ThinkGeek contest

So, Kathy from Kindle-aholic and Stellar Four, posted links to a ThinkGeek donation contest this morning. (Yes, I know that line was link-insane -- sorry about that!) If you're willing to give ThinkGeek your email address, you can pick a classroom at DonorsChoose.org. to possibly get a donation.

I'm pretty sure that ThinkGeek is donating $1000 no matter what, so it's not as if giving them your address has any intrinsic advantage to the outcome -- someone's getting that money -- but I picked a classroom anyway, Mrs. DeVille's ESL elementary in Seattle. If you're willing to let ThinkGeek have an address, her number is 1627207291, if you'd like to vote for her, too.

Why did I pick her? Um, mostly, because I looked for a Seattle ESL teacher thinking I might find a classroom taught by a friend, and then found this one and really liked her name. Well, or had sympathy for her name, anyway. I wonder how many Cruella jokes she's heard in her life? And yet she's listed as a "Mrs." which probably means that she changed her name, so I wonder what it was originally? Was changing it a hard decision or an easy one? Yep, questions like this are the kinds of thing I can ponder for hours. Anyway, it's a minor thing, but it only takes a minute to vote, and she, poor teacher, posted her request in November and is almost out of time, with the entire amount to go. And a printer is really a pretty nice thing to have.

I can't decide whether this is mean of me or not. If you're from the northern US and in the midst of a major blizzard, you probably want to stop reading now. But I rearranged my bedroom and this is now the view from my bed.

It makes me think that possibly I should be working a little harder toward finding a job that would let me stay in Florida. I've mostly been thinking that when R graduates from high school, I'd head off to someplace where I'm more employable. But I should stop taking my palm tree for granted.

On February 7th, Ghosts reached a milestone on Amazon -- 100 reviews. I don't know why 100 is any different than 99, really, but it was somehow a thrilling moment in a pretty rocky week. Onward, upward, back to Time!

Anniversaries

A year ago today, my best friend died.

I don't actually believe in ghosts. I do believe in an afterlife. Quite firmly. I have solid reasons, reasons that are as convincing for me as the evidence of gravity that we all have any time we drop a glass and wind up with milk spread all over our floor.

My grandmother had Alzheimer's. Long before her actual physical death, she had mentally left her body. She was alive but absent. And yet there were times when I felt her in my life, when I knew that even though she was actually trapped in a nursing home, a prisoner of a body that no longer worked, she was with me. I felt her presence in a room. And I knew it was ridiculous, because she wasn't there. But I felt her love for me, her affection, nonetheless. And then she died, and I stopped feeling her. She moved on.

My grandfather died much sooner. But he left behind one of those plastic circles with a rough surface that you use to open jars. It held the name of his hardware store. It was a promotional thing, just a piece of plastic. Except when I couldn't get a bottle of pickles open, I could say--can still say--"Boomie, give me a hand,"--and the jar would open after having been stuck for minutes. Okay, sure, it's ridiculous. It's psychological. It's just some subliminal thing that lets me think that those words mean something. No one with any sense would believe that he's actually helping me. But I feel him with me in those moments and he is helping me. Sometimes he's laughing at me, not in a mean way, but in a loving way. So, okay, it's just some quirk of psychology. "I feel" proves nothing.

My father-in-law, Malcolm, didn't believe in life after death. He was a wonderful human being. At his memorial service, people talked about what a curmudgeon he was. Yep, he was a curmudgeon. It didn't stop him from being wonderful. He was filled with energy, with life, with persistence, with joy. He wasn't perfect, but no one is. I think, if he could have gone back in time, he would have been a different kind of parent. But he did the best he could with the information he had available to him at the time that he had it. Malcolm was...oh, love is such a strange thing sometimes. Malcolm was technically my ex-father-in-law--I divorced his son. Realistically, he probably had lots of people in his life that he loved more than he loved me. Except I don't think so. Honestly, I don't think so. He had four sons. I think his life would have been different if he'd had daughters instead. He probably should have had daughters instead, but he loved me like a daughter. And I was lucky to have him, to know him.

I'm not actually easy to love. I'm kind of a pain in the ass. I'm rigid, I'm stubborn, I'm opinionated, I tend to be sure I'm right. Malcolm and I had one final conversation, in which I said to him, well, we'll see. He knew that death meant dead, gone forever. I knew that he was wrong.

The day after he died, I woke up to weird light. The sky was strange. I went outside and I didn't see it. I knew that something was odd, but I didn't know what. I went back inside. Then R went outside and called me to join him, his voice hushed. A double rainbow was spread across our house, starting at one side, ending at the other. I absolutely believe, one hundred percent, not a doubt in my mind believe, that Malcolm was responsible for that rainbow. That his spirit broke out of the shell that had been trapping him for so long and danced across the sky. That he found my mom--who had died exactly one month before him, to the day--and said, come on, let's paint her a picture. You don't have to believe that. It's okay if you don't. But I know, absolutely, that Malcolm and my mom painted me a double rainbow.

Michelle died a year ago. I've felt her with me. And she's mostly exasperated with me. I can feel her kicking me. I know she's telling me to get over it.  I hear her voice saying that I should use the time that I have. I know that's what she wants from me.

But I miss her.

I called tonight. I've been thinking of doing it for ages, weeks, months. Chris hasn't changed the voice mail. It's still her voice.

Joy

I dropped my computer on Friday.

It broke.

I realized almost immediately that I'd cursed myself. I told someone in a comment or email that A Gift of Time would be ready in March or April as long as I didn't lose any more time to colds or flu or minor disasters. Saying something like that is like asking for the universe to start laughing. Whoosh. Have a cold. Ooh, and here's the flu. Almost done with that? Okay, next up, minor disaster...hmm...I know, broken computer!

I'm so glad I specified minor.

Fortunately, I appear to be up and running again, and it was indeed minor. I thought I might have broken the power jack on the computer itself, but I got a new power cord and it works. Yay!

Several days without a computer though was...strange. I don't know that I would say that I'm addicted because that implies that it's optional in my life when the reality is that for me it's an essential tool for work and communication. I managed to do some useful household chores that I've been wanting to do--my bedroom has new curtains, which is something I've been intending to do for months--but I also spent a fair amount of time at a loss for what I ought to do next. Even my fallback entertainment options are linked to my computer. I read books on my computer, play games, watch television and movies, talk to friends. Anyway, I am quite glad to have it back and not just so I can start writing again.

