So my tears won't fall...

Post holidays (which, this year, were everything any young lady, including myself, could dream of) all I can think of is Hyu Sakamoto's tune Sukiyakyi which is loosely translated as "I look up when I walk." I am reminded of 5th grade recesses in which my feminist, but serenely un-severe, teacher told us to ",walk with a purpose." I've been spending these many years searching for just such a purpose.

Here I am. I am ready to march forward into 2010 with a purpose.

Home and Hearth, Kith and Kin...

Tell me I'm the best Christmas present you've ever gotten.
You are.

As we start to get older, the holidays tends to bring people of a certain age to discussion of home, displacement, growing up, etc. I'm starting to notice a shift in myself that has been growing, slowly, like a crack in your car windshield. The farther away you get from Christmas breaks from school and talking about going "home" for the holidays with the intense need to get away from dorm food, and as significant others or close friends fill in certain gaps in your life left by your parents, the more confused you get about where you fit during the holidays.

When my mother passed away last year, two months before Christmas, in typical fashion, my sister and I plowed forth in an attempt to scrape together some semblance of a holiday, with little room left for reflection, maybe because at the time that sort of contemplation would have shattered us like blown out Easter eggs.

In preparing for the holidays, I've thrown myself full force into the superficial trappings of Christmas, egg nog, and ornaments, and the Grinch, but as the holiday itself, and my Christmas Eve birthday, draw near, I'm starting to feel a bit blue, detached, like there's something missing. I almost said no when sister asked if I still wanted a red velvet birthday cake. I want my mom to make it. Since we've started doing holiday functions at sister's house, that connection between myself and my home feels like it's dwindling despite the fact that my father lives directly next door. My precious baby Christmas ornament lives on my sister's tree now and the angel on the Advent calendar sits on a little shelf waiting for me to put her on the tree. I can't help but miss the days spent in pajamas with cousins tearing open gifts and as we got older poring over the crappy holiday blockbuster movie listings for our ridiculous trek to the cinema after the parents decided it was bedtime.

This year a new beau asked me what I was doing on Christmas Eve, and at first I was a bit shocked. I'd never really considered an alternate activity. Nothing and nobody (including the CCD Christmas pageant) has ever been able to tear me away from the same exact birthday activity that I've acted out my entire life. It's like a slightly tastier version of the film "Groundhog Day."* Even during my horrible, "I hate my family, I only want to hang out with friends" early teen years, I would never betray birthday Christmas Eve tradition. We skipped Christmas day altogether some years, but never Christmas Eve.

I think Christmas Eve in our family is the one constant that we'll always have, and I fear the possibility of any change in programming. Even though there's a big empty spot, there's a sad comfort in eating the same soup, the same cookies, the same birthday cake and waking up to the same casserole brunch the next morning, year after year. Here's hoping that the comfort of familiarity will help me shake off some of this lost feeling.

*For the record, I hate that movie more than almost anything.

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She wrote his name in marker in all her bras and underwear...

I'm hesitant to write too much here and possibly "jinx" things. I know, I know. I really am a teen. I even have a giant zit, mocking me from just below my lower lip. My inner blabbermouth won't let this blog go un-posted in, and in order to acquiesce to its fervent demands for disclosure, I will say this: I am in big trouble.

Same Ol' Crap, Merry Christmas...

Right around Halloween, and for approximately the thirty following days, I went on an endless rant against all things Christmas. Not really against Christmas, but I just couldn't fathom why these people would be putting their decorations up. I was still clinging to my fake spiderwebs and slightly sagging gourds from the pumpkin farm. Don't you dare make me give up my rubber centipede and my jiggly skeletons, not yet! I began to get extremely militant about it. And loud. Imagine that. Then suddenly, on the morning of Thanksgiving, I went on a cleaning rant, taking down all traces of All Hallows Eve, leaving nary a decoration on the wall but a few gorgeous little hand turkeys. Those are still up, I might add. Hand turkeys are decor for all seasons... all seasons in which one might want a turkey.

Then suddenly I wanted nothing but Christmas. Maybe it was the frosty, sea green ice cream trees in the freezer case at the store, or the crispness in the air, or the realization that my birthday is less than a month away (!!!), that made this little Christmas baby take it all back. I didn't mean it, Santa, really. Now I find myself wanting nothing but to bask in the radiant multicolored glow of my tree, make popcorn strings (eat popcorn strings), listen to the same Christmas mix CD over and over again, trying to figure out how one can listen to "Baby It's Cold Outside" and watch "Rudolph" at the same time. It can be done. Others will just damn you to Hell for it. I can think of little else besides candycane reindeer, and the gentle sounds of my Frosty the Snowman music box in all it's battered, dusty glory. If I could burrow into my Christmas tree with a Santa mug of eggnog, I would. Maybe I'll try later if I can sneak another mug into the house unnoticed. I'm not sure what it is inside me that snapped, but until Christmas, I'll be making tiny Santa hats for my animal friends, and watching every claymation 70s Christmas movie that the Family Channel has gifted upon me this year (and no they are not playing the Life and Adventures of Santa Claus and for that I hate them).

My best ornament ever:

Hello, Friends