I Am This Woman

Stuff it, hackers! You got nowhere with my blog.

I discovered a problem when a reader told me she had a Trojan warning from this blog. I Googled, tinkered and upgraded and firewalled, and it’s all good now. With a pre-spring floral theme. Ta daa!.

Here is the fix, in case you have similar on your blog.

Instead of looking for the Javascript, though, I just changed themes and deleted the hacked one. It was pretty much all point and click.

My apologies to users who registered legitimately. I got overzealous and deleted all users except myself. So if I blog again, and you want to comment, you’ll have to re-register.

I noticed that I wasn’t doing Holidailies about three or four days ago, and I kept thinking of things to write about. However, I never quite got the impetus or sufficient guilt to sit down and write. So much of what I want to say is mundane to the point of utter solipcism. So much of what is going on is unremarkable. Does it matter that I cleaned out a closet? Does it matter that I have started reading Dashiell Hammit? I did and I have, but there’s no bloggy spark there for me. And now, compounding the problem is the guilt that I’m not doing it, and that I want to, but I just can’t

My apologies to readers who look forward (if you do) to my entries. I am reminded of The Rolling Stones’ song It’s Only Rock and Roll.

If I could stick my pen in my heart
And spill it all over the stage
Would it satisfy ya, would it slide on by ya
Would you think the boy is strange? Ain’t he strange?

That’s pretty much how I feel. If it’s okay with you all, I’d rather not bleed publicly this year. I am bleeding and it is not pleasant, but there just doesn’t seem to be anything good to say about it.

Cheers and happy holidays to you all!

During the year, I seldom make cookies. There is only one person in the house who really can afford to eat cookies, and then there’s always the mother’s dilemma about sugar and teeth.

But in an attempt to get in the spirit, after three years of getting in a funk or a panic about Christmas, I am baking.

The list so far:

• Oatmeal Raisin Walnut Cookies
• Rum Balls
• Snickerdoodles (vanilla and cinnamon)
• Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

I have also made spiced pecans (chile garlic) and plan to make cinnamon sugar pecans, as well as lemon sugar Snickerdoodles.

Somewhere along the way, I hope to find the joy of holiday baking that I used to get. As I was (not) resisting (very hard) eating a Snickerdoodle, I tried to think of a healthier (ie, reduced fat, reduced sugar) way to say I love you. Pickles? I have a jar of bread and butter slices which I crave around the holidays. Harry & David pears, oranges, grapes? Never been the recipient of a _____-of-the-month club. At my old job, a client used to send beautiful flats of tomatoes — yellow, orange and red ones. I photographed them too. My parents used to send all the kids who were not Coming Home For Christmas a smoked chicken from some place in the Ozarks.

On the surface, radishes seem like they would work well. Dark red with pretty green tops. That’s very Christmasy…

Yeah, NO. Cookies are the thing. I’ll bake them and give them away (watch out teachers and co-workers!). And maybe next summer, I’ll take up canning so that pickles and radishes in festive jars will take the place of all this sugar, butter and flour.

I said maybe. I am going to have to learn to like radishes, I guess.

Not radishes.

I have several boxes of them, and have been meaning to get cards out for the past few years. I just sorta stopped right about the time I got divorced. I’m not sure what happened. The good part is that I also stopped buying Christmas cards. I do love a good card, though.

Tomorrow, if I can get my two hours of work done in the two hours I’m allotting, I plan to scribble some cards while watching White Christmas and drinking Good Earth tea (it has a Christmas cookie taste). I’m sure that once I get to the PO, I’ll have sticker shock, but I’m determined to have no cards leftover when this is all done.

Results will be reported later, simply as a gee whiz kind of thing. I’m certainly in no competition with anyone for Queen of Cards. That title belongs to someone in Pennsylvania. And I expect a card from her in a few days.

N = variable integer

I have no idea how far back I have set myself, but it’s nearly midnight and I’m behind on updating the blog, cleaning three rooms, laundry and prep for tomorrow’s deadline.