Speaking of that, though, I tried to write on paper. With a pen. And no. Just no, no, no. I've thought more than once when I felt stuck that I should try going offline and writing in longhand, but...No. Not gonna happen.

This feels like a really boring blog post. I should probably title it that, for full disclosure early on. But I'm back online and wanted to type, so this is a little warm up to get me back to Natalya and Colin. :)

Quiet

I've been pretty quiet for the past couple weeks: this is because January is off to a rocking start. (Not.)

R whined to me the other day that it just wasn't fair that he was sick again. I responded matter-of-factly that often when you're sick, your immune system is depleted and it makes it easier to get the next virus that comes your way. That was before I caught his latest virus and holy cow, it's a misery.

While the rest of the country wallows in coughs and sore throats, we're hovering by the bathrooms and discussing which foods might just possibly, maybe, not make us too much more miserable. My vast expertise in vomiting would be useful if I was willing to go to the grocery store to get us some nicer foods (popsicles! mint ice cream!) but meanwhile, we're debating the plain pasta vs plain eggs repertoire. Again and again and again. First time I've had a stomach virus that has lingered for more than 48 hours. I'm ready for my immune system to get itself back into gear.

Every once in a while a list of the things that are piling up drifts into the back of my head and I start to feel a little panicky. It's not that anything has a deadline of tomorrow, but the number of small and mildly urgent errands that I should be taking care of seems to have gotten scarily long. I think next week I will make a literal list so that I can start crossing things off.

Unsurprisingly my New Year's resolutions fell by the wayside. 20/10? What's that? 1000 words a day? Hahaha. But I decided today--possibly in a symptom of getting healthier, possibly just to relieve my sense of guilt--that I will start New Year's over again after Martin Luther King day, which is Monday. I sort of like the idea of MLK day being a day for saying, "Hey, you had great ideals and hopes, but they didn't quite work out the way they should have, now it's time to try again and do better this time." A fitting MLK quote: "Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle." Okay, so I'm quite sure that he wasn't talking about my personal struggle to get undepressed/motivated, but it still seems nicely fitting.

Oh, and the real reason I decided to write something today--it's Zelda's 9th birthday. Nine years old! I hate that number, although I like it better than double digits. Here she is with her siblings, eight years and several months ago. Of course she has a ball in her mouth.

IRL, she's staring at me now, trying to tell me that it's time to get off the computer and do something. She'd prefer a walk, but she's going to have to settle for a greenie. 

Happy New Year!

My resolution of last year was pretty simple: be kinder to myself and others.

I'd say I didn't really do so well at it. Not that I was unkind to anyone else, but then I'm generally not--it was more of a mental change I was looking for rather than an actual behavioral change. And mentally, wow, was I hard on myself last year. C'est la vie. I should probably keep trying, but it's not going to be my resolution again.

No, this year, my mental goal is to try to appreciate the moment. I started with "remember to appreciate the moment," but that's very in-your-head. I don't want to be thinking, "Enjoy this, this day will never come again." Instead, I want to be enjoying it. So that's the goal. Appreciate where I am. (At the moment, the dog is licking my foot with deep concentration. It tickles.)

On a few more practical goals, I'm going to start tracking word count. I made myself a little Excel spreadsheet. I've never done this before: I've never liked the focus. What good is it write 1000 words if the words go nowhere and do nothing? But in the interests of seriously cultivating better writing habits, I'm going to give it a try. (Resolution failure waiting to happen is when you say you'll "give it a try!" So maybe I'll be a little more specific--for the next two months, I will track my word count and if it's helpful to me, I'll continue.)

I'm also going to try to do a 20/10 every day. (If you're not a #UFYH follower, that means 20 minutes of cleaning, followed by 10 minutes of rest.) Every single day. There's always plenty to do--there are some deep goals, like cleaning out closets and the spare room and the garage that I never get to because they seem so overwhelming. So this year, when things are in shape, I'm not going to say, "well, it looks pretty good, I think I'll skip today." That way lies the descent into "ugh, how did this place become such a disaster area?" Instead I'll use my 20 minutes to tackle one of those seemingly irretrievable areas and/or to drive to Goodwill and donate.

Last, but not least, I'm going to really teach myself how to format ebooks. I've trusted in the software process so far, but I'm tired of never really feeling certain what's going on behind the scenes. I want to feel safe that my books are as perfect as I can make them and--okay, it's a little obsessive of me--I'll feel that way not by paying someone else but by knowing how to do it myself.

Do I have writing goals? Probably. Finish A Gift of Time for March release, finish A Gift of Grace with less pain and suffering than Time has already caused. Maybe write a couple more Akira short stories for the fun of it. I have to think that their wedding ought to have some associated drama. But I'm not going to stress too hard on those.

This year might be the very last year that R lives at home (or it might not, life is long and strange) and I want to be sure that my focus is on having a healthy life/family/work balance. I don't get these days back again. If I've spent them all grinding away trying to become a successful writer...well, honestly, I still think it seems really unlikely. Most writers can't earn enough to live on by writing except by making the 18-hour day commitment that JA Konrath and Bella Andre talk about. And for me, making that kind of commitment now means giving up something that matters more to me. Maybe it's worth it if being a professional writer is the only job you've ever wanted, but I've had plenty of other jobs I've enjoyed. Every job has trade-offs. The writer trade-off tends to be that it has to be the only thing you care about and for me, right now, that's just not how it is. Maybe in 2014--especially if R is living elsewhere--it will be.

So! 2013, here we are! May it be a joyful and lucky year for all of us.

Depression

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for a month now. I don't know why I'm so reluctant to simply let go of it, one way or another, but I am. I want to keep it, to remember it, and I also want to get rid of it, to erase it. But I'm tired of being indecisive and I'm tired of seeing it in my drafts, so I'm posting it today, to let it finish out 2012, and tomorrow or Tuesday, I will write some nice inspiring "2013 will be all better" post to start off the New Year with a little more optimism.

I left a comment on Anne Stuart's blog this morning and I've been thinking about it all day. I need to revisit it. And what better place to do that than here?

