Oh, my bruised and battered body. It is almost as if my life as a desk-dwelling knitter-librarian has not prepared me for hard physical labor. My legs and my bottom and my back are linking arms in an Irish bar song of pain. Not my actual arm-arms, though. Evidently my arms are accustomed to hefting books and toddlers, and then from the armpits down I am just a person-shaped sack filled with pudding.
And all I did was clean windows. I stood at the sink, wiping grime as thick as gravy off of louvers that had been rusted shut for 30 years and wondering what I had gotten myself into.
Why is it so dark in here? OH HEY.
But they are my disgusting louvers, and you have to start with basic wiping before leaping in with power tools and paint rollers.
So, the annual end-of-year quiz has become a thing of gnashing and squinky-side-eyeing, because it is a thing written by a YOUTH, and after you've answered a couple of questions about money and death and love as an adult, you're pretty much ready to torch the thing and go get a drink. So here is a modified end-of-year thing, hitting the same main points. Perhaps a good thing to go with here after a protracted absence, as I have been over at Wordpress for most of the year, and managed to burn that to the ground, too. If it is a sign that I am too old and incompetent to write anymore, I am going to choose to ignore it and whack away stubbornly until one of my grandkids comes along and gives me something too advanced in its simplicity for me to operate.
So here we are. 2014 in Review.
THE GOOD - oh, go ahead and brag, you shameless tart
I got a job! And I bought a house! Am now once again a respectable Children's Librarian, in a respectable suburban three-bedroom home in Hawaii. Big improvement.
(I have been a librarian for almost 10 years, but took a year off to move islands and have my daughter, so getting back into the career stream was of great import.)
THE BAD - just get it out with quickly and move on
My 18 month-old daughter almost died after tripping and falling on a tile floor while shoe shopping - concussion, seizure, stopped breathing, ambulance, hospital, recovery, observation. I still have the dress they cut off of her. It was a horror. Then, just as we were relaxing a bit, it happened again while visiting friends in the most remote part of Maui, necessitating an air rescue - which I could not ride along on. Watching the helicopter leave, and the drive to Kahului, with no cell reception and no way of knowing if my baby was dying of a brain bleed, were maybe the worst 2 hours of my life to date. We bought the child a helmet, and she is ok. I am all nerves whenever we go out, hovering and yipping. So that's nice for everyone.
Less bad but still not great: I didn't publish a book this year. But I had Reasons.
Also, I broke a tooth. And got two other teeth capped. The dentist knows my name and asks pertinent questions about my personal life, and that is never a good situation to be in with someone who drives a Lexus or runs an administrative office.
STYLE - was there any?
I am eyeballing the skirt-and-boots-and-tights look, but haven't gotten out of my pants yet. I have a hard time buying legwear that costs as much as discount jeans but can be eaten by cats.
But I have really been getting into oxford shoes.
MEDIA - the best and the worst of 2014
Podcasts: I listened to Serial, which I didn't expect to get hooked into, but totally am. Welcome to Night Vale is always wonderful, too.
Books: Most of my reading is done in the car, via audiobook. I listened to a bit of everything, depending on what passed through my hands at the library, then I went fast and hard through Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, because they are wonderful madmen. The top 3 books of the year were Anansi Boys, Good Omens, the Tiffany Aching series, and the Silkworm (by JK Rowling as Robert Galbraith). Ok, that is 4. Well, 7, really, when you count the individual Tiffany Aching books. They are all worth having a go at.
The worst book was Velocity, by Dean Koontz. Put down the thesaurus and assume your reader is intelligent enough to follow you along with a character's emotional journey without explaining every reaction and physical movement in minute and florid detail, ok Koontz? Three sentences to describe the function of a bandaid and why it was important to the character to put one on (spoiler: to stop the bleeding). THREE SENTENCES.
Look at this nonsense:
Music: I liked a couple songs on the radio. It wasn't a big year for music. I tend to listen to celtic stuff and classical if I'm cleaning or knitting or doing something around the house, lest I become an angsty insufferable thing. Otherwise, it's audio books.
RESOLVE. Get some.
People talk shit about resolutions, but I am of the opinion that resolve and follow-through and ambition are all good things to have in life. You must better yourself. You must fight back against the years and the health problems and the heartbreak. Work. Try. Fail. Redouble your efforts. So that is where I am now: 2015's theme is REDOUBLE MY EFFORTS. Last year was I AM SUPPORTIVE OF YOUR ENDEAVOR (and yes, these are said in all-caps, even in conversation), and that was a pretty good one. My mother cat-sat for Stephen King's grand-kitties, and Mike brewed the legal limit of beer in one year (which is stacked floor-to-ceiling in the Harry Potter closet, because we don't actually drink that much). There was travel and new food experiences and motorcycle action. Could have done without the hospital mishaps, but that was not through any lack of cheerleading or support on my part - just dumb bad luck and a child with the physical grace of a pelican.
So this year I will learn to oil paint.
And refinish floors.
And renovate bathrooms.
I will foster my oldest child's new interests in coding, Monty Python, and Neil Gaiman novels. My middle child will be read to from a variety of excellent young-people books by Kate DiCamillo and Cressida Cowell. There will be a big home-made dollhouse for the little one, and I'll finish her quilt. We will make the new house a home. I am resolute.
Also, I will lose 10 pounds. I am instituting a no-facebook-until-fitbit-has-been-input rule, so I will probably be off of FB completely inside of a month.
So there it is. 2014 did not suck, except when it profoundly did, but as a larger picture it is a lovely snapshot in my life. One of work, nice drives, good books, happy family, too many cats and birds, and old friends come to call. Must not screw it up now.
I still miss the people I always do. I still have bad dreams and wishful ones. But it is less acutely stabby now, and that's progress.
