I'm happy.
It's a little after midnight, and I'm sitting on the old striped couch that once belonged to my grandmother and is now a fiercely guarded family treasure (despite its objective hideousness). The woodstove is blazing merrily in one corner, and in the opposite corner is the tree. All nine stockings - Mark, Melissa, Juliette, Gabriella, Mom, Dad, Ben, Kat and me - are hanging along the walls beneath the windows. An electric train runs around the base of the tree, and inside its track and along the walls are all the presents - predominantly for the little ones, J and G, but some for the rest of us too.
I'm so happy.
It's wonderful to be here in my uncle's house in NH, our two families together for Christmas. I've always been very close with my uncle, and since he's lived here for nine years it feels familiar and like home in a way no where else does now. And since it's not *my* family's house in NC, where I'm never fully comfortable or settled and where I regularly get lost coming home from routine shopping trips, I'm relaxed in a way I haven't been at Christmas since...since the last time we spent it here. My cousins (Juliette is 3, Gabriella is 2) are unbelievably adorable.
My grandparents not being here also makes a difference. I feel guilty saying it but it's true. I love them both very much, but they create stress for the rest of us in a huge way. Last time they stayed with my family in NC, this exchange occurred: G - "Is there any more pinot grigio?" Me - "No, sorry Grampa, it's gone." G - "...disappointing." So while they are in our thoughts and missed, it makes for a much, much more easygoing holiday season.
I don't know what it is. Maybe it's that I'm officially done with the most demanding semester since fall MA year. Maybe it's that I feel like I real person again and not a mechanical grad student shell of my former self. Maybe it's being reminded that there's parts of me I still really care about that are not in Madison.
There are downsides. I've barely spoken 10 sentences to my parents - not for any real reason, just how it's happened - my sister is a closed book I'm not entirely sure I want to/am ready to open, and I've yet to leave the house to go anywhere but the mall. But even so - I'm very happy, and I find myself smiling at even the most insignificant tableaus. Once upon a time I was naive enough to love my family so much I thought we were perfect, with a perfect dynamic. This year is by no means a return to that, but it makes me feel like, various dysfunctions aside, there's really something here.
Realizing your family is loveable and comforting despite their dysfunctions: isn't that what the holidays are all about?
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
The silver linings
Today was utterly lamesauce in every way except for these things:
- Andy and his constant gold-star-winning
- seeing Abby and Lindsey for the first time in ages, even if we didn't get to have dinner
- randomly acquiring, at tiny tiny odds, a tiny plastic Naughty Sorceress in Kingdom of Loathing
I realize that this last makes me a really big dork, all the more so because I've posted about it here, but I don't care. That shit made my day. It's really the small things that get you through this time of year.
- Andy and his constant gold-star-winning
- seeing Abby and Lindsey for the first time in ages, even if we didn't get to have dinner
- randomly acquiring, at tiny tiny odds, a tiny plastic Naughty Sorceress in Kingdom of Loathing
I realize that this last makes me a really big dork, all the more so because I've posted about it here, but I don't care. That shit made my day. It's really the small things that get you through this time of year.
Monday, December 14, 2009
And I thought I'd be done by now. Silly Becca, unrealistic dreams are for undergrads!
I'm losing steam. I still have to finish Russ's paper - by tomorrow evening at the latest. I have to do some major work on my proposal for Deb. I have to grade 35 papers.
Sigh. Oh well, things aren't nearly as dire as they were a few days ago, when I had 6 hours to write a presentation (which I thought was 20 minutes but was in fact 12, a misconception that actually proved useful), then 8 hours to write my entire proposal draft (didn't happen, clearly), and finally 4 hours to write a conference-length paper (admittedly from a very thorough outline, but still a grave, grave miscalculation on my part). I suppose it could have been worse - at least these 18 hours weren't consecutive.
