Like other quiet days it started with a cup of coffee in bed and an hour or so of reading to finish my first pass through Bergen’s The Time In Between. Then some unwrapping with gifts odd, ordinary, and pleasant–no toe-wigglers this year I think. A leisurely breakfast. Some phone calls. Now he’s off working on a story that needs another two or three pages added before the end of the year (and it’s hard for me to be churlish about his disappearance since he only has three days off in two weeks). And I’m reading blogs, thinking about the year, and drinking a so-so glass of wine. Soon I’ll need to decide if we’re cooking the chicken today or whether we’re eating leftovers. Easy, calm, and very much like ourselves.
Every year I manage to forget about this part of December. But now the radio has started to solicit and play “stories of happy memories of Christmases past”. I snap the radio instantly off.
Until this point if of my media-saturated year, I manage not to think much about old, old unhappinesses. My childhood was dominated by my father’s active but much lied about alcoholism and my mother’s over the top attempts to create and control happiness. Christmas was never a happy time and the ludicrous emphasis on mandatory happiness makes it all harder to keep in perspective.
So for the next week or so the radio stays off. Lots of vinyl to play instead.
Thanks to the corp I work for, I get a big chunk of time off in December through a combination of company shutdown days, statutory holidays, and vacation days. I usually fritter them away in errand running, movie and/ or bad tv watching, cooking, and reading with some cleaning thrown in out of necessity. Same plan this year. On the list so far
- tackle the bathroom which is becoming disgusting (so much for waiting for him to take his turn in cleaning it. And no twenty-five years co-habitation does not necessarily improve the male’s dirt recognition ability.)
- watch all of Season 7 of Buffy on my shiny new dvds
- cook a couple of the soups in my new soup cookbook
- make another run to the LC since they were out of my favourite whiskey during the first run
- read the novel I got from my mother-in-law for this holiday
- make a library run to drop off and pick up even more novels
- enter more books into my catalogue
- clear some cranky old boring dull items off my to-do/next action list
- stare into space
- sleep in (a lot)
- find some one in the city who sells good locally made cheese
- watch bad daytime tv
- send out more holiday cards
- wind up 2005 financial records and think through 2006 budget
- dust
- drop stuff off at St Vinnie’s
- see a movie or two
Over the last couple of years several of our relatives have undone our trick of moving a thousand miles west to create psychological space in the family. Somehow half the family has followed us and we now live shortish train rides away from them. And when kids were added to the mix our refusal to travel in December eroded. We still avoid scrambling to be with the extended family on the twenty-fifth but we do First Christmas a week or two before to please the children and the parents. The trip was pleasant enough; the gifts made people happy all round; and the food was excellent.
The kids giggled themselves silly. We suspect that one secretly thinks her father is Santa and not just her Santa but everyone’s Santa. The other is still very worried about the definition of “good” but is very clear that Santa only brings toys and never brings socks or underwear.
We’ve passed the milestone of First Christmas. And now we’re into the slightly less mad rush to fill the house up with good food and drink, clean away the year’s accumulated grunge, and enjoy the passage of time in each other’s company. An entirely secular and private time.
I’m in the middle of writing Christmas cards and I find myself reluctant. All because I haven’t been able to bring myself to update my address book to delete the names of friends and family who have died. Every time I look at their names I remember them and miss them. Even though it’s been several years since they died, removing their names seems like a betrayal. Maybe next year.
I find it very easy to lose a habit whether it’s a brain habit like writing or a physical habit like flossing. Life has been as usual with the usual ups and downs at work and home. And since it’s a quiet life we lead, I haven’t been much moved to blog about any of it. Some of the interesting stuff is happening at work (off-limits) or in other people’s lives (also off-limits). All the same I miss my small blog habit.
While I was messing with the network set-up, Dg was wandering around and noticed an old portable CD player.
Some sort of beer-powered synapse fired. Rummage, rummage. Click. Flip. Click. Stamp stamp stamp . Arms waving outside my workroom. Overloud voice: “Hey did you know I can use this gadget to listen to all the Queen music I want and you won’t be able to tell.”
A twenty year lag time is a wonder to behold.
A simple test post to determine if I’ve set the first half of the wireless network up correctly. So far I’ve installed the new card, the s/w, cabled everything, powered it up, and connected a couple of times. Still feels very clumsy.
Update: danged printer won’t work with the Base Station but that’s a relatively minor irritation given that I print very little material since I moved to full-time teleworking.
A larger problem is that I can’t get the must-use-for-paid-labour old and creaky PC to connect through the Base Station to the DSL modem. I don’t need both machines to connect to the internet at once since I do try to keep work and non-work computing separate, But connecting/disconnecting the DSL cables is a pain I want to get rid of.
Comedies get played here a lot. Dramas too. Kung fu movies unfortunately. Horror films never.
Seen at the Little Professor’s and Badger’s.
Airplane!
All About Eve
Amelie
Annie Hall
The Apartment
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
Blazing Saddles
Bringing Up Baby
Broadcast News
Caddyshack
Le diner de con
Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Duck Soup
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Four Weddings and a Funeral
The General
Ghostbusters
The Gold Rush
Good Morning Vietnam
The Graduate
Groundhog Day
A Hard Day’s Night
His Girl Friday
Kind Hearts and Coronets
The Lady Killers
Local Hero
Manhattan
M*A*S*H
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
National Lampoon’s Animal House
The Odd Couple
The Producers
Raising Arizona
Roxanne
Rushmore
Shaun of the Dead
A Shot in the Dark
Some Like it Hot
Strictly Ballroom
Sullivan’s Travels
There’s Something About Mary
This is Spinal Tap
To Be or Not to Be
Tootsie
Toy Story
Les vacances de M. Hulot
When Harry Met Sally…
Withnail and I
Usually this is the time of year I get giggly over the first snow. Or the smell of snow on the wind. Or the idea of the first snow.
Never ever have I looked forward to the first freezing rain warning of the season. Freezing rain is a January and February treat. Not November. November should be cold and grey with the promise of snow. Not soggy and slippery with treacherous ice and rain.
