a new year, a new you

You guessed. The ubiquitous, but let's hope this one keeps you entertained. I usually don't do resolutions. I'm one to view the reality of the situation: that instead of a new year's resolution it's a new year's let down. I never keep to the list of ways to better myself and so I don't keep those lists, but this year feels different. I like the 8 at the end. It's all curvy and soft and even. I like even numbers. They remind me of symmetry and safety where no one gets left out. I like including everyone. And so, for 2008 I will make a wishlist and there will be no pressure, no self-induced panic over completion, no self-hatred for lack of completion and by no means will there be any "what if."

That being said in 2008 I wish to:
- publish
- read 30 books
- write every week
- buy something big
- love someone
- get small
- work for Obama
- fly somewhere fancy
- just be

And I also hope that you will embrace the 8 at the end of this year and be soft and suptle too and in your softness just be.

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.

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.

in which i'm thankful

My favorite time of year when the trees look like paintings and the air (should) feels like a cool dip in fresh water. This year has been one for the books and one of my quietest ones. I can't say why I've been so quiet, why the yearn to write out loud stilled inside me, but I wouldn't take back what's happened in the real world. I found that happiness and contentment is a place I'd trade for writing any day. Maybe there is something to artists and pain or maybe there are just moments that I want to keep all to myself, wrapped up for me to remember or forget. I want to return to writing, to make it a daily habit and it might be a goal I set up shortly. I'd like to see what writing looks like with my newly wired mind. And I'd like to know what it wants me to share or hold back. We'll see about that.

Right now I'm thankful for the time I get to spend with my family this week, and I'm a little sad for all the family that won't be around this year. There are babies and babies and babies to come and my dream, my absolute wish is for a Thanksgiving where all the people I love come together and spend the night under one roof. That roof would have to be big, really big cause I got a lot of love up this heart and I'm so giving thanks for all ya'll.

things being what they are

I've been standing on a cliff dreading the descent below me. I don't want to jump but I know from somewhere deep that the fall is inevitable. In the space between the knowing and warding off of these fellings I do my rituals which amount to breathe blowing in a strong wind. I can't stop the force that's brought me here. I can't unstep my path and yet I want nothing to do with this cliff. I don't want to jump. Not even the lure of a free fall is exciting. I want solid ground again where everything is monotany and calm, where a sneeze does not equal the push that sends you headlong into the void. And yet I know this place well, have stood here many times before- sometimes even willing the wobble on the edge, coaxing the feelings of balance to last a little longer. But this time, this day, I don't want the cold that is barreling down my throat no matter what days off it promises. I want health and sunshine and to enjoy the beginning of fall that is coming, just glinting through the trees.

sooner or later

Lazy would be an understatment. Before any time off I make lists upon lists in my head about morning walks, afternoon teas, museum visits, matinee movies and reading under a tree in a beautiful public park. When the time off truly comes I wake up late, decide that Regis and Kelly are way more important than a walk or bike ride and then I hit the downward spiral of channel surfing all day. It's bad, it's really bad. There have been summers where I refused to turn on the TV except, of course, to watch Jessica Simpson's married life "reality" show.

But, today is different (ha!). I'm off to Starbucks to get some true energy and then to a knit shop. You see I must relish a little bit today because tomorrow starts a part time babysitting job that will heavily interupt my reality TV watching life (at this point it's all repeats). I'll soon be hiking and sitting poolside with two young kids. Oh the tan needs to not fade away. Not fade away.

be

It's a hazy morning in Nantucket. The clouds have come to say good morning, but are making their stay a bit unwelcomed. I think hazy days are lazy days and I'm a bit happy for the reprieve. I did a 15 mile bike ride yesterday on a whim and my bum is a bit sore. I'd go again today, but I know that just 3 miles into it I would be cursing the bike seat and wishing against all creation that I was at home, horizontal and reading. I love Nantucket. There is no agenda here- just relax, play some tennis, go for a walk, ride your bike, eat a cookie, sit at the beach, go shopping, go kayaking, go fishing or just be. I plan to kayak. I never have before, but it is on my short list of things to do this summer and what better place than the sound in Nantucket, paddling around all the moored sailboats? Today though, after an impossibly delicous croisant from the Sconset Market, I am lazing it- taking the hint from the weather and just being- like the cloud that's hanging around outside and making the cool air just a bit too dense, so will I hang and maybe nap or read or play games or just be. I love it here. And yes, I wish you were here too, that would make it even better.

it feels like the first time

Spring! Every. Single. Year. I proclaim it to be wonderful. It's like my memory lapses and I feel like I have never seen green budding on the trees, have never smiled at the hint of honeysuckle in the air, have never opened my windows, have never seen the sun. And yet it's what I think about when I look outside, am outside. I can't believe that I get to witness this beauty, that green can feel like life. And I don't even love Spring. I like it, but Fall and Winter have my heart. Spring is a mistress, my flirtatious interlude to the horridness of Summer. If Winter has my heart, Summer has my...