Why, you wonder, O Gentle Reader? Because I decided it would be a great idea to look at my yarn stash tonight. At 10pm. In my bedroom. And hey, the bed is a great place to do that because it’s the right height and it’s up out of the dog hair.

Now, it’s nearly midnight and my bed is covered up with yarn. I’m tired, I want to go to sleep… but the bed is covered in yarn. Neatly categorized and stacked yarn, yes. I have managed to divide and conquer the unbridled expansion in the past months. The last yarn I bought was in the summer. And I finished two works in progress (known in the knitting world as WIPs). However, this does not make it so I can go to sleep now.

I may be dumping some of the stacks into buckets and bags and dealing with it all in the morning. Well, after I finish that deadline. And those cookies I need to bake, and those packages to finish and mail…

Yeah, why do I do this to myself?!

“Why do people put up lights?”

The lad, he asks a good question. I know his is based on the silly ads from Target this year, combined with a green sensibility that he’s gaining from the last ten years of science education and marketing about climate change.

But it’s an opportunity to point out to him that indeed it’s dark at 7am, and barely light when his bus picks him up 45 minutes later. The days are getting shorter, and on Solstice, the light turns around and comes back our way.

When he was little, we used to go watch the sunset and say goodbye, Mr. Sun, and one dawn on the 22nd, we went outside and banged pots and yelled for Mr. Sun to wake up and come back into our hemisphere.

He’s forgotten that. Another year, we celebrated Yule, with presents and candles and celebration on the 22nd. We stopped doing that because the world does not stop on that day. There was no hush to our after-dinner walk, no cheerful greetings from strangers. It’s a nice idea, but not practical where we lived, and I missed that special community feeling.

Last year, we were flying out on Christmas Day, to visit dear friends on a coast with beaches. So we did our “magical tree surprises” on the 24th. It was actually quite nice! The day was largely spent goofing off and enjoying what Santa brought, and we ended up at Target exchanging something and using “Christmas money.” Then later that evening, we went to a movie. Bending but not breaking our rituals seemed to work well.

However, why do people put up lights? Because they are pretty. Because they shine hope into the long dark night. Because those neighbors have done it every year and feel all Christmasy and holidayish when they do it. Because that house wants to be flashier than the other house. Because the birth of Jesus was set at Solstice to symbolize that He is The Light in a world of sin… The lad’s response: “That sounds cheesy.”

Today, I’m going to say, “In fact, my lad, we have a box of 600-plus lights on strings. Let’s untangle that and hang them up.” I wonder how he will take this news.

There are some aspects of creativity that rely on tradition, else you simply think “whatever for?” Creativity that speaks to an inner need, a desire for order or ritual is satisfying. Creativity that simply makes a mess or teaches a lesson is more likely to feel like school. Or a big mess.

I’ll present him with the Box O’Lights idea and see how he feels about sculpting our own message of hope in lights for the neighborhood to see.

I cannot begin to explain how sparkly and shiny and mesmerizing an LCD TV is. After a lifetime of CRT, it is to gawk. Esp. when you are looking at aerial shots of remote Samoa or Mark Harmon’s handsome face. The trouble with a new TV however is the decided drain on creative time. To make up for this, I knit. I am finishing a Christmas present for someone, but last night, even the border collie wanted to gawk at the TV, so my lap was occupied. Thus, no knitting. Just the lap dog and the gawking.

Will I ever get the gift done? Maybe I should have left the early Santa present in the box until the Santa work was done.

Driving through a part of Dallas that I have never seen, I found myself feeling really out of sorts and grumpy. The parking lot where I stopped to buy groceries was badly laid out, the sky was too cold, the clouds all wrong. The people were all circus freaks, the checker too slow, and no one could drive a shopping cart to save their lives.

