butterfly dream

[sigh] Were the back-from-vacation blues supposed to kick in this early? I was having a ton of fun yesterday, unpacking and looking at downloaded pictures and cataloguing smuggled American chocolates (oh, Dove, why must you stint the Canadian market so?)..then I woke up today, and looked out at the grim winter gloom, and suddenly...

I suppose it's understandable in one sense: namely, the 'tomorrow I have to get up and face the cold dark Monday commute all over again' sense. I love summer, and I love how summer makes me feel - 'happy and aimless and idle and pagan', as per Annie Sullivan. I don't like the feeling of being confined by the weather again.

But that's not what seems to be uppermost. What's really bugging is a sense of having done something different, unusual, out of the daily grind, for a short two weeks...and now here we are again. I am just not feeling very interesting, today. Not so much in terms of my writing (although I will confess to having hyped myself up a little in re: coming home to find an email from PopMatters, since the editor mentioned considering submissions over the holiday break). Just...you know that Barenaked Ladies song, Pinch Me? "On an evening such as this/It's hard to tell if I exist"? Like that.

Yes, I know this is basically a self-pity fit. Also, that I've brought a lot of it on myself. I look back at my entries for 2008 and see a whole lot of wishing and hoping and excuses, but not so much with the going out and grabbing the brass ring by the tail, or whatever it is I'm supposed to do. There is procrastination, and then there is yours truly, brushing out the mane of the My Little Pony toy she got with a Happy Meal in West Virginia.

So this seems like as good a time as any to think about New Year's resolutions. I hereby resolve, this year, to stop yapping and start doing. To quit thinking of an hour spent reading people rambling on about how much they hate comic strips as time spent productively on the computer. Over the course of this year spent searching so haphazardly for a writing focus, I ran across one simple piece of advice that really resonated, from Toni Morrison: "Write the story only you could write." It shall be my mission, in 2009, to find that story and commit it to, er, MS Word.

Meanwhile, to all the friends and other readers who've stuck by me and my pretensions thus far, you are either completely crazy or...well, yeah, you're completely crazy, and I love you for it. Here's hoping we all land at the bottom of the new year with our crazy intact.

Mom's best friend and her daughter about my age, whom I likewise adore, have gone in with us on a ten-day luxury condo rental on Anna Maria Island. Leaving Dec 22nd, returning Jan5th. This, as you may imagine, has me no end excited.

We haven't had a proper winter getaway vacation in years. The last two of those winters have been a relentless march of gray skies, and snow, and cold, sigh twice and repeat, ad nauseum. In the big city, this effect is magnified almost unbearably by the endless vistas of glass and concrete and steel.
I leave for work each morning in the cold and frozen dark, I come home in the cold and snowy dark, and there is no warm  welcoming surface anywhere. Indoors there is comfort, of course, but always shadowed with the knowledge that you're marooned there. This becomes especially pertinent when you're starving, surrounded by restaurants just a few too many cold minutes away, and all the caff has to offer is egg salad on white.

As you can see, it is imperative that I get away, for the sake of my prose if nothing else. What I really love about this trip is how adult it is. Not so much in terms of 'retirement community' as 'no costumed mice within fifty miles.' We are planning to drive down over the first weekend, and that's about as structured as it gets. At least, it will be if we can stave off the best friend's instinct to feed us every morning, noon, and night. She is Polish, so a firm line will be necessary. (Albeit we are not ruling out Shoemom's favourite white borscht.)

I am so seriously anticipating this vacation, that I am currently living off a diet of rice cakes and water, the better a) to look half-decent in the new bathing suit - something else I haven't given thought to in years! - and b) to take at least a little advantage of the truly astonishing array of American junk food. Specifically, those Dove chocolate-chip cookies I bought last time. Oh, and real key lime pie, can't forget that. It is a good thing the Eucharist does not involve key lime, else we here @ Shoe Central would be seriously considering conversion.

