holiday b&e cheer.

Here we are, solstice on the verge, snow on the ground, Christmas on the horizon, Cait on the edge.
Only not really. Things are good, calm, peaceful. There is joy and cheer and camaraderie that I am happy to take part in.
Only thing, I'm not sleeping. I don't know exactly why. Last night I laid awake for four or five hours thinking about engraving. Of all things. The night before it seemed like the heater was making so much noise I was never going to be able to drift off. And I didn't.
But it could be reversable: I went running this morning, just a short 4 miler because it is cold and snowy and I am a lazy slack ass, but usually exercize helps. Physical exhaustion can often win out over internal rambling--my own little hamster wheel that won't stop spinning.
Man I am such a drama lately! Why can't I let it go? I am really looking forward to a couple of days off and away--I will be going to my family's for the holidays and hopefully doing nothing more stressful than carrying on polite conversation with my mother and watching sappy movies and some good bad cable.
Happy everything, anyway.

let's not forget the Rum.

Its all merriment and cheer around here. And I’m totally feeling it. I’ve got my red boots--my favorite farm boots that make way more sense in mud and rain than snow, but which I wear anyway at any given opportunity because I love them: they’re big, they’re red, they rock.

Did you ever read that joke book when you were a kid that had the joke in it: “whats big and red and eats rocks?” in it? I was such a huge fan of that book and that joke in particular.

(answer: a Big Red Rock Eater! All the toddlers in the room fall down, all the grownups groan).

I made festive food last night, in the midst of a snowstorm. We got slammed, here on the coast. Lots of driving snow and wind-whipped road ways. It was quite romantic to be snowbound and baking with my sister.

Her boyfriend was trapped for about seven hours on a bus, which is totally unromantic, but he had his laptop, so he got some good paper-writing done I guess.

And today all the trees are tippled white and the snow is as pristine as it ever gets along the sides of major road ways. The roads themselves are already a brown churn, and much windshield-wiper fluid will be expended for visibility to stay good over the long haul.

I’ve got homemade candy to send to relatives all stacked up and waiting in the cold storage room, but because it is right there and already bagged and all, I keep giving it to other people. Not accidentally really, its just that I seem to want to give everything away lately. I am feeling a need to clean out my closet and crawlspace before the holiday--my mother has told me twice now that she thinks I have quite a lot coming to me, and I am worried that she has been thinking about the fact that I may be sad since August and taking it out on her credit card. I hate it when she does things like that. My parents, as a couple, and my father, as an individual, are big believers in sustainability and self-sufficiency. Once upon a not so far away time, they grew most of their own food and their house is as energy efficient as it was possible to make it (with the roof designed for the eventual addition of solar panels they’ve never been able to afford), my father is against all things consumerist and specifically “The Man”. Oddly, my mother only goes along with that to a fairly superficial point: she is something of an uber-consumer; she cannot say no to a “good deal” and thrives on discount shopping and post holiday sales and the like. She almost always overbuys in the cheap-plastic-crap department and it is something I’ve tried to talk to her about in the past, and totally given up on in the present. My dad feels the same way. When I balked a few years past at accompanying her to some post-thanksgiving day buy-buy-buy frenzy my father took me aside and reminded me that it was a small thing, I didn’t have to participate myself, and it would make her happy. My dad is good like that.

cradle and the cookie jar

I get a little fixated sometimes, on the finance thing. I begin to obsess about numbers and they way they impact my life today and will impact the future course of my life. My sister and I have been having arguments lately about how warm our apartment should be at night and during the day, because I am interested in keeping costs as low as possible (within my measly budget) and she is sort of oblivious to costs, rising costs and the stupidity of heating a building that no one is in.
Its a hard thing about this time of year; the budget--It seems like there are suddenly a lot of things that require a small gift or item--holiday parties and Yankee Swaps and I have fifteen coworkers in my department who all send each other Christmas cards. I've been trying to keep things on the low end of the scales by home-making as much as possible--the cards for example--and toffee for party gifts and for the people I actually share an office with. I like to think that, on top of being cheaper it also is more personal. But even if other people don't see it that way, it is at least a little cheaper. I like getting to go to these little parties and being included in holiday gatherings and traditions, but I want to try and do it in a way that doesn't compromise me financially.
The heat thing, the continually skyrocketing cost of oil has me worried. I don't want to get myself into a situation where I have to abandon my savings plan to just make ends meet. My sister isn't on any sort of plan--though she is a student with a fairly small fixed income, