Maybe next year...

I cannot wait for Christmas to be over. You're looking at the date of posting, perhaps, and thinking, but Mere, it was over when you wrote this. But it wasn't. We still have to do dinner tonight with Dad and girlfriend, and I treat gift-giving as a buy-as-you-must process, so I made the purchases a few hours ago and finished wrapping them a few minutes ago.

And even when that's over, the living room will still be strewn with ribbon and wrapping paper and receipts, even though I didn't even really buy that much, and also I'll still have to write thank-you notes. For things I didn't really need and cost people money they probably could have used for their electric bills and, I don't know, groceries.

What I don't understand is that in spite of the fact that this is roughly the way I experience Christmas every year, I still find myself looking forward to it, from somewhere in the first week of December until somewhere in the morning on the 25th. I'm wondering if maybe there's a way I could take that part, the looking forward, out. Clichéd though it will indeed sound, it's the expectation that gets me every time. If not for that misleading swell of excitement, brought on by, I suspect, the pine boughs and white lights, I imagine I might sail through this week with some degree of peace, tranquility, and even gratitude for just the fact of the days themselves and the fine people who continue inexplicably to be willing to populate my life. But that would probably require that I figure out how to move through the rest of the days that way, and heaven knows I haven't got that down yet, so perhaps I'm waxing ridiculous here. In any case, I just thought I'd take this opportunity to mention that I'm looking forward to when it's next week.

How it Went with the Mouse, Part One

So last Christmas (yes, the one that was 362 days ago), my cousin got us a gift certificate to this unbelievable cheese shop. All year long we kept talking about how we really should spend it before it expired, and finally, about two weeks ago, we did. We spent the better part of a Saturday letting the shop staff shower us with samples and detailed descriptions of flavor. And we even managed to actually spend the thing. And then some. So we came home with two fancy cheeses, a quarter pound of salami, some fancy chocolates, and a stout called Lump of Coal for my brother. He doesn't really acknowledge Christmas, and rather enjoys a good stout, so this seemed appropriate. We ate the cheeses in tiny amounts, wondering how we'd ever go back to standard grocery-issue cheddar.

And then, the other day, I was rooting around under the sink looking for my neglected SIGG water bottle. When I extracted it from the mass of recyclables I was surprised to find it rattling. I held it over the counter and gave it a little shake, which produced two dried out pieces of toast crust and, yes, a couple of small cheese rind chunks.

They say that when there's one mouse around, there are more, but I decided not to traffic in this sort of defeatist thinking. We had just the one, and he'd likely go find another cupboard to haunt once I got rid of the trash bag I'd made the mistake of stowing REALLY GOOD CHEESE in. Then a few days later I opened the silverware drawer and found several dozen telltale... well, let's just call them turds. That, of course, was the day before our solstice party. You know, the one that happens only once a year? The one that's the only party I can be cajoled into having? Great timing, mouse. As though hostessing wasn't undesirable enough as it is.

To Be Continued...

Cheer

The current view from our living room window - we got the lights up just in time for the snow. You'll also notice in the lower right corner of the frame, however, that while I tested them RIGHT before we wound them in and out of each and every (OK, every other) railing rung, half the bulbs decided to stay quiet.

I will say this: presumably out of respect for my mildly compulsive self, they chose a junction (stairs to deck) at which to make the transition from off to on. Or they suspected that if they'd been lit, say, halfway up the stairs, I'd have likely ripped the lot of them out and called the whole thing off.

I have to say, I do like how they glow from inside their snowcases.

50,286

So. Yesterday afternoon at 4:38, I completed the project called "write a 50,000 word novel(la) in November." See www.nanowrimo.org. I have a few things to say about this.

I set out to accomplish this odd feat because Meg sent me the link and I got really excited when I read about it and it had been forever since I got really excited about anything. If you write every day for 30 days, it takes 1667 per day to make it to 50,000. That's not that much. So because I was willing to have it be Just a Draft, and therefore not my finest work, by the end of the month, it seemed at the outset like a manageable project. Except, of course, for the fact that like most everyone I know, life seems crammed beyond capacity with Things I'm Supposed to be Doing that I'm Already Not Doing. Please don't ask me how I decided which things to capitalize. Some of the things in that category:

calling people back
drumming up more business
dishes

But I decided to try it anyway, at the risk of further alienating people I love who are still waiting to hear from me and staying mostly broke for at least a bit longer and eating toast off the cutting board. I needed to remind myself that I could accomplish things I wasn't sure I could.

And it was going really well, for the first 15 days of the month. I had to double up the day after Gram's funeral, and then the next weekend after a visit to Mom, but mostly I stayed with 1667 per day. Until we left for Thanksgiving. When we returned from the 9 day trip, I was virtually 8 days behind. I never stopped completely, but I was focused on being a good extra family member, and that really took up most of me.

We got home on Monday, November 26th, and the outlook was bleak. I figured out that it was going to take 4300 words a day to make it to 50,000. Visions of extensions danced in my head. No one would give me a hard time for needing the weekend. After all, there was a travel disruption of major proportions! For most of the week, as I plugged away alongside getting caught up on the rest of life, I knew that I would get close, but not there. When I went to bed on Thursday night, I was at 42712. With much else to do on Friday.

But I knew there was something important about finishing on time. I've been finding lots of excuses for myself, for many months. This weekend marks 6 months I haven't been dancing, thanks to whatever irksome thing is going on with my spine, and it's been a discouraging stretch. So I got up on Friday morning, wrote the next 1800 words, went to work, wrote another 900 between kiddos, and then when the last one had left sat down and wrote the last however many thousand. It took a very long time. I was hungry, and tired, and stiff and sore and it got dark too early and I wanted to go home and watch TV instead. Kind of like how it seems doing everything lately. All the more reason to get the thing done. I needed to know I could do it anyway.

So I did. 50,286 words. With a beginning and an end, which Meg pointed out means there's also probably a middle. The best part was what it said in the letter from the website congratulating me on my "win." (You just have to finish to win.) I paraphrase: If you can write a not-terrible novel in a month, what else can you do [that you want to do] that you're not doing?

Indeed. So. Thanks to anyone who's still my friend, or said "that's cool" rather than something sarcastic or negative when I told them what I was doing, or otherwise loves me or cheered me on. And please think about what you're not doing that you want to do and just might be able to, no matter what you think. If you need me to cheer you on, let me know.