Does Anyone Else Have This Problem?

Each year, when the holidays are over, it seems to take forever to take down and pack away the decorations.  And some are always missed.  (There's a Nativity in an upstairs bookshelf that hasn't moved in three years.)  Yet, before all that, when the decorations are first being brought out and placed around the house, there never seem to be enough.  Only a couple of little areas in the house have very much Christmas going on.  

 

It's kind of sad.  And not in the heartwarming Charlie Brown kind of way.

 

No, our house just seems sort of bare.  Granted, there isn't much of a holiday budget this year, but aren't there nice, inexpensive ways to make each room feel Christmas-y?

 

 

Ah-Cheer

For someone who didn't actually see her daughter all that much in the last week, I have somehow managed to come down with the most aggravating symptoms of the head/chest cold that was wracking Hannah's health while we were in Tennessee.  Sore throat (actually, it feels like someone is rasping my throat with a saw), cough (which makes the throat even worse), fever, headache. . .  I feel miserable.  Thankfully, I guess, the death certificates have not arrived yet, so I don't have an imminent trip to Nashville.

 

 

(This is precisely how I feel.)

 

We brought Riley, Mama's cat, home with us, and have been trying to ease her into live at The Chez.  Hannah made some real breakthroughs in the last couple of days, with Riley volunteering to spend time with her --- even purring.  I've never, ever heard that cat purr.  It will be interesting to see if any of the progress is lost, now that Hannah is back in Atlanta, and won't be back until mid-December.  

The rather spindly little artificial tree that I bought after Christmas last year is up.  This is the first time in Briton and Hannah's lives that we haven't had a live tree.  But they understand.  The tree isn't decorated yet, but we'll get there.  The stockings are up, and a few Nativities are out. . .  It is beginning to maybe start to feel like Christmas.

How about at your house?

 

 

Either I'm handling Mama's death very well, or I am in complete denial, and the ton of bricks has yet to fall.

I sort of have to keep reminding myself that she's gone, you know?  I look at the first sentence of that last entry, and it's like that isn't happening to me.  I've cried, it isn't that.  But there's a composure that seems out of place.  I'm parentless now.  It's just me.

If I begin to think too far ahead, my head spins.  One little chore, one little step at a time, I keep telling myself.  Nothing can be done at all until I receive the death certificates, so staying still seems to be all I can do right now.

People keep telling me to get a lawyer, or an accountant.  I don't know anyone up there.  It makes my head hurt trying to pull it all together.  Since I'm the only child, shouldn't it be fairly straightforward and easy?  Haven't people with less intelligence than me managed estates successfully before?

I am giving myself the early Christmas present of calling off any more gift knitting.  What's done for the etsy shop is done, unless I'm truly in the mood to make something for there.  The sweater I was trying to get done for Briton was going painfully (in the literal sense;  tough yarn), so it got ripped out this afternoon.  And I could feel the load lighten.  Yes, I'm upset that I won't have it to give him, but I'm more relieved that there are no more deadlines looming over me.

The Work of Grief

My mother died last Wednesday.  At least we think it was Wednesday.  I had been trying to call her that afternoon and getting no answer, so I got in touch with my cousin, who got in touch with the police, and they got into her house to find her lying on the floor between the kitchen and den.  One of the officers said it looked to him she'd been dead between 8 and 18 hours.

I packed quickly (and poorly, it turned out) and got up there that night.  Since we have only one working car right now, Briton and Hannah had to cobble a trip up;  they arrived Saturday night.  Visitation was Sunday night, burial was yesterday (in a dismal rain.)

Mama had asked for a graveside service only, and had chosen the person from her church to say a prayer.  I read from Proverbs 31 (A Virtuous Woman), and it was done.

I'm thinking now of all the paperwork I will have to do when I go back up next week.  And I am overwhelmed.  And, I imagine, only now feeling all the sadness and loss that adrenaline and arrangements-making covered over until now.

'Tis the Season

Made this this weekend, and still can't get over how cute it is.  The snowflakes and "pearls" are cut from miniature garland, and just tacked on.

Made lots of little things this weekend: several seed stitch buttoned bracelets that are my "Goosebumps" series, a couple of wide buttoned cuffs, pet things.  Just a few sales is all I ask.  If you had told me last year that Christmas this year would be even grimmer, I wouldn't/couldn't have believed you.  But it is.  A year without a job does that to a holiday.

Because Alan is a Two-Time Knitters' Hunk, and Sam is Our Reigning KH

Sam Neill is crazy, wicked clever and funny.  He is also a winemaker who periodically asks his friends to contribute their Essential Listening music lists.  This is today's:

Alan Rickman

Special Guest  DJ Thespian LEGEND, Alan RICKMAN Star of Bottleshock (Just to show this is in some small way connected to wine.)
Ladies aanndd Gentlemen! Tonight only, direct from Broadway, the utterly unique and completely brilliant Alan Rickman, right here in the Dayglo Disco spinning his discs just for you. And you. And you two in the corner. Yes it's Alan Rickman ... NOW I have your attention. Yes, it's the man who brought you Snape in Harry Potter (if you're under 20), Valmont in the RSC's Dangerous Liaisons (if you are grown up), the bad guy in Die Hard, he IS Colonel Brandon, Truly Madly ... oh alright you’ve got the picture ... and masses of other luminous performances on stage and screen. He is, like his namesake Chicken Rickman, sexy, charismatic and very scary. And here he is ... RESPECT ... sashaying up to the turntables with a stack o’ wax under his immaculately cut  armpit -- give it up, if you please, for one of the greatest actors of his and any other generation -- the simply great, the inimitable the fantastic ...Alan RICKMAN!!

---

These are songs to have grown up with:
I Won’t Dance - Fred Astaire                                        
My hero. Completely disciplined, completely free.
I’m Easy - Keith Carradine                                 
From Robert Altman’s great film, Nashville.  The scene has an acting lesson from Lily Tomlin.
Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts - Bob Dylan                                             
10am. Monday morning. RADA student. Our brilliant teacher, June Kemp, gets us moving.
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face - Roberta Flack                                      
Just listen.
Desperado - Langley Schools Music Project
Recorded in a school gym in 1976. The singer is 9 years old.
Dancing in the Street - Martha and The Vandellas            
Just dance.
Real Good For Free - Joni Mitchell                                        
She says it all, really. No comment required.
Coney Island - Van Morrison                                      
Nostalgia about everything. Everywhere.
You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling - The Righteous Brothers                  
Last dance at the party. A red light bulb. The dregs of cheap wine.
Imagination - Little Jimmy Scott                                         
A great jazz singer rediscovered just in time.

---

Thanks to Alan from taking a few minutes from learning his lines and rehearsing Seminar for Broadway. Fascinating list, and illuminating too. Go see it if you can.
Oh, and when we said inimitable, we were exaggerating. In the Proprietor’s experience, AR has one of those voices that actors all over the world absolutely love to imitate. Like Michael Caine and Sean Connery. And Christopher Walken. It’s a compliment.
Anyway, we always love any Rickman performance.  What’s your favourite?
He is the Bee’s Knees. Practice your Rickman with that phrase ... mutter through your teeth with eyes half closed and a kind of hypnotic drone “...heeez the beeez neeez." Good.

Today

At my psychiatrist's office, I saw a woman who looks on the outside the way I feel on the inside.  It's the second time I've seen her, but it really hit me today.

 

She came into the waiting room with her head down, and sat in a chair in the farthest corner.  Her posture made her back curve and her torso cave in.  She had a little purse which she held (both hands) in her lap.  Her clothes were ill-fitting, her shoes were old.  She never moved.  Not a muscle.  Her mouth was slightly open, her hair mousy.  She looked so all alone and so pained.  There was nothing about her that hinted at happiness or satisfaction or friends or hope.

I saw myself today, turned inside out.

Good Company Makes A Good Meal

November 10, 2011

And I Read, Too

Just the other day, I told a friend of mine that Jose Saramago is my favorite author.  This weekend, I finished his Seeing, the sort-of companion to Blindness (one of my favorite books of all.)  It was, as all his work is, remarkable.  And though Saramago is my favorite author, my favorite writer is:

Heck, maybe he's my favorite reader, too!

Once I got finished with Seeing, I sped through two more books.  Both were fairly short, but so compelling it was hard for me not to read them.  One was Thunder Dog, about a blind man and his guide dog surviving the 9/11 attacks.  (ANYthing about service dogs --- I'm there.)  The other book was Scattershot, about a family with bipolar disorder.  And "family" here is literal --- both parents, and two of the three children suffer with it.  After all my mental health issues this year, it was both a comfort and a fright to read their struggle.

Knitting does continue.  I restarted Briton's Christmas sweater with a different color yarn --- just wasn't satisfied with my first choice.  I've got just a couple of facecloths to knit for Hannah, and all my knitting for her (so far as I know) will be done.  I'm doing little things for the etsy shop --- tree ornaments, brooches, that sort of thing.  I hope, I hope, I hope I get some traffic this year, because if I thought last year's Christmas was tough. . .  Twelve more months of unemployment have broken the back of this one.

Photo Essay: Finn Falls Asleep

It doesn't take him long.

Lately

I'm in a black mood.  Feel like I'm getting sick.  Feel like I'm flailing and thrashing about with no direction or anchor.  I'm mad.  I'm frustrated.  I can't sleep.  I want to be left utterly alone.

 

Dear God, please don't let this mean another medication has stopped working.