been merry and reading

I was so lucky to haphazardly be granted the chance to read an advanced reader copy of Janice Erlbaum's Have You Found Her. My little review can be found in my "what I'm reading on the tube" as well as on LibaryThing.com. You should read it too. It was a good one.

And Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I'm sure I'll be back soon.

radio ga ga

Since the day after Thanksgiving I've been listening to Christmas music. I do it every year. And I love it. I don't get the Christmas blues that people talk about- how lonely the holidays are without someone by your side. I'm not a lonely person, I'm just a loner. Except now the time is growing closer and closer until the object of my affection is within arms length and my thoughts a vering from Christmas to attack mode.

This will be the fifth year that I have stood near him when a new year started and this will be the fifth year that I leave the next morning with longing and obsession in my heart. The daytime pre-obsession is a bit quieter this year, but my dreams are peppered with him, even with his friends. And the next day I wake up and he stays with me a little while the way good dreams do, like the object is really there, like there was never a dream at all. And then I have coffee.

Christmas songs on the radio are my background noise this season and I can't help but notice all the wishes to be near someone, cuddled up by a fire, basking in the glow of lights. I have to say that for all of that sentiment that I don't miss I do wonder what Christmas would be like with him and whether he'd be game for a tacky lights tour. While I'm not putting pressure on myself (because I know I'll whimp out) this may be the year that the radio pining starts making a little more sense.

refreshing this itch

I've just been busy. It's the worst excuse. It satisfies no one. But, it's true. When you get busy, your priorities change. Sometimes that's good and sometimes not. This blog is a priority that I shouldn't let slip and yet I have. And reading, it's gone by the wayside too. And now there is time to ponder, time for naps and TV and blogging.

I went through all the links yesterday on the side of this blog and it was like going through old photos, remembering times and sentiments that used to be a part of your everyday. Like the daily photo blogs of London and New York. I forgot that I've missed them. They felt like old shoes, all comfortable with a tinge of homesickness. So, blog world, I hope I'm coming back to you now. I hope this is more than a day or two fleeting feeling. I want to spend some time with you again and I hope you'll do the same.

the year of the lean

The last thing I want to do these days is blog.  It's lost its luster.  The tingly, warm feelings I used to have about this little space in space have fluttered down to a dull hum.  And part of me wishes that weren't the case.  For instance, two Sunday night's ago I wanted to blog the following, but had absolutely no energy or desire.  Something about a lunchbreak today though makes blogging sound real good.
 
I put up my Christmas tree three weekends ago with my nieces.  It's become a tradition that they come over and put all the ornaments on after I've nestled it in it's stand and strung it with white lights (only white lights, only).  But this year was a little different.  They had to stand outside in the spitting rain while I very ungracefully took the tree out of the back of my SUV.  I had opened the the window and thrown the tree in with the fat part inside the car.  Kroger will sell you a tree for real cheap, but they won't give you string or even help you haul it to your car and since I'm a single girl who likes to make things difficult and do it my ownself, I was forced to get up close and personal with a very wet and sappy frazier fir tree.  The tree top stuck out of the window, but I couldn't pull it out that way so then I had to open the gate and finagle the tree and well, it wasn't pretty.
 
I picked my tree for it's crooked top branch that reaches so haphazardly to the sky.  I feel like a Christmas tree should reflect it's owner and so I always look for the ones that are a little off.  But, my poor nieces in the rain watched helplessly as I dragged the tree up two flights of stairs.  One of them was carrying a hacksaw wrapped very carefully inside a towel.  I'm telling you, this was a stressful little venture.
 
Once the tree was inside my warm and not raining apartment I had to do some surgery on it.  I took the hacksaw that the 6 year-old carried in and started sawing forcefully.  After about 2 minutes the 5 year-old announced that she was bored.  I was sweating and wet from rain and sticky with sap.  I cared not about her boredom.  
 
When the time came to put the tree in the stand, I had a feeling that I had not taken off enough branches, but my arms were aching and the tree needed a resting place.  I got all the screws tightened as much as I could and prayed that my nieces would not be killed by a falling tree this year at my house.  When the light stringing began, the nieces got bored again.  And I was still sweating and wet and sappy.  AND while putting the lights on, the tree decided to fall two times and I had to enlist the 6 year-old to hold the tree, a 6 year-old to hold the tree (wanted to make sure you got that).  
 
With lights finally on and a civil, sisterly fued avoided- we began the ornament hanging.  The youngest one bugged out and watched Hannah Montana or something like that.  The six-year old, my little trooper stayed with me throughout, carefully picking out ornaments and placing them as high as she could.  After one more tree fall that almost crushed the six-year, I decided to give up and just lean the tree against a wall.  Hey, it beats battling with it and worrying that in the middle of the night all my ornaments will be broken. 
 
So this, people, is my Christmas tree.  A wall is supporting more than the ceiling this Christmas.  And I love every crooked little leaning branch of it.