Blogging is public, obviously, but my blog is also personal. Posts on this blog go back six years or so, long before I started writing fiction again, and I'm willing to bet that I'm the only person who's read some of the older posts. That's fine by me. For a long time, I posted words here but I never mentioned them anywhere else. This was literally an online journal--my memories, stored in the cloud. When I self-published my books and linked the books to the blog, I accepted that people might find it but I also never really expected that people would. I'm saying all this because I'm torn between my desire to write with honesty--for myself, for what I need out of writing at the moment, for my own experience--and my awareness of the possibility of an audience. Personal versus professional, I guess. So, warning: this is intensely personal and if you're only reading because you're hoping to find out when A Gift of Time will be available, it is absolutely okay with me if you stop reading and go do something more fun with your time.

So here's how the story goes.

R was unbearable last Sunday. Completely annoying. I finally snapped at him, "I'm done. Go away. I can't handle this. I don't want to hear it."

He did the hurt look.

I felt guilty.

I said, "Wallow in your own room. In your space. But I am not up for this level of self-pity."

He exited. Gracefully. I felt guilty. More than guilty. Evil. Mean. Bad mom.

Eventually, probably at least an hour later, I wandered over to his bedroom doorway. He didn't glare at me. He gave me the stoic, "you have crushed my spirit and wounded my sensibilities" look. It's a good look and he does it well. All his life--or at least from the time he was eight months old, which is the first time I can remember this feeling--he's been a master at the expression that says, "you have failed me, but I forgive you anyway." It's a powerful look and someday I should write the story of the only time I spanked him and how quintessentially perfect it was for my parenting philosophy, but that's not today's story. Anyway...

I said to him, "You have a genetic predisposition to depression. It is an illness. It is a chemical imbalance in the brain, a shortage of dopamine and maybe serotonin. It can be helped with drugs. And if you think that is where you're at, we can go to the doctor and get you medication and that's okay."

He shook his head.

I said, "That's fine, too. But what I'm hearing you say is that you feel overwhelmed and if you're overwhelmed, you still have options. I sort of think they're obvious. If you can't finish your English project, you tell your teacher, I can't finish, I need to work over Christmas break. And she says, well, I'll have to downgrade you a letter grade and you'll get a B instead of an A. And so what? You'll live with a B."

He glared.

I repeated, "So what? You'll live with a B."

He glared more. Maybe added a nostril flare.

I shook my head. "You have choices. You have options. It is not the end of the world or anywhere close if you get a B. Or worse. Nothing that you're doing is going to affect the fate of the world."

The glare deepened.

"Dude," I tried, "When I was in 11th grade, everything was desperately important to me. I felt like screwing up would be..." I couldn't come up with the words for what it would have meant to screw up in 11th grade. I shrugged helplessly. "I knew that I couldn't screw up. But I was wrong. It wouldn't have mattered if I did. And it doesn't matter if you do. You'll be fine. We'll be fine."

"I'm not going to screw up." His words were tight and hostile.

I sighed. Being a mom just sucks sometimes. You want to show that you understand but it doesn't come across that way. "I was desperately worried about disappointing people when I was your age," I said, trying hard to keep my voice even. "But you know what? It's okay if you disappoint me. I will love you just the same."

His glare softened slightly. But only slightly.

And inwardly, I wanted to roll my eyes. Great, I'd told him he could disappoint me. That wasn't really where I wanted to go with this conversation. He is--okay, I'm a little biased--the most amazing kid ever. He's never going to disappoint me. Not because of anything he needs to do, but because he is who he is. He could fail every class, and he would still be the gentlest sixteen-year-old you have ever met. He would still be a charm magnet for six-year-olds. He would still be himself. There is nothing he has to achieve to be wonderful. He simply is.

So I persevered. "When I was your age, I felt like I had to be perfect. I thought I needed to be perfect. But that was an illness talking. That was the wrong amount of dopamine in my brain. You don't need to live that way."

He looked away.

"If everything is overwhelming and you can't handle the stress and what you need to do is stay home and play video games all day for a few months, that's fine. We can make that work. We'd figure it out."

"I don't," he grumbled, still not looking at me.

"Okay." I stood in his doorway feeling stupid. I'm not sure what I finished with. I don't know how I ended the conversation. But I walked away frustrated and worried and uncertain.

The next day, he was sick. Sore throat, flu-ish, so I told him to stay home from school. He did the same the next day. Wednesday, he was back to himself, cheerful and positive and offering up quirkily random bits of information, like the fact that golden eagles were used as hunting birds in Mongolia. And then he said to me,

"The opposite of depression isn't happiness, it's hope. You know you’re depressed when you’ve lost all hope, and you know you’re getting better when you find it again."*

I think I said something along the lines of "Feeling better?" to which he said, "Yeah," and the conversation ended.

But I've been stuck on the words ever since.

My friend Suzanne asked me if I wanted to go to Belize a few months ago. I said yes. Since 1999, Belize has been number one on my list of places I wanted to visit. I still remember sitting in our dreary apartment in Walnut Creek, on the hand-me-down-down-down couch, and hearing the name of a completely unfamiliar country on a television show, probably Zoboomafoo and thinking "Where's that?" It was a place I'd never heard of, despite three solid years of major Model United Nations activity in high school, and it sounded wonderful.

And now--I just don't care. I want to care. I think I ought to care. I keep reminding myself that I adore Suzanne and her husband and I love going to new places and I've wanted to visit Belize for over a decade. But I just can't find ... anticipation.

I told R the words that I had quoted him as saying, and he said that he wasn't nearly so poetic about it, and that he just meant that he felt like normal life included lots of looking forward to good stuff and depressed life didn't have any looking forward.

Yes. Exactly. Depressed life has no looking forward. I am living in the absence of hope. I am trapped in the inability to believe that the future matters.

I don't want to go to Belize. I feel as if I ought to want to. But I just don't. And it is that way for everything in my life right now. I simply can't make myself believe in the possibility of tomorrow. All there is, is now. And now isn't very interesting.

I stumbled across this post the other day. I know it's long. But the part where she talks about feeling like you're living life through a television screen? I went to my favorite event of the year a couple of months ago with one of my favorite people in the world and that is exactly how I felt. I wasn't really there. I am not really anywhere.

There's a saying, "Depression lies." Yes. It lies. But it also erases. Everything meaningful gets lost in a cloud of "so what?"

*This is the motivation post. It never really got to motivation. I am just not motivated these days.

I'm allowed...