If only there wasn't so much enjoyable stuff I wanted to do in the next few days - dinner with various friends, shopping on State Street, Christmas movies...the fact that I have to work a writing center shift tomorrow night also does not help. Though let's be honest, the time would have been eaten by the holiday party anyhow.
Sigh. Oh well, things aren't nearly as dire as they were a few days ago, when I had 6 hours to write a presentation (which I thought was 20 minutes but was in fact 12, a misconception that actually proved useful), then 8 hours to write my entire proposal draft (didn't happen, clearly), and finally 4 hours to write a conference-length paper (admittedly from a very thorough outline, but still a grave, grave miscalculation on my part). I suppose it could have been worse - at least these 18 hours weren't consecutive.
If only there wasn't so much enjoyable stuff I wanted to do in the next few days - dinner with various friends, shopping on State Street, Christmas movies...the fact that I have to work a writing center shift tomorrow night also does not help. Though let's be honest, the time would have been eaten by the holiday party anyhow.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
It's the most [expletive] time of the year
...well, not really. But kinda.
It's always an odd juxtaposition, Christmas and end-of-semester. I spent most of today reading about propaganda and children's literature while listening to the "Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown" soundtrack. It actually wasn't a bad day - I'm at the point where working on papers is less stressful than not working on them, and I like my topics well enough to make research tolerable. I'm feeling more in control of the whole "papers" situation, and while I'm by no means close to where I should be in terms of completing stuff on time, I am confident I can finish in something resembling a timely fashion.
I'm making more of an effort to be in the Christmas spirit this year. The last few years I felt like I missed the season almost entirely, which sucked. So this year I want to decorate more - I put up lights last night - listen to more holiday music, maybe go to a concert, watch some classic specials...when will I do all this, you ask? Well, since all my papers (theoretically, in the magical ideal dream world my professors apparently inhabit) have to be in by the 13th (and hopefully *will* be in by the 15th or 16th) I have three or four days in town with only some grading to do, in which I can hopefully get in a little Christmas cheer. We'll see.
It's always an odd juxtaposition, Christmas and end-of-semester. I spent most of today reading about propaganda and children's literature while listening to the "Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown" soundtrack. It actually wasn't a bad day - I'm at the point where working on papers is less stressful than not working on them, and I like my topics well enough to make research tolerable. I'm feeling more in control of the whole "papers" situation, and while I'm by no means close to where I should be in terms of completing stuff on time, I am confident I can finish in something resembling a timely fashion.
I'm making more of an effort to be in the Christmas spirit this year. The last few years I felt like I missed the season almost entirely, which sucked. So this year I want to decorate more - I put up lights last night - listen to more holiday music, maybe go to a concert, watch some classic specials...when will I do all this, you ask? Well, since all my papers (theoretically, in the magical ideal dream world my professors apparently inhabit) have to be in by the 13th (and hopefully *will* be in by the 15th or 16th) I have three or four days in town with only some grading to do, in which I can hopefully get in a little Christmas cheer. We'll see.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Taking organizational problems to a new level
From The Overland Mail, 1948:
"So far as India is concerned the story of the mail service commences with the history of the Hon. East India Company, that famous trading corporation of seventeenth-century English Merchant Adventurers who in course of time secured India for the Empire, and in studying the career of Waghorn, a native of Kent, we should do well to bear in mind the observation of Charles Grey in his entertaining book "The Merchant Adventurers of London," that the mariners of the East India Company seem almost without exception to have hailed from Chatham, Deptford, Limehouse, Rotherhithe, Rochester and Wapping."
"So far as India is concerned the story of the mail service commences with the history of the Hon. East India Company, that famous trading corporation of seventeenth-century English Merchant Adventurers who in course of time secured India for the Empire, and in studying the career of Waghorn, a native of Kent, we should do well to bear in mind the observation of Charles Grey in his entertaining book "The Merchant Adventurers of London," that the mariners of the East India Company seem almost without exception to have hailed from Chatham, Deptford, Limehouse, Rotherhithe, Rochester and Wapping."
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