We Don't Need No Steenkin Humbuggery!

On this day, December first, for the past decade, I have woken to a depression the sort of which could drive a less lighthearted person than myself to self-harm. This is no joke. We've been so broke that one year we could only buy each other (meaning the entire family) one thing from the Dollar Tree. On that year our Christmas meal was provided by gift cards that Nettl had received from co-workers. It was dismal, and I seriously wanted to die. Last year, we had no money for Christmas until the mail arrived at 3:30 on Christmas Eve, and that was only $300. Talk about a mad scramble. It's no wonder my health has always taken a nose dive every December. With Hashimoto's  disease being strongly triggered by adrenalin, good or bad, this stuff nearly kills me.

But this year is different. We seem to be slowly reaching the end of a long, terrifying chapter in our life as a family. I woke up this morning with food in the pantry, the rent and utilities paid, and a slowly increasing income. Oh, it's not huge, but we can go get a Christmas tree tomorrow afternoon (we borrowed an artificial tree from Ville and Beau last year, which was a real lifesaver. If not for them, we wouldn't have even had a tree), and presents will begin to appear beneath it over the next couple of weeks.

This is all too good--and I'm still glowing from Thanksgiving! The humbuggery is over at last! Last night, while buying groceries, I even found myself singing along with the Christmas music.

We've learned huge lessons over the past decade. We've learned to tune out the holiday hype (not having cable has separated us from so much stress and propaganda, it's not even funny) and we've lost the drive to spend, spend, spend (not having credit cards has taught us that we don't need to go into debt over silly, extravagant gifts). We've learned to keep the holidays centered on being with the people we love, making music, sharing laughter, and all that good, old-fashioned, Home For the Holidays stuff. These have been very hard lessons--devastating lessons, in fact--but we've learned them.

Oh! Speaking of Home For the Holidays, Nathan will be here! I haven't said much about it, but he's been in the Army since last summer and we haven't seen him since he left. Needless to say, Nettl is fairly dancing on air over this. I can't think of a better gift: our boy home, safe and sound.

So today, instead of editing, I'll be putting together a Holiday playlist for our household music. We just never use our CDs anymore and I prefer music to be shuffled anyway. I'm going to start a shopping list for the holiday foods I want to make, and I'll be making my gift list and checking it twice. It would be perfect if we got snow sometime between now and the 25th, but I'm not going to complain if we don't!

Sometimes When I Write

There is a part of me—a part that even my family and my best friends have never met—a part that feels everything too deeply, internalizes everything, absorbs everything. It weeps easily, feels for others easily, feels for itself easily. It is tender, yielding, and has nothing to do with the Good Time Charlie that I am in my everyday life. It is solitary and is happy to remain so. It hears the deepest nuances of music, the undiluted meaning of words spoken and unspoken, of charged air. It is the real me, without the trappings of Steph, SK, Kaye, or The Berg...

What's That Noise?

All night, either in the wall behind our bed, or under the floor, or maybe outside, there has been a weird noise. I can't really define it... a scraping, gnawing sound. Too loud for a mouse. I'm listening to it now, as a matter of fact. We have a lot of "critters" here: opossums, raccoons, a skunk, even an armadillo, so I figure it's one of them, but what the heck is it doing? Of course, I've seen far too many bad sci-fi movies, so my imagination tells me it's...