R and I went out for dinner tonight. We had Korean food, as we did last Christmas day, and the restaurant was amazing. I had exactly the same experience that I did last Christmas, though, which is that the food was so good that I ate too much and then I was uncomfortable and by the time we got home, I felt vaguely hostile to the restaurant. But really, the food was terrific: we had their Korean version of sushi for an appetizer, which was yum, and then they do little dishes of vegetables, including a pickled radish, sesame seed green beans, spicy tofu, a sweet potato thing that R decided was too good to share with someone who doesn't like sweet potatoes, fish cake, kimchi...and I'm not sure what else. But yummy food, which I say to remind myself, and which is not my story.

So this is my story: when we got home, the dog -- the naughty, naughty, BAD dog -- had gotten into a bag of Lindt truffles. R saw the ripped up bag first and he was scolding her and upset before I even got into the house. The dog is, as per usual, completely insane with delight that we're home, madly excited, dashing between us, while R stomps around, mad as anything. It was his present to me, so he's upset that his present has been destroyed, but he's also upset because we've done this with Zelda before. This being the emergency vet visit, several hundred dollars, stomach pump thing.

I'm looking at the bag and trying to figure out the math. This will be the fifth time that Zelda has gotten into chocolate, which might say that we're really bad dog owners, except that Zelda is a Jack Russell terrier who can get into anything. Seriously, she opens closed doors by standing on her hind legs and using her paws, she opens cupboards with her nose. She can leave the backyard any time she wants, through multiple routes, and the only reason she doesn't (most of the time) is that she knows I don't want her to, even if she doesn't understand why. The only object in the house that she hasn't figured out how to open is the refrigerator, which is a good argument for keeping all chocolate in the fridge, but it was a present. Who keeps presents in the fridge?

So I'm working on the math. Six ounces, partially dark chocolate, and three ounces is the magically bad number for dark chocolate for a dog of her weight, but there's some left in the bag, and how many servings are there in the bag? Even as I'm trying to figure that out, I'm also trying to take her pulse. Racing heart beat is a symptom of chocolate poisoning for dogs -- that's how they die, really. But it doesn't feel that fast. It's fast, sure, but she's excited that we've just gotten home and bouncing around and...it's normal fast.

I lean in and take a big whiff of her breath. Her breath is not lovely. It never is. But it doesn't smell like chocolate. Or like vomit. It was the vomit that I was trying to smell. On one notable occasion, she had her stomach pumped and only a day later did I find the pile of chocolate vomit under the bed in the spare room that would have told me the stomach pumping was unnecessary. I found said vomit because she went back to it for a snack--gah, dogs--and I smelled it on her breath. So I'm smelling but there's nothing there, no chocolate smell, no vomit smell. And she's settling down. We're home, that's good, and maybe she'll just take a little nap now that she can relax.

But a dog in the midst of chocolate poisoning? Is not going to be taking a little nap.

I finish my math. Ten truffles are missing. Presumed eaten. I go into the spare room to look under the bed. I don't get there. In the back corner of an arm chair is a Lindt truffle, half under the cushion. She didn't eat it. She didn't even break the wrapping paper. I start searching. Over the course of the next hour, I find eight of the ten missing truffles. One in her window dog bed, one in the dog bed under my desk. One in the couch in the living room, another in the arm chair. One in my bed, one under a pillow in the guest room. And so on.

A 9th is, I am sure, in my closet. I can tell from how she's acting now. She keeps going into the closet but when I follow her in, she acts innocent and quickly leaves. She's figured out that I'm stealing her treats. I have no idea what that feels like from a doggie perspective. She did some perfectly good hunting, gathering, and storing for later, and her pack leader has screwed it all up. Does she think it's unfair?

Along the way I find a bag of pills -- Vitamin C maybe? -- that she has also stashed. The citrus smell reassures me that it's nothing too scary but some guest in my house, I don't know who, lost a lot of pills at some point. Oops!

By the end of the hour, I'm totally comforted that the dog hasn't eaten enough chocolate to be dangerous and the dog is sulking. And R is not happy. In fact, he's pissed at Zelda -- she ruined his present. Not cool.

I point out to him that it was actually kind of fun in a way -- like an easter egg hunt. Been a long time since I got to do that. I didn't mind it and was amused by her creative hiding with the last couple chocolates. He says, "Oh, I should view this an as an entertainment value addition to my present?"

I say, "well..." and then point out the real plus. When we got home from dinner, I thought the dog might die. I was faced with the real possibility that Zelda had eaten enough chocolate that we would lose her. On Christmas Eve. On CHRISTMAS EVE! The relief of knowing that no, that wasn't going to happen? Golden. The joy of realizing that the ridiculous dog had hidden chocolate all over the house? Priceless.

R listened to this and nodded. And then he said, "So the perfect Christmas gift is for me to threaten to kill the dog and then not carry through on the threat? Handy. And cheap. I'll remember that for next year."

I think he has not quite forgiven her.

But it made me laugh.

And I'm allowed to share it, because he told me just the other day that it was okay if I told stories about him online.

Tomorrow's menu

Tomorrow's menu for four:

Scandinavian smoked salmon on butter crackers. Highly likely to come in two varieties, one with cream cheese, a little minced red onion and a couple of capers; the other on a horseradish cream sauce, sprinkled with dill.

Cantaloupe wrapped in prosciutto, possibly drizzled with a balsamic glaze.

A winter fruit salad, composed of mixed greens, topped with orange, grapefruit, red onion, pomegranate seeds and toasted almonds, with a vinaigrette dressing. I know I had a recipe for that, but now I can't find it anywhere, so maybe it was my imagination. That makes me nervous about the vinaigrette, so I'll probably spend too much time looking for the recipe later today.

Break for opening presents, then I spend twenty more minutes in the kitchen while other people amuse themselves. It's my strategy for both enjoying the meal and still having hot food. We'll see how it works. Anyway, break followed by:

Roast beef with a horseradish glaze, served with a cranberry horseradish relish. Yep, I'm continuing my experiments in spicy cranberry sauce. I'm sure I'll find one I love someday.

Mashed potatoes. Per request, completely plain unvarnished mashed potatoes. No garlic, no blue cheese, not even a little feta or sour cream snuck in there. (It wasn't really a request, more of a mild statement of affection for traditional mashed potatoes, from the tolerant recipient of all of my food experiments, aka R.)

Roasted green beans with lemon and garlic from this recipe, which just totally sold me.

Break for watching some televised Christmas special, followed by:

Cherry fruit paste from New Zealand with two cheeses, a camembert and a brie, and more crackers.

A dessert to be provided by my dad's wife, maybe Christmas cookies, maybe fruit pie (because R likes fruit pie.)

