Last year I didn’t send out Christmas cards because I was an emotional wreck and didn’t feel like it.
This year I felt guilty and swore I’d send the damn cards. I didn’t really want to. It’s one of those things you think you should do. And I really like getting cards from other people–especially the ones my cousins send with photos of their kids–so I feel guilty not making the gesture to keep in touch with the people I care about. But isn’t that what facebook is for nowadays?
Anyway, I contemplated sending an ironic holiday haiku in lieu of the “holiday letter” but thought better of it. Then today I pulled out last year’s cards, which shed glitter all over the place and then when it was time to seal the envelopes the glue was shot. At that point I just gave up. That’s it, people. I’m done with Christmas cards. Just think of this blog as your holiday card/Valentine/whatever other holiday greeting appeals to you all rolled into one.
I need to write something.
Blogging is not a bad start, but I need to find some poetry in me.
It isn’t easy.
As you know, I spent Saturday snowed in and moping. I had a whole list of things I was going to do today, but I slept until 11:00 am and didn’t get to most of them. The one thing I had to do today was go to my friend P’s house. Not only was she having a Christmas party this evening, she also agreed to deliver cookies to my dad in Maine when she goes home for the holidays. I had to talk myself into going to the party. Not that I didn’t want to see P, but I am just feeling so tired and anti-social and Scrooge-like that I knew it was going to take even more energy than usual to act like a normal person who can socialize with strangers and make small talk. I reminded myself that I need to make an effort to be social or I’m never going to have more than 3 friends in this city, and I reminded myself how happy and surprised my dad would be to get the cookies I made for him, and I considered the possibility that there might be some hot marines at the party (P’s husband is a marine), and set off around 5:00 pm for her 6:00 pm party.
It was the first time I’d been outside since Friday night. Although the sidewalk in front of my building was clear–they do take care of us here, as they should given the exorbitant rent–but it was about the only section of sidewalk I encountered that had been taken care of the way it should have been. Then there was the metro. I knew they were only servicing underground stations today, but I didn’t anticipate delays serving the stations that were open. Silly me. At 6:40 pm I was still waiting for a train to P’s house. I decided to give up and go home. By taxi.
I’m glad I took the taxi because the driver told me he wouldn’t be surprised if I had a snow day at work tomorrow. The roads downtown were half-plowed and slushy, and he pointed out that if it froze tonight, people would have a hard time getting to work tomorrow. Not only that, Connecticut Avenue (and probably some other major thoroughfares) was lined with plowed-in cars. That’s all well and good on the weekend when people park in the outer lanes of the street, but those lanes get used for driving during rush hour.
About an hour ago I forced myself to go to bed even though I wasn’t really tired (having only been awake for 12 hours), but before I turned out the light I decided to call the federal cancellation phone number just on the off chance that a decision had already been made about tomorrow. It turns out that all federal offices in the DC area are closed tomorrow. How sweet is that?
And how bizarre, right? You would never have a snow day in Maine two days after the snowstorm.
So now I’m wide awake and totally psyched that I don’t have to go to work tomorrow. I still have to get up at a reasonable time because I have a chiropractor appointment at 8:30. (My first one in DC, and boy do I need it!) I hope that’s not canceled.
And then I have a long list of things that I should have been doing this weekend: laundry, cleaning, groceries, and other random errands and things. Maybe if I can at least get myself organized and cross some things off my to-do list I won’t feel quite as stressed out and overwhelmed as I have recently. We will see.
“Stop leading with the movie guy story and the fact that you can use a handgun.”
Not that I do lead with those stories, but it made me laugh.
A couple of days ago I was all set to write a post about how even though work is not the fantasyland I had imagined it to be, and even though online dating is slowly killing my spirit, all in all, I am happy to be here, in this amazing city, in my messed-up but interesting life.
And actually, that’s really true. I still walk around, sometimes, thinking…I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe I made it here.
Of course, right after that I think about the fact that there is a two-year probationary period at my job, and I really don’t know if I can go two years without saying something stupid, pissing off the wrong person and getting fired. And then what will happen? I won’t be able to afford my apartment and will be forced to choose between living on the streets or moving in with my parents.
Or if I don’t get fired, maybe my teammates will hate me, and that might be almost as bad.
This is a hard time of year, and I am feeling it in full force.
The blizzard isn’t helping, although it is sort of an interesting diversion. (A police officer pulled a gun in a snowball fight today. That doesn’t happen very often in Maine.)
I feel lonely and sad, prickly and unlovable, tired and stressed. Happy Holidays.
That’s my sister and me.
I’ve always been fairly ambitious, competitive and driven, but compared to my sister I look like a total lazybones. She used to be up half the night studying in high school. She used to practice sports for hours–I mean, like, eight hours a day during summer vacation. While I was running around trying to get boys to like me. Now she is a busy little bee doing all sorts of scholarly research while I am…well, running around trying to get boys to like me.
Now she has a blog. And it makes my “public” blog, the fitness blog, look like a joke.