Early morning. Coffee. Couch blanket. Boys tearing through stockings. Typically, all adults are on hand at this ungodly hour to witness the children’s excitement, but this year I was the only one who got out of bed. Santa ran out of candy and oranges on the last stocking, so mine was mostly empty and topped with a squishy bit of fruit from the back of the fridge. A cockroach ran out of my stocking when I looked into it. My days of holiday magic and delight appear to be at an intermission.
There were Skylanders and Legos and a wry stare-down over a package of underwear, but the runaway hit of the day was the electronic sound effects maker. Screams and farts and deep-voiced baby cries punctuated the early morning.
OH, THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING IN THE STOCKING THAT MAKES A NOISE, said Death. OTHERWISE, WHAT IS 4:30 A.M. FOR?
But it was a lovely day, with lovely booze, and a lovely meat pie to stuff into the cousins and a lovely plum pudding that caught the table on fire. I missed dessert, because of a dinner-time diaper blow-out and subsequent bath/trouser scrubbing, I did manage to watch the end of a Christmas Story and knit a couple of rows with a kitten down my shirt.
And then it was done, and it’s back to work again. I feel a bit sad and confused about it. I think the theme of 2015 will have to be “Redoubling my Efforts”. More running, more making, more cleaning, more cookie-baking, more feeling. I will make it happen.
“If you trust in yourself. . . and believe in your dreams. . . and follow your star. . . you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.” ― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
Guess who is working all day on Christmas Eve? It is me!
Less-than-gruntled librarian on morning break
But then I will drive home through the snowy rain, burst in to cheers and giddy children and roast beef with yorkshire pudding, seize a glass of porter, and celebrate until my antlers drop off.
In the darkest part of solstice, the power went out. Rain that had been lashing the house and toppling trees suddenly fell silent. The darkness and quiet woke me, and I stretched my arms up over my head, dangling my hand between the bed and the wall. Something touched my finger. Something which felt very much like someone else’s finger – firmly, right on the tip of mine, boop. I rolled over, tucked my hands under a pillow, and my foot disentangled from the blankets. There was a pause, and then something – something like a finger – carefully traced the top of my bare foot.
“Gawd, stop,” I said.
And I fell asleep again as the rain roared back into life.
So there we are. Worlds converge, darkness falls, a creature stirs, and I couldn’t be arsed to defend humanity. Sorry, everyone.
So the boy turned 12. After a day crammed with breakfast cinnamon buns, mini cupcakes for his class, and irresponsible candy consumption, we geared up for a feast at our favorite Chinese restaurant. I scraped the struggling infink’s hair into pigtails, made the boys change clothes because they had decided to roll down a hill in the rain, and warmed up bird formula. As the baby dove chugged its bottle, I said, “Birds. All these birds. At least nobody has tried to give us kittens.” And I ducked as imaginary thunder clapped, and said, “I RETRACT THAT STATEMENT.” But it was said.
At the restaurant, the cousins were late. We ordered gau gee and spring rolls and drank pots of green tea before giving up and ordering dinner, and were halfway through the Mongolian beef when the boys crowded in. “WE SAVED A KITTEN.” Oh no. Gavin lit up like a shiny beamy thing. This is a boy who is cool just by sheer lack of self-consciousness. He wears Doctor Who shirts, has glittery kittens on his folders, and he ain’t give a damn. Kittens are his thing. “The kitten will be mine,” he said. “No.” I said. “Yes, it will,” he said. “Well, ok,” I said. Damn. Outwitted.
The cousins wanted to give it a go at kittymommyhood, since they had saved it from the slavering dogs. But the cousins swell up like puffer fish when they touch cats. “We will bathe it every day!” they said. “We will wash our hands so much!” they said. But then they woke up with boiled eggs for eyes, and my aunt was on the phone, arranging for transfer of custody.
So now we have another cat on the already-unwieldy pile of cats.
I think. It may be a mongoose. We will find out when it tries to eat our faces while we’re sleeping.
Names are being debated. The kids want to name it Zhu Li, so they can yell, “Do the thing!” at it.
I am lobbying for Our Lord Sandra, because this is the time of year that baby Jesus may come a-visiting, and nobody is to say that Jesus won’t come as a little ginger cat just to keep us on our toes, and in my favorite YA series, Georgia Nicolson’s little sister gets hold of the Jesus figurine and dresses it up and names it Sandra, so there you go. Literary and seasonal.
I am between audio books again, and so I have been listening to music, which is basically just me sitting with my ipod in my hand and clicking through songs every .5 seconds.
Nope.
Nope.
Nope.
Ok.
I tried howling along to a sappy ballad, but my voice came out like a wheezy gasping thing. The vog is billowing in lovely misty masses between the mountains, strangling us all. Am probably slowly expiring from walking pneumonia. Began mentally formulating my final emails to loved ones. It is possible, I thought, that if I want to impart my beloveds with a sweet, sad remembrance of my life, I might want to use the word “bonk” a bit less. And anyway, email might not be the way to go for final correspondence. There is always the chance that you will shoot off your last words and then fail to die properly, and then be faced with awkward reconciliation – but with a paper letter in the mail, in the event of miraculous recovery, you still have the chance to kill yourself before it gets there. That is definitely the way to go, death-bed-wise.
I started looking for the idiot in the grey Charger who passes me every morning. He has a bumper sticker that says “Honk for Impeachment”, which must have been a handy solution to his always being honked at for driving like an asshole, and a sticker that says, “Spay and Neuter Liberals”. I have been tossing my hair and winking at him every morning, so that he will begin looking for me and bobbing his eyebrows, not suspecting that I am just luring him closer so I can punch him in the junk. It will be a complicated maneuver, with the highway and vehicles involved, but a person needs a cause to commit themselves to.