I'm hoping I may have finally figured out how to make Christmas bearable. As a kid, the only food traditions I cared about were the cookies. Our traditions were presents and jokes and music and decorations and a schedule that had us moving from one relative's house to the next in the cold, snowy weather. Aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents; sharing a basement bedroom with my sister and brother, with our parents asleep in the room next door; whispered early morning conversations while waiting for Santa; and so much laughing. So much laughter.

But I think my grandfathers were the sources of the laughter. And when they died, the laughter stopped.

My paternal grandfather died first. He loved to tell jokes. He told jokes to strangers, made people in stores laugh, was just the warmest man imaginable. His humor had not the slightest speck of malice in it. You would never have known from his friendliness and compassion of the burdens he bore without complaint. His wife, my grandmother, was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic in her 40s. As she grew older, she lost more and more of her hearing until she was really entirely deaf. He was her link to the world. Endlessly patient with her. He was a devout Christian and the closest thing to a saint that I've ever met. Also, he just loved to make people laugh. If he hadn't made you laugh at least once in your interaction with him, well, he'd keep trying. And you would laugh, eventually, or at least roll your eyes with a resigned smile.

Anyway, after his death, Christmas changed. His wife, my grandmother, had to be institutionalized. Against her will and via the legal system. I think it was hard and painful for all of the relatives in my parents' generation, but I don't know that they had any other options.

We still tried. And for a couple of years, we sort of made it work.

If my paternal grandfather told jokes, my other grandfather played jokes. Nothing made him happier than to give you a joke present that had you frowning down in confusion while he roared with laughter across the room. Well, except maybe giving my grandmother something that made her tear up with appreciation.

We had one last good year, a Christmas in New York. The only bad note was that my grandfather had a back ache that wouldn't quit. It turned out to be bone cancer and he died that April.

After that...we tried. We really did. Different places, different houses, different activities. We went to Disney one year, North Carolina once. I spent a Christmas in Seattle, another in Canada, another in Santa Cruz. My grandmothers and great-grandmother suffered through slow declines in institutions of varying levels of unpleasantness. (In a stroke of unfair irony, my aware and present grandmother lived the longest in the worst of them, while my grandmother with Alzheimer's spent her years unconscious in a much more comfortable, even almost pleasant setting.)

But I guess I've never managed to recover from the idyllic childhood. Christmas has been making me sad for close to twenty years now, and losing my mom just made that worse.

We'll see if making it all about the food makes it better. And meanwhile, I have a super-secret, super-fun project that I'm working on that I'd really like to have done tomorrow, so I had best get back to it! Merry Christmas!

The looking-straight-ahead-awkward-conversations

R and I were in the car today. I'm not sure how often that will happen now, so I figured I needed to get my difficult conversations in while I had the chance. One that I had been thinking about was about his privacy, basically about how and when I talked about him online. This week, a mom's post about her child went viral and aroused a lot of controversy, including some harsh words on children's right to privacy. It made me think. It made me worry.

So I started carefully. I wanted to set the stage. I wrote a ton about him when he was little, all on a board on AOL, and alas, most of it lost to the mists of time. The board shut down, I didn't have archives, I don't know what I said. I wish I did! But I've been more careful as he grew older. I actually started this blog to write about learning disabilities, oh-so-many-years-ago, but I never wound up doing that. He worked so hard, but his struggles felt private to me.

Lately, though, I've been less careful than I used to be. I've used his real name a few times; my written-but-not-posted-post on depression features him heavily; I've quoted things he's said in comments on other people's blogs and here, too. I didn't feel as if I was being insensitive, but would I necessarily know?

So I started talking. You know how sometimes when you know what you want to say but you don't quite know how you want to get there, you sort of wander around the point? I did that a little bit. R made a couple comments. I talked some more.

Finally, he interrupted me and said, “Mom, I’ve read what you write about me. You make me sound smarter, funnier, and far more charming than I really am. Feel free to continue.”

I laughed and laughed.

Because you know what? I really don't.

Driver's license

We are leaving the house in less than half an hour so R can take his driver's license exam and oddly enough, I am so anxious about it that I wish to throw up. But I'm not sure what I'm anxious about. If he fails, that'll be bad, but if he passes, he'll start driving my car. By himself.

If he fails, he'll be sad and mad and disappointed and that will all suck. If he succeeds, all of our car conversations -- which really are some of our best conversations these days, because it takes about twenty minutes to take him to his friends' houses -- will come to an end. No more racing to identify the pop music on the radio, no more debates about philosophy, no more looking-straight-ahead-let's-talk-about-something-awkward opportunities.

And having written it out, I feel much better.

I hope he passes. And when he does, I will simply have to make sure that we still go places together sometimes.

Rewind

On 9/11, I was in California. By the time my alarm went off, the first tower had already collapsed. I heard at most ninety seconds of radio news before my five-year-old said, "What's a terrorist? What happened?" and I shut the radio off.

For most people, the next few days were non-stop televised tragedy. For me, it was the completely surreal attempt to shield my boy from the entire thing. My most vivid memory is of watching his kindergarten class play on the playground while adults stole away to listen to radio reports in the school director's office as furtively as if we were shooting up in the bathroom.

I asked him yesterday what he remembered. He thought about it then slowly shook his head. "Nothing. Not from when it happened. I remember a ceremony, some kind of memorial service, but I think that was later." Success!

I didn't realize this at the time, but by shielding him, I shielded me, too. It was years before I saw and heard the sights and sounds of that day. I wish I had done the same this weekend. I know that whether or not I put up the Christmas tree has nothing to do with anything that's happening in CT, but it feels so wrong.

Ironically, on Thursday, I was really happy. I'm working on a very fun secret project (not to be secret for long!), and I got my hot water heater fixed. It's been semi-broken for months, which is not that big a deal in Florida, really--cold showers are not usually a problem when it's 80 degrees--but oh, it was fun to have hot water again. I think I shall pretend to go backward in time to Thursday and work on being happy about hot water and being entertained by my secret project. Wouldn't it be nice if time could rewind like that?

Sherlock

I walked into R's room and said, "I know you hate it when I rant about television. I know. But do you mind if I do it anyway?"

He said, "What show?"

I said, "Sherlock."

He said, "Yeah, I don't like that one anyway. Go ahead."

I said, "Forget the sexism. Take it for granted that Steven Moffat is completely insanely sexist, doesn't understand that women are human beings, whatever. Assume that and let it go. The show is still completely maddening."