Thing is, I tend to put on weight squarely in my stomach and hips, so these two goals will be locked in perpetual conflict...but where there's a will, there's a way. *munches BBQ-flavoured rice cake with renewed conviction*

Also, there will be long walks among other 'quaint shops', and shell-hunting on the beach, and lying flopped in a beach chair with a good book and/or my iPod. I've bought the latest Patrick McManus and Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency just for the occasion, not to mention the new Bob & Ray bonanza. Just think, two blissful weeks of nobody having to hear about those two, except the people trapped in the immediate car with me. The fun, she is spreading. 

OK. As many of you may already know, Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate Christmas. The precise theological details can be obtained by making clicky with the link down and to your left.

In re: a question I see a lot around these cyber-parts, yes, it's entirely acceptable to give the Witnesses in your life a card along with everybody else. Just make sure that a) you know them well enough that they'll understand the motive behind the gesture is friendly, and b) the card is appropriately non-denominational (a lovely winter scene, say), and you're set.

Honestly, you needn't spend a lot of time feeling sorry for us this time of year. Because meanwhile we are staring around in frank awe, trying to figure out just why you-all enjoy it so much. Seriously.

I've worked major retail outlets many a Christmastime, people - another side benefit to our stance, lots of overtime on stat holidays! - and I'm here to tell you, the jolliness, from all appearances, it is a myth. Or at least, a wistful long-shot, rather like the precise sprinkle placement Martha Stewart gets on the cupcakes.
In terms of sheer guilt-induced looniness of expectation it can be topped only by the wedding industry. Maybe. When you're a bride, you at least get the consolation that it's all about you. At Christmas, by contrast, you get to run yourself ragged trying to meet the fondest needs of everybody else. Which as far as I can tell, even if you love them dearly, does not quite compensate for the loss of dignity inherent in screaming at the poor bookseller because she has just sold the last copy of The 25 Greatest NASCAR Sponsors of All Time. Or whatever.

Then, of course, there's the post-event afterglow. In the one case, snazzy vacation, lotsa hot sex; in the other, eighteen avant-garde cheese graters and that Elmo toy that when you walk past it, goes 'Awww, you don't wanna play with Elmo?" in that sad-clown way you have always hated and feared. You can't do anything about it, either, because this was little Suzy's gift from your in-laws. So you also now have confirmation that the big family dinner is going to be really tense.

The whole situation is best summed up by the bizarre movie Christmas With the Kranks, in which a random couple's desire to exercise their basic frelling free will is relentlessly steamrollered by an entire neighborhood of self-appointed Santa's Little Helpers. As far as I can tell, this thing was marketed without a trace of irony. (Neither was Fred Claus, but I think that had more to do with specific latent sadism on the part of those particular film-makers.)

The only defense - not unlike the one recommended for Martha and/or wedding plans - is to raise a wall of cynicism real quick. Thus the 'Carols I Hate' articles, the commercials based around how nobody ever looks forward to those family dinners...the deep sighs of envy when the Witness in the next cubicle over confesses that they never even heard of mincemeat.
Come to think of it, I don't think I've seen one unironic media mention of the holidays this year. Oh, except that one Hallmark commercial, but they have to lure you into a diabetic coma because that's the only state in which anyone would lay out $19.95 on a china gingerbread-house that blinks in tune with Jingle Bells.

It all makes for a rather pleasant holiday experience for all the wrong people. The one slight drawback, of course, is that we can't go near shopping malls past roughly November 15th...in other words, not so much with the possibility of being crushed to death in Wal-Mart. Yeah, tough choice there.

OK, yes, I'm exaggerating. Those who have contrived to keep their holidays focussed on faith and/or the simple joys of family love and togetherness, I salute you wholeheartedly. Know that Witnesses strive for the same - just not necessarily on the 25th around a tree.

For this holiday season, I wish everyone happiness according to their lights, literal or otherwise. Mind, I'll be a safe distance off on the beach at the time.