I've been so enthralled with Spring that I haven't yet cracked the air conditioning this season. In fact, I don't plan to until mid May. The weatherman says that cool will hang on in the evenings until at least the 10th, so with small fan whirring and windows open- let the savings begin.

But it isn't the first time that the miser in me has taken over the thermostat in my house. This Winter I might have turned on the heat 3 times. Might have. I have some things going for me in this instance. I live in the middle of my building- in the middle from top to bottom, left to right. I like to imagine that this helps the insulation factor. Also I like cold. I like candles. So, I mixed the two and often settled in with soup and tea to ride out the perpetual draft coming from the windows, and they're replacement too. The guise was the money issue. I could survive with socks and another shirt, but my bank account could not survive the blow of heat in Winter, one thing had to give so I chose the heat. I got flack for this, even started a family fight. Visitors complained, but I had forewarned them to deal and so I felt not guilty. I soldiered on, sometimes with a knitted hat on my head.

My motivation? A house. I want to commit. I'm ready for the plunge, the long ride into night, the settling of old wood, the settling of my soul. Plus I'd really like to be able to paint the walls.

If my desire to nest wasn't strong enough when I was 18 then I don't know what it's doing now. Everyone (with the exception of 2 people) has told me that buying a house is difficult and that you should search and search and search, but something tells me that my gut is my Google and I trust what it gives me in the number one position. I start hardcore looking this month. I plan to put a bid on a house in June. I hope to move in in August.

I'm poor now with no heat or air conditioning so that I can afford to buy a house. When I actually own one, what will be my excuse then?

an easter miracle

Yesterday I woke up to snow- everywhere. It had beautifully fallen and stayed on almost every surface. And it was cold outside. I called it an Easter miracle, snow in Virginia in April not having happened for 24 years. I was six when the last snow came and I remember it. I still wish for a snow in April, a freak little thing when spring lets you know it’s not completely let go of it’s winter coat strings.

The snow yesterday was nice, if short lived, and coated roofs and trees. The trees were the strangest, freshly sprouted with bud and yellow pollen- a white coating of snow was out of place. I played with my nieces and nephews, throwing snow balls and making snow angels. It was perfect snowball snow, the kind that packs so easily and firmly and can hurt when it hits.

By 4 o’clock when I finally got to my errands started it was gone, like it had never been there. I’ve been hoping for snow since November. Hoping would not be the correct word- more like longing, gritting my teeth and praying for it to happen. It took ‘til Easter for my wish to come true. EASTER. And then it was gone. Maybe it wasn’t a miracle, maybe it was tease, an in-your-face from nature to me. Whatever it was, it was beautiful and magical and perfectly peaceful, like every snow should be, like every snow is.

on the weather

"It's January 14th and 70 degrees outside," a bewildered man said to his son this morning in the Starbucks parking lot. His son responded with some kind of quesiton about a movie, too young to care about the flip of the seasons, the unrealistic bend toward Spring in Winter, long before Winter even got here.

I'm not a fan of the flipping seasons. I want Winter with all it's rudeness and smugness. I want to complain about my feet being cold and hide under scarves and sweaters and actually use the endless supply of jackets I own. I want to wear my heavy jeans with a longsleeve shirt and not worry about sweating late in the day.

I need the huddled up, hermit like behavior inducing weather of Winter. I need snow, or at least the hope of it. I am not happy with Winter shirking it's duties. I get up and go to work everyday. All I'm asking if for Winter to do it's job. It's really not such a difficult task.

i’m wishing for snow

It’s still technically fall, but when coats and gloves are necessary we automatically put “winter” in our everyday vernacular. And I love winter. Love it the most even though when fall comes I think it is my favorite. It isn’t. Not truly at least. Winter is the one that I long for. It’s my second skin, my soul mate.

The darkness feels strange at first then it becomes so usual and almost comforting, makes snuggling into bed early an OK venture. And candles. Oh candles in the cold. Sometimes I burn candles instead of turning on the heat. It works. Kinda.

I could live on a land that only had winters, where down was stuffed inside everything, where tea, hot chocolate, soup, and grilled cheese ruled the kitchen. I could wake up to snow each morning and go to sleep with a fire each night.

On come winter, come to my house.