He wrote something on a note card. I think he was prepping for his drama class.*

"It's like World of Warcraft, really. Irene Adler is a rogue. So, whatever, she's an evil female character, yeah, so what? Really, she's a rogue. Everyone hates rogues. They're annoying. But they are what they are and when they're played well, they kick butt."

He says, "What are you talking about?"

"I don't care whether Irene Adler is sexist. Yes, women tend to be rogues. They learn how to manipulate and back stab and stealth, because what the hell, those are useful skills when you're small and weak and somewhat defenseless. And they're really annoying skills when you're PVPing against them."

He blinks.

"I'm serious. Irene Adler is a rogue. Which is fine. Rogues suck, but it's a legitimate character class. But then -- then -- then he turns her into a pally. What the hell is up with that? Rogues don't act like pallies. Rogues don't do front-on confrontations. Rogues don't call people 'junior' and get all triumphant about defeating them. Rogues that do that kind of thing get their butts kicked."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm saying that the ending of episode one of season two of Sherlock isn't annoying because it's sexist -- although god knows it's sexist -- it's annoying because it violates character class rules. It's annoying because it is absolutely crappy characterization. It's annoying because turning a rogue into a pally for ten minutes because it helps your script is lazy, lazy, lazy screenwriting."

He writes something on his notecard. "Done?"

"Yep. And I feel much better. Thank you."

"No problem."

I will probably have to give up watching television when my boy leaves home.

*He doesn't read my blog, but I was writing when he came into my room to say goodnight. It was government, not drama. Also, he doesn't think he said, "Done?" which he felt sounded pejorative. He thinks he said, "Feel better?" This could be true. But it would be unduly repetitive and he was willing to grant that it was okay as is.

Random Thoughts on a Random Monday

1) I'm a terrible manager of myself. If I was a good manager, I'd fire me for being a rotten employee.

1a) If I was my employee, I hope I'd fight my firing and try to get disability for depression instead.

1b) If I was a really good manager, I'd make my employee-self get treatment for depression.

I have a really long post half-written about depression. Not so much fighting it, because I'm not fighting it very successfully, but about the ironies of needing motivation to fight an illness when a symptom of the illness is lack of motivation. Actually, it's not really about that at all, but that's what it will get to eventually if I ever finish writing it. I promised a friend that I'd get medication in August. It's now December. Time moves very quickly when you sleep through it.

I suppose that counts as a random thought, but that wasn't where I was going with my randomness.

2) UFYH had a post about how doing one dish was better than doing none, although technically the person posting had done ten. For a brief moment in time, I found that motivating. Then yesterday I looked at the kitchen and did the math. If I wash one dish but use three, I am on a path of inevitable decline. My lackadaisical dishwashing simply staves off the moment when there are no clean dishes left and makes the misery of a mostly dirty kitchen last longer. Possibly much, much longer. So we did a 20/10 and Rory did the kitchen.

3) Walked the dog after dark yesterday. Not my usual habit. Instead of chasing lizards, she chased frogs, and instead of terrifying squirrels, she frightened a rabbit. My neighborhood has just as much animal life at night, but totally different. This morning I saw a hawk, sitting high up on a street light and I wondered whether an owl took its turn on the same post the previous night. I should walk the dog at night more often.

4) I was seriously considering skipping Christmas entirely this year. My entire gift budget disappeared last week in a -- wow, so I wish it had been an electrical problem, so I could write "crackle and pop", but no, it was more of a "thud" -- when R dropped his computer. Or dropped something on his computer. Or possibly both, I'm still not sure I understand the story. But the computer was dead and he needs a computer for school and thus, he has an awesome Christmas gift -- relatively, that is, it was the cheapest laptop we could get -- and there will be no other Christmas presents.

And Christmas was my mom's holiday. Last year I cried through decorating the tree and took it down the day after Christmas with relief. Why put myself through that? Then I read this post on Momastery. You know how sometimes you read something that doesn't really fit your circumstances but still strikes a chord? That's what happened. There's no line or sentence I can point to that was the meaningful one, but as I said there, "You’ve reminded me why I should care (about the holiday). We celebrate the light in the darkness. If it was just light in light, what would there be to be thankful for?"

I have a lot to be thankful for. (But I should probably still figure out how to get some anti-depression drugs.)

Powerball

So...I will not win the lottery, because, let's face it, no one you know ever does. And at this moment in time, supposedly 130,000 people are buying a ticket every single minute (that stat courtesy of the WSJ) so the chances are insanely small. I suppose they always were, even before people went insane. It's not as if the mathematical odds change at all based on the number of people going crazy. Not the point, however.

After I picked up the kid from school today, we were talking about what we would do with our lottery winnings while on the way to the grocery store. For me, that mostly included paying for people to go to college. Many, many people. My nieces and nephews. My cousins once removed. My step-grand-niece. It just seems like the thing to do with a lot of money.

On the way home from the store, I said, "Let's pay for Cheyne to go to college, too." The kid said, "Um, why?" I said, "Why not? If I've won the lottery, then all your friends can win the lottery, too. We'll pay for everyone to go to college." The kid said, "Let's buy a ticket."

And so we actually bought a ticket.

Ooh, radical.

Most of the time, I am perfectly capable of enjoying the lottery without wasting money on it. The money is just to buy a couple hours of dreaming, imo, it's not like you'll ever win.

But that said, buying a ticket meant that I really needed to get my money's worth from my $2 so tonight was much lottery dreaming.

Twenty minutes ago, the kid came into my room to say goodnight and I told him of my new lottery plan. Okay, there's the $200 million to college tuition for random people, but also, wouldn't it be insanely fun to pick people and give them $1 million dollars where they get to keep $100K but then give away $900,000? It could be like a reality television show.

He frowned, skeptical, and I tried harder to persuade him. No, seriously, I said, we'll give Wil Wheaton a million dollars and he'll give $900,000 to the Pasadena Animal Shelter and we'll get to go visit. What cooler way could there be to spend a million dollars? We'd have so much fun.

He stayed skeptical. I tried harder. Nathan Fillion, I offered. We'll give him a million dollars, and see what charities he likes. Felicia Day. She'll probably go for something musical. Jenny Lawson. She'd go for mental health, I bet. The Vlog brothers. They'd definitely have fun with a million dollars to give away.