Here’s a secret about my sister. When she was a senior in high school and got her SAT scores back, she asked me what I had scored when I took the SAT. It was about 100 points lower than she scored, and I told her that, and she gloated. Not for an extended period, but for one brief moment she let it be known that she was psyched about outscoring me on the SAT. And it irritated me that she would do that. But I knew that the test had been re-normed (is that a word?) since I took it. I was working in the admissions office at my university at the time, and the admissions officers had a tool that would allow them to compare the new scores to the old scores. So I went in and asked one of them to compare my old score to her new score, and I found out that I had outscored her after all. And you know what? I never told her. Because I figured if it was important for her to think she had outscored me–I don’t know why since she outshined me in everything else we ever did, too–then I would just let her think it.
I know getting a high score in the SAT doesn’t make you “smart,” but nevertheless over all these years of being the underachieving sister, one of the things I told myself to make myself feel better was that at least I was smarter than her.
So now I’m reading her blog, and it is depressing me because her thinking is sharper than mine, and her writing is better than mine, and what have I been doing with my life, anyway?
It’s a good blog–about religion and politics. You should read it. I’m not putting the URL on here because I don’t want her to find MY blog, but if you google her by name you can find it. And if you don’t know her name, email me and I’ll tell you.
I used to hear people talk about emotional baggage and think how lucky I was not to have any. Or much of any.
(Is that laughter I hear, dear readers?)
Then along came the filmmaker, and suddenly I have trust issues.
When I notice that BB only seems to call me on Wednesdays I think…I bet he has a girlfriend and this is the night she has other commitments. When Tom tells me he’s going away on a business trip I think…Sure. A “business trip.”
The filmmaker used to tell me he had a meeting with his lawyer. I don’t know much about what lawyers do, but I’m pretty sure the things the filmmaker was doing all those times are not among them. Either that or his lawyer was Ally McBeal.
I have a new mantra at work: It’s not business, it’s politics.
I have resolved to recite this in my head every time that something crazy happens, which is more frequently than a reasonable person might expect.
This is not the objective, data-driven corporate sector.
This is not the warm, fuzzy nonprofit sector.
There is no science–social or otherwise–to any of this.
This is politics. The worst of all worlds.
The T.S. Eliot quoting guy asked me for a second date, and we had dinner last night.
Did I mention that he is a little bit young? He looks young, too. So much so that on our first date when he was talking about having gone to college in DC, I thought, “Wait…did he just graduate from college???” Fortunately, he was talking about law school. And he did take one year off between undergrad and law school. But this is his first year on the job, so I figure that makes him about 27.
I think it’s safe to say that we’re at different places in our lives.
Which I actually think is good. I think we might actually be able to have some light-hearted good times together.
I enjoy his company. He’s smart. Funny. Interesting. Very liberal and socially conscious without being irritating about it. Respectful in that certain way that liberal men are sometimes.
Yeah, I think maybe we’re going to get along.
Wow. Does this make me a cougar?
So yesterday was the wreath-laying at Arlington. It really was amazing. When I arrived shortly before 8:00 there was a huge line of people in front of this big arch where opening remarks were scheduled to be happening.
The ceremony included remarks by MW (pictured below), who started this project 18 years ago, and his wife, and some cemetary officials.
The remarks that got to me the most, though, were those of a woman whose son was killed in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11. She said that after awhile you start worrying that people are going to forget about your child and that it meant so much to her to see so many people turn out to remember him and others like him.
Until I heard her speak, it hadn’t fully sunk in for me…the meaning of all this. I mean, I’m patriotic, and I believe that honoring veterans living and dead for their service is the right thing to do. But the pragmatic part of me also realizes that the dead don’t care what trinkets we put on their graves. I guess I hadn’t fully understood how much it means to their living relatives until I heard that woman speak.
The other thing I learned is that it means a lot to the men and women who are currently serving. I posted a couple of status updates on facebook about participating in this project, and several of my friends and relatives who are in the military wrote to say how much it meant to them to know that people were doing this. I guess everyone–soldiers or not–wants to know that someone will remember them when they are gone.
There were so many people there. Just as the opening remarks concluded, two marine helicopters flew directly over the crowd as a way of saying thank you to both the soldiers and the volunteers there to honor them. Then, volunteers streamed into the cemetary to unload four tractor-trailers worth of wreaths to decorate four sections of the cemetary. In this photo, you can see the line of volunteers entering the cemetary.
Interestingly, we were asked not to place wreaths on stones marked with a Star of David but to take a moment to stop at those graves and remember those soldiers, too, which I thought was kind of nice.
There were so many volunteers that I only decorated one grave. After that, I watched and walked and took it all in. All those people. All those perfect, white stones. It was something to see.
I thought a lot about people I know who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. I thought of the boy who grew up on my street, who might as well have been my brother for as much time as we spent at each other’s houses. He’s going to Afghanistan after he spends Christmas with his wife and brand new baby.
Here is the grave I decorated, Garret Edward Smith, Pennsylvania Tecs Engineers, World War II, March 17, 1928 – October 25, 1953. I’ve been thinking about those dates. That makes Mr. Smith 25 when he died. But World War II ended in 1945, which means he would have been a 16 or 17 year old soldier.
Here are some pictures of the graves and the trucks:
