Gracenote

Last week I clicked on the wrong thing in Thunderbird
which led to me buying a book of poetry written
by a dead friend
from an Amazon third-party seller
as you do.

The seller was a charity shop
that helps homeless people with HIV/AIDS and I told myself
she would have liked that.

The book arrived yesterday.
I didn't open it until this morning
and when I did, I found
it had been signed.

This is the time of year when I miss people.
People I loved dearly
and people I didn't even know all that well.

This week I will use my grandmother's measuring cups to make
Christmas cookies.

And I will hope once again that they serve Tab in Heaven
for AJ.

12 things on 12/12/12 12forever infinity12

1. My new favorite things to photograph are the birds in my kids' high school parking lot. I felt you should know.

2. The holiday baking is coming along nicely: pretzel/Rollo/pecan cookies, pretzel/Rollo/M&M cookies, almond crescents, pecan tassies, peanut butter blossoms, chocolate chip meringues, date-nut balls, coconut flour gingerbread drop cookies -- all done. Today: fudge and some more coconut flour goodies. Still debating the wisdom of peppermint bark and rolled sugar cookies.

3. I've decided I do not care for LED Christmas/fairy lights. I felt you should know.

4. I've been watching a bunch of those old claymation Christmas shows from when we were kids -- you know, back in the Jurassic -- and holy cats, those are some messed-up nightmare inducers, eh? Who in the world thought those were a good idea? Why did we love them? Were our parents slipping us weed milkshakes? IS MY WHOLE CHILDHOOD A LIE?!

5. I can tell I'm going to have trouble coming up with 12 things. Let's press on.

6. I'm reading Louise Penny's A Fatal Grace, the second Chief Inspector Gamache book, which is a heartwarming tale of Christmas murder. I like it very much.

7. I have been huffing the Fresh Balsam candle from Bath & Body Works and I think it might be causing brain damage.

8. This week we'll attend the high school band holiday concert for the first time with C as a spectator rather than a performer and I'm going to try really hard not to cry, you guys. Concert season usually doesn't affect me the same way marching season does so it'll probably be okay. *sniffle*

9. I have complicated feelings about the new Hobbit movie coming out this month. The Hobbit is one of my favorite books of all time -- I can remember my dad reading it to me as a bedtime story when I was very young -- but I have a longstanding and rather intense crush on Martin Freeman, the actor who plays Bilbo. So that might be weird. I'm still going to see it, I just might have to call my therapist immediately afterward.

10. It's been legitimately cold here, like in the 20s (F, not C) when I wake up in the morning. I can't decide how I feel about that.

11. My old Cuisinart food processor gave up the ghost this week so P got me a new one, and he says I should just throw the old one away, but his parents got it for us when we were married and they're both dead now and I don't want to throw it away, you guys. Much like with the badly injured/dying squirrel we found in our back yard last week to which P was forced to deliver a swift, humane death, I think I might have to implore him to "take care of it, but I don't want to see it or know about it or be told what happened."

12. I'm still really sad about that squirrel. I felt you should know.

Holly jolly

I woke up this morning an hour and a half before my alarm was set to go off. I'd been having a dream about bisecting triangles. Is that a thing? Bisecting triangles? Like with a compass and a ruler? I'm pretty sure that's a thing. It's weird what your brain dredges up when it's not engaged in anything productive, eh?

I could have gone back to sleep but I kept thinking about my shopping list, about how I totally forgot to buy the stuff to make fudge and how I've decided to make pecan tassies for the boys this year (the boys being husband P and son C). Yesterday I made grain-free gingerbread cookies for me (recipe found in this awesome book) and pretzel/Rollo treats for the kids (topped with pecan halves for the boy, holiday M&Ms for the nut-allergic girl) so today I really need to make P's almond crescents. It's only fair.

The decorations are all up and there's not much shopping to do. Things are humming along nicely.

C is in a really good place right now thanks to Lexapro, neurotherapy, a new daily meditation routine and generous applications of tea and Hobnobs. He's been able to get out of the house more and more but he's not yet ready to go back to school, so we've just gotten him approved for continuing with Homebound Education through the spring semester. And he might be sitting out our big holiday shindig with P's family which, as much as he enjoys seeing everyone, has always been incredibly stressful for him. If he sits it out, I'll sit it out with him, because I think 16 is just a bit too young to be left on your own for an extended weekend at home with no parents. (And not because we think he'll have a wild party or anything. Just the anxiety, you know. His AND mine, if I'm being honest.) We'll see how he feels as the date draws near.

H is recently back from a trip to Houston for the 2012 Texas Thespians State Festival, where she had an absolutely amazing time. She came home with an armload of college brochures and is VERY excited to be planning her future. Her fifteenth birthday was kind of piecemeal -- she got breakfast in bed on the day proper, right before boarding the bus to Houston, and then cake and presents when she got home a few days later. She never did have any friends over for an actual party, but apparently one was had in the school cafeteria at lunchtime the day before she left. High school has been very good for her and I'm still coming to terms with how big/old/mature she is now, how quickly she's growing up, how she'll be driving this time next year when it seems like C was only just taking driver's ed himself a short while ago. But then they ARE only 19.5 months apart.

P is nursing a bad back and keeping busy with work and volunteer stuff. I'm keeping busy too, you know, doing the holiday stuff. Baking cookies. Watching Elf. Drinking cheap wine. Bisecting triangles in my sleep.

We can talk about Christmas now

I was so freaking organized for Thanksgiving this year, you guys. I'm not sure how that happened. I made the sweet potatoes on Tuesday and then everything else (mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce) except the turkey, ham, gravy and rolls on Wednesday, and then I made the meat and rolls and gravy and stuff on Thursday and just warmed everything else up, and I had told my parents to be here at 1:00 which is exactly when everything was ready. This will never happen again, I'm pretty sure.

My parentals brought my mom's mac & cheese and a pecan pie and these little pilgrim hats my mom made out of fudge stripe cookies and mini peanut butter cups. We ate and played Apples To Apples and went for a long walk with the dog and I did not take one single solitary photo, not of my parents or the food or anything. Heh. Whoops.

H does not like me to decorate for Christmas before her birthday, which is Thursday, which is also the day she leaves for a three-day school trip about which we are all VERY excited, because she was one of very few freshman from her school selected to go. She has given me permission to decorate for Christmas while she's gone so that when she comes back, apart from being FIFTEEN HOW DID THAT HAPPEN, she will find herself smack in the middle of Christmastown. Which means now I HAVE TO decorate for Christmas while she's gone or she'll be very disappointed, and I'm not sure I was quite ready to do that this soon. Hmm.

It's not that I'm not ready for Christmas. I actually sort of am. I've been downloading pooloads of Christmas music off Amazon this week (did you know Jethro Tull has a Christmas album? well, now you do) and I've made my lists of baked goodies and whatnot. The gift shopping is essentially done owing to the fact that both kids requested big ticket items that ate up the whole budget for their gifts. I've been swilling eggnog with abandon and I'm already on my second bag (so far) of Lindt dark chocolate mint truffles.

It's just the decorating, ugh. So much work. I may have to only set up one tree this year and leave the other five in their boxes. (I know. I DO UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEM THERE.)

Meanwhile I am still taking photos for the habit blog's flickr pool but sporadically, not daily. I am reading Patrick DeWitt's The Sisters Brothers which is delightful but not at all Christmassy. I'm making chai tea concentrate (with rooibos) again but this time I've cut the sugar in half and it's STILL sweeter than I'd like. I may just leave it out altogether in the next batch and sweeten each mug individually. It's been chilly off and on but I've forgotten how to wear a scarf without it looking stupid, oh no.

The leaves have just started falling from the plum and pecan and elm trees and our neighbor's bradford pear. I found my fireplace DVD (our real fireplace has birds in it). We've been running the heat at night. Let's do this, December. I am ready for you.

11/12

Ugh. Yeah. November. I don't know why I've been so stressed lately. There's nothing particularly horrible going on in my life right now (C is all caught up on homework; Grandpa has been released from the hospital into a nursing home). Just drew the short straw in the brain chemistry lotto, I guess. Or maybe it's the crazy perimenopause hormones. Or pre-holiday stuff. Or I'm just a whiner. Or all of the above.

Anyway, here's a bunch of random for your Tuesday:

I'm reading Tovar Cerulli's The Mindful Carnivore and I like it very much. I picked it up (on Kindle, so figuratively speaking) because the blurb described a philosophical/culinary journey much like my own: grew up fishing and eating meat, became vegetarian for ethical reasons in early adulthood, suffered health problems as a result, returned to eating meat but in a more conscious/responsible way. In Cerulli's case he went the extra step of learning how to hunt, which I have not done, but we do eat game when we can get it and I feel it's a more ethical choice than CAFO meat. So yeah. Interesting. I will try to post a more detailed review when I've finished it.

(Related: I read this article yesterday in the November issue of Whole Living and found it so interesting that the author feels weirdly apologetic about her vegetarianism, because I've always felt the same way about the fact that I have to eat meat. And that, you know, I LIKE MEAT.)

(Also related: I have this shirt but I feel weird about wearing it in public, especially if I know kids will be around. I do not want you to have to explain that to your young children, fellow parents. YOU'RE WELCOME.)

(Anyway....)

I've started doing cross-stitch again, because I'm 80. Yeah. I don't know. For some reason my hands hate me when I try to do crochet and even knitting now, but I can hold a frame and a needle just fine. It's been years and years since I did any cross-stitch and apparently the done thing now is to do half-crosses across a line and then go back the other way to fill them in, but I don't like that. I like to make one complete X and move on to the next one. So that's what I'm doing. You are fascinated by this, I can tell.

I can never be in a bad mood while listening to this song. I think it's the horns.

So far my November submissions to the habit blog's flickr pool have been featured on the blog three times: on November 8, 10 and 11. This makes me happy.

Sparkpeople tells me that I've managed to maintain my weight loss for 8 weeks now, which I find remarkable. Much like I didn't expect to actually lose the weight in the first place, I didn't expect to keep it off, either. I've kept my eating habits pretty much the same as when I was trying to lose but I have not worked out as much. I barely worked out at all for the entire month of October, in fact, which is probably why November fell on my head like a ton of bricks. So, I am back in the saddle now: exercising vigorously at least three days a week and eating more elk burgers to compensate. It works for me.

It's cold here now. Legitimately cold, not just Texas cold. My cooking mojo is returning and my Thanksgiving menu is set.

But I'm not quite ready to talk about Christmas. If that's okay with you.

Putting the funk in dysfunction since 1966

So I'm in therapy now, you know. Working on some things. Given that I am high-strung and pessimistic by nature, we're trying to lower my base level of OH MY GOD WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!1!!1!!11!!! and raise my base level of Everything Is Awesome! <3 kittens !1 rainbows! so that when little disasters hit (my grandpa is in the hospital! my kid is a full week behind on homework!)(these are things I found out today!) I don't go off the deep end and start looking for ways to fake my own death or whatever.

Yeah.

So far? NOT GOING WELL.

I'll keep you posted.

Done

I don't have a lot of good things to say about politics here in Texas, but I will say this: we have early voting, and it is Teh Awesome.

So yeah. I voted LAST WEEK. And I'm not sure I can be held responsible for my actions re: the next person who reminds me to go vote today.

I'm just sayin'.

A brief interruption

Well, I guess it's decided, then. Having missed posting here yesterday, I'm obviously NOT doing NaBloPoMo. That takes some of the pressure off.

I couldn't post yesterday because we were busy doing this:

At C's request, we drove down to San Antonio yesterday to watch his high school band compete in a big huge giant (61 bands, yo) marching contest at the Alamodome. They did amazing and ended up placing 8th.

And I didn't cry. Not like I did when I first saw this year's marching show on Parents Night back in August, with the hole in the sousaphone line where C was supposed to be. He was in uniform that night but not on the field. Instead he was off on the sidelines, under the bleachers, up in the stands, battling an anxiety attack and trying to stay away from people who were eating.

I cried a little bit last Friday, too, when the band marched into the stadium before the homecoming game (the only game I've attended this season), and there were all the sousaphones in back of the parade block like always, only C wasn't there. (He was off having a fun adventure with a friend that night, which was a very good/happy thing, but still.)

I tell myself I shouldn't be any more upset about C not being able to do marching band this year than he is, himself, but I can't help it. He had to overcome so much to even do marching band in the first place -- sensory processing difficulties, motor planning difficulties, a paralyzing fear of flying insects. And he did. He overcame all of that. And then after a brief taste of success, anxiety stole band away from him earlier this year. I know how hard he has worked, and how good band has been for him, and how much joy it's brought him, and to see all of that taken away, well. As his mother, sometimes it just doubles me over.

But hey, I didn't mean for this to be a maudlin update, so here are some good things:

1. C is doing quite well at his current dose of medication.
2. After a shaky start when we first arrived at the Alamodome, with all the people and food and chaos, C ended up having an absolute blast watching all the bands and hanging out with friends.
3. He is looking forward to marching again next year. And we really think he will be able to do that.

I'm hopeful that eventually he'll get back everything he's lost. And then this year will be just a memory. A tiny, faded scar.

Still trying to get the eye

I'm participating in the habit blog's open flickr pool again this month, just like last November.  I don't know whether any of my photos and words will make the cut this time around, but if you'd like to follow along, I'll be collecting my submissions here (click on the thumbnails to bring up a larger photo and caption).

P.S. The box above that one is labeled STUFF.
P.P.S. I still haven't decided whether I'm doing NaBloPoMo. Let's just see how this goes, okay?

Happy November

So hey! How was your Halloween, everyone? I think H outdid herself with this year's pumpkins but apart from that Halloween was sort of a non-entity around here. I forgot that it was even happening until sometime late last week, when I was grocery shopping and wondered what was up with all the giant bags of candy. D'oh!

I blame it on having teenagers. Mine are now officially old enough to feel self-conscious about trick-or-treating, and thank God for that. No more combing through piles of crap at Goodwill and Party City weeks in advance looking for costume components that won't make my girl child look like she's going as a kinderwhore for Halloween, and no more trying to wash fake blood out of my boy child's clothes = fine by me. Now H walks around the neighborhood -- NOT trick-or-treating -- in some cobbled-together costume (fully clothed, I'm happy to say) with friends and C hands out the candy while I stay locked in my bedroom with a cocktail, my TiFaux and the dog. It's really better for everyone that way.

I haven't quite decided whether I'm doing NaBloPoMo this year. Last year it rendered me even more boring than usual, so. Maybe. Maybe not.