(I can think of others, too. Patrick Rothfuss would be on my list -- he'd give the money to Heifer International and that's pretty much the best destination I can think of.)

Finally, R nodded. Okay, he agreed, to my imaginary disbursement of millions of dollars that we don't have. That sounds good. But can we give money to Hyperbole and a Half first? I'd really like to know that she's okay.

My boy.

Holy shit, do I love him.

I would also really like to know that the creator of "All the Things" is okay.

And if we win many millions of dollars tonight (which we won't, because buying lottery tickets is really just throwing money away) that will be the very first thing we do.

Dialog

Dialog avec boy.

Him to dog: All right, I'm going to unload the dishwasher and then go to bed.

(Departure from my room to kitchen.)

Me, realizing the opportunity: Yo! If you feel so inspired, set up the coffee for the morning.

Him, calling back from the kitchen: I'm really tired.

Me: Yo! Set up the coffee for the morning.

Him: Ugh.

That better mean that I have one-button coffee in the morning. Really, that's what it ought to mean.

Today would have been my mom's 70th birthday. A few years back, we talked about doing a cruise for her 70th birthday celebration. I was more okay than I expected to be with today being an entirely solitary day at home because honestly, she would have liked it that way. And I woke up this morning to Ghosts at #1 on the best giveaway Contemporary Fantasy list, which...well, those lists are kind of a joke. A) So what if you can give away more books than anyone else? Talk about a meaningless metric! And B) Amazon lists are fluid and flexible and really don't reflect anything much at all. But still, it felt like a nice birthday present when it wasn't really my birthday.

Capturing a memory

Tomorrow ends my two dog weekend.

The most entertaining part of the weekend has been watching the two dogs negotiate. They are so incredibly different. I call Zelda "fluffhead" sometimes and it's because she's a long-coated JRT, so if I don't chop off her fur, which I routinely do, she can wind up looking quite fluffy. Gizmo deserves the name for other reasons. The difference between them is the difference between a guinea pig and...well, honestly, a human being. A small human being. A preschooler. Or maybe a toddler. The kind of human being who understands some of what you say but is often confused by your choices and motivations. Versus...a guinea pig. Poor Gizmo might, in fact, be the dumbest animal I have ever met. Cute, yes, but completely oblivious to everything.

Gizmo doesn't jump, Zelda does. So Zelda can get places that Gizmo can't. I give them treats. Sometime later, I discover that all the treats are buried under my pillow. I scowl at Zelda. There are enough treats to go around. There is no shortage of treats. And then I lift Gizmo onto the bed, so that he can choose from the treats. Five minutes later, I'm watching Zelda try to sneak the treat away from Giz. She doesn't just take it, she stealths it away. She's like the pushy salesman, who steps a little too close so that you step away and then suddenly you realize you've moved halfway across the room and are looking at exactly what he wants you to be looking at. Manipulative.

And my lap--oh, so funny. Zelda demands her space like a cat. She doesn't debate the rules with Giz like a dog should. She just squeezes him out. If he's going to be near me, she's going to be nearer. If he's going to be on me, she's going to be more on me. It's nice for me, except for the few brief moments when I've had two twenty-pound dogs sitting on my chest (not a lot of room for air in that scenario). Then I shove them both away and say, "You're dogs! Cut it out!" and Giz looks at me blankly, with his trademarked "the lips move, I wonder if that means something" gaze and Zelda looks shame-faced before starting to lick my hand and snuggling closer and closer until she can get her tongue onto my face, too.

Giz doesn't care about rides in the car. Not at all. And when you come home, he's like, "Oh, hi. You left the room a minute ago, didn't you? How've you been?" Zelda knows exactly what's happening when we head toward the back door and does her best ears up, eyes alert, plaintive plea to come with us. When we get home, she has an extremely finely tuned sense of time. If I've been gone for just a few minutes, she's hoping that I'm changing my mind and am going to bring her, but she's not going to get too excited about the unlikely possibility. If I've been gone for more than twenty minutes but less than an hour or so, she's happy to see me, with an enthusiastic hello, paws up, tail wagging. But if I've been gone for several hours, it's insanity. Dashing from room to room, desperately trying to get into my arms, must, must-must-must, have a chance to lick my face and have me rub her belly. It's that returning-vet-greeting every time I'm gone for a few hours. When I've been gone for days, though, totally different story. It's "Oh, you're back, great, I need to go to sleep. Right now. Preferably on you, but okay if not." I come home from a trip and she crashes as if she hasn't slept in days. I'm wondering how Giz is going to react when he sees his people tomorrow. I bet he dances.

Two dogs is more than twice as much work as one dog. Walking them is not the peaceful, meditative, story-planning walk that I'm used to but more of a tug-of-war, constant attention scenario. I know that they're both perfectly capable of walking nicely on leash, but together, they get distracted and excited. Still I really like having them both here. At the moment, I'm sitting on the bed with a dog on my feet, another snuggled by my side. Also on the bed are multiple stuffed animals (Giz really likes to sleep with his toys around him) and three rawhide bones. It's almost like having a toddler again in terms of distractions and toys, except a toddler that can be left home alone.

Thanksgiving dinner

Yes, we're a week away from Thanksgiving. I cooked Thanksgiving dinner tonight anyway. Long story, having much to do with the fact that last year Thanksgiving fell on what would have been my mom's 68th birthday. And my sister's best friend died the night before. I told this story once in a setting where my point was how reality actually does have worse coincidences than fiction and it was received with awkward, frozen smiles which reminded me, oh, yes, this is truly awful, but mostly we've come to accept it as just, like, you know, life. (And yes, my best friend also died last year. Unrelated. It was a rough year.)

So yeah, last year's Thanksgiving sucked. Big time. In the kind of way that leaves you shell-shocked and unwilling to celebrate the holiday forever after. Except I really like cooking Thanksgiving dinner. It's one of my favorite holidays, because, hey, food, what's not to love? Except last year dinner conversation consisted of things like one dinner guest talking about how grateful he was for his wonderful wife (dude? Your semi-host's wife is DEAD and today is her BIRTHDAY, so shut up now) and another talking about how her mom cried all night long because Sharon was dead and we would never see her again, which we have to forgive because the guest in question was eight years old but wow, if you want to have an uncomfortable giving-of-thanks, just ask an eight-year-old to talk about death. That'll do it.

And yet...I like cooking Thanksgiving dinner. So on actual Thanksgiving we will have a seafood buffet -- I'm hoping for sushi, personally -- but today we had the traditional foods. And yum!

