, dammit. Being able to participate in our government, in the in the democratic process, should never be taken for granted or just assumed. So tomorrow, on election day, I will be taking my ballot to the elementary school near my office and handing in my ballot. It’s the closest I can come to punching the button in the booth.