I had to step out of my little bubble – the grooves in my neighborhood where I know what to expect and where everything is – and make do in unfamiliar territory.  I had to study each grocery aisle, see if the item I sought was where I supposed it might be. No? Hmmm, ok, then where? Ah, here’s is the self-rising flour, and I might as well get some cornmeal too. Oh, look! They carry Adam’s Extracts! I’ve been looking for those for months! Little surprises, being able to make do were okay, but the entire hour put me on edge, and as it turned out, I was late picking up the lad.

However, all is not lost. These unpleasant irritations and minor perceived slights, coupled with the moderate success of finding most of what I was looking for, are actually good for the brain.  Processing all that new information, readjusting to the environment and keeping a neutral if not positive outlook is like doing a particularly strenuous workout for the brain. One might be “sore” afterwards, but it requires fresh connections in the brain to solve the problems presented.

And this keeps us young. Going around and around in the same pathways, like that tiger in a too-small cage at the zoo, will lead to neurosis, even psychosis. The stress of doing new things all the time, not recognizing any of the territory at all can be harmful. But surely there is a sweet spot where routine, success and the unfamiliar all meet.

Still, I forgot to get butter. So the cookie baking will have to wait until tomorrow. And no new recipes this time! I’m sticking with the tried and true!

I was thinking today about my family — the ones who are gone. My father (who died from congestive heart failure), my mother (who died indirectly from liver and congestive heart failure) and my brother (who died from pancreatic and hepatic cancer). By the ends of their lives, they were all broken in some way. Missing them makes me broken. The “complicated” grief I feel, that I live with daily, makes me broken.

But I have to wonder: aren’t we all broken? Isn’t that what all that literature is about? Paradise Lost, the Romantic poets, Hamlet’s fatal flaw, Achilles’ hubris. Popular culture is filled with broken people – some funny, some telling the truth, some exploited, some exploiting. We love to see the flaws in people. The news is still crowing about Tiger Woods’ infidelity, Jon & Kate references keep cropping up, and tis the season for the daily “broken” family story on the local news. We gravitate toward brokenness, and yet culturally, we all believe the goal to be happy, uneventful, easy lives.

I read or heard somewhere, from someone who had experience with cancer professionally and personally, that the trick to life is not having everything go your way, but having the resilience to survive these problems – whether they are great or small – and the urge to recover and find the good parts. Holidays are difficult times for this, if one has lost family. Re-inventing traditions that go on without them is harder than simply ignoring these 40 days and just getting through them.

The bright spot in this should be the memories shared, but it is too easy to focus on the hole – much like that void on the tree where there needs to be more twinkle lights and maybe another globe or two. Is it too corny to say look at the whole tree? Maybe, but I’m sticking with that.

I think I’d rather have a tree with voids, a Charlie Brown tree, than no tree at all.

(Already I’m a day behind Holidailies… so HA! a goal to shoot for during the rest of the month!)

The first day of Holidailies, the first day of finals week for my students, one month before the big show that I am working (four 12-hour days in a row), and a little less than six weeks before a big family wedding. It is not the end of the year for me at all. It is the beginning of a long haul of family, work and writing. There will be the usual tax concerns, getting clutter out of the house and donated for that write-off, paying those last few bills. But the slate is full and active, it does not need to be wiped clean.

Last night, we made cookies – one batch flopped. It’s been a long time since I’ve baked something that flopped so miserably. Peanut butter cookies are supposed to be thick and puffy with the pretty fork marks (who invented the forked peanut butter cookies, I wonder). These cookies flattened out into alarmingly flat and crispy flat things. At least they will make a cookie topping for a pie or perhaps for ice cream? Flopped, too flat cookies are depressing. I’m putting a big red mark on that recipe. Cookbooks of mine, you’ve been warned!

Today’s cookies will include snickerdoodles and rum balls. Yes, that’s right, I said RUM.

(Formatting note: I’m told that the blog title comes out as I Am This Womar. I’m working on fixing the font size. Let me assure you I have never been a ‘womar.’)