Turkey, obviously. Stuffing and potatoes, c'est la vie. But our sweet potatoes were these and wow, it was so good. I could eat that celery topping all day long. And for cranberry sauce, I made two different kinds. The first was straightforward and yet yummy; a bag of cranberries, plus a cup of orange juice, plus 3/4 of a cup of sugar, plus a teaspoon or so of cinnamon, plus a handful of chopped pecans, all simmered for a while. It's the most traditional cranberry sauce I've ever made (I tend to go weird on cranberry sauce) but it might have been one of the best. Then the second cranberry sauce was hardcore weird: a bag of cranberries, plus half a cup of sugar, plus a cup of cranberry grape juice, plus a tablespoon or so of sriracha sauce plus two teaspoons or so of unsweetened chocolate powder. And it was also yum, although yum with a serious kick.

We had pumpkin cheesecake (Sara Lee) for dessert, which is not typical for me -- dessert is definitely the area I most tend to go crazy and creative in but my mom made excellent pumpkin pies and last year I tried and failed to make her pie and so this year...yeah. It just fell into the Do-Not-Touch category so pumpkin cheesecake seemed like a good option and, in fact, it was quite yum. Good crust and tasty filling. It's a good thing I liked it because I've got half the cheesecake left.

Plus, best news, I've got my dad's dog visiting for the next few days. Gizmo is some wacky mix -- half Pekeginese, half poodle, I think? But soft and fluffy and just as willing to snuggle as Zelda. Rory was mopey this morning and I told him that he'd have Giz to console him for the whole weekend and he grunted and said bitterly, "No, that just means you'll have two dogs to adore you." Which, okay, sort of annoying when you're trying to cheer someone up and yet, so true. I adore my dog and she fully reciprocates so for two days, I get to experience double adoration and double snuggles and double demands for attention and love and walks and food and that is all double-good by me.

Malware and motivation

My computer has become infested with malware, making the internet essentially unusable. I've tried a variety of things to fix it, but every time, either I get frustrated after an hour or two and decide to try again later (fast-forward another week or ten days before I'm willing to tackle it again) or I think I have it fixed only to discover a day or two later that I'm wrong, wrong, wrong. By unusable, I mean that when I'm typing, it may take seconds between letters. When I'm browsing, clicking links takes me to random sites, not related to the sites I've clicked on. Filling out forms is simply impossible, and I'm not willing to go to any secure site (ie banking or business related) in case a keylogger is waiting to steal my password. In other words, unusable.

I have to fix it. I know I have to fix it. I know that I'm the only person who's going to fix it. But somehow, I'm just stuck. It's so much easier to turn the computer off and play Sudoku on my iPad. It's a problem at exactly the wrong level of serious annoyance but not quite completely incapacitating.

But there is hope. I've been following a site called Unfuck Your Habitat . . .

You know, I got exactly this far in writing this post, and then I heard the voice of Ms. UFYH in my head and it was saying, "Excuses are boring." It was a nice voice. Friendly, maybe a little tiny bit southern, in that way that some southerners can pull off of saying something mean in such a way that it sounds gentle, even though it's not. But firm, very firm. So away I went and now, four and half hours later, my computer is reformatted and I'm online again and my most important software (Word, so that I can keep writing) and my most important files (the Time files, of course!) are all back online.

Not only that, the two most recent boxes of stuff from my mom's house are unpacked and somewhat put away, and the kitchen cupboards are reorganized so that some of the china can fit into the kitchen, making it far more usable than if it were stuck in a box in a closet somewhere. And the coffee plus coffee supplies are actually next to the coffee maker. If the camera battery was charged, I'd go take pictures.

I've needed to fix my computer since July. It's October.

Typing at full speed. Checking my email in seconds instead of tedious minutes. Clicking on a link and having it go where I want it to go...It wasn't 20 minutes. But I'm so, so, so glad that I finally just stopped making excuses and got it done!

Thank you, #ufyh!

Grief for the 10,000th time

I started using a site called OhLife last year. It's sort of a diary -- it sends you an email every day and you reply and it saves your messages and then sends them back to you. The ideal scenario is that five years from now, you see something you wrote and feel charmingly nostalgic. Oh, I remember that, what a good choice I made, how fun that was, whatever.

Holy bad words, I picked the wrong year to start using it.

Yesterday, we worked on cleaning out the house. It had to be done. I have no argument with that. It should have been done nine months ago. Maybe a year ago even. I think a year ago I might have cried my way through packing up my mom's things for Goodwill with resolution and dignity and sorrow, but not despair. Yesterday, not so much. I want to keep it all. Everything. She cared about those things. She valued them. I look at them now and think, this was from the trip they took to Russia and they bought this in New Orleans and we got this together on our trip to London and she loved these dishes and I am just unwilling, unable, to let anything go.

I hate clutter. But I miss my mother.

So today's OhLife? Said, "Michelle's tumor is back. She's having surgery on Friday. Pretty sure that's enough said, but until I found that out, it was a nice day. I feel...numb. Not sure there are words, really."

 I stayed numb for a long while. I wish I was still numb. The hardest part is the moments when I think, I am so, so, so sad, I should call...and there I stop. Because I should call my mom or I should call Michelle. They are who I reach out to when life is simply unbearable -- my mom for the unconditional love, Michelle for the unconditional support.

And they're gone.

Bitter break up songs

We were in the car on the way to school when Katy Perry's Teenage Dream played on the radio, right after Taylor Swift's We Are Never, Ever Getting Back Together. I mentioned to Rory that the singers singing about infatuated romance two years ago have now moved on to bitter break-up songs and something about his expression -- first thoughtful, then mildly horrified -- made me laugh so hard I almost choked. I can't remember the last time I laughed like that. I'm sure whenever it was he was the one who made me do it and we were also in the car, because it felt like such a familiar experience, but wow, it felt rejuvenating. I think I've felt happier all morning long because of it.

I wrote yesterday for the first time in weeks. Literally, weeks. This morning, I expected--somewhat gloomily-- to hate everything I wrote last night, but  in fact, I quite liked it. Whee. I haven't yet written any more today, but I'm trying to make a pact with myself that I'll write 1000 words a day of something. If not Time, then a short story or a letter or a blog post. Anything that lets me get back into the habit of fingers moving across the keyboard. This counts as a couple hundred words, but there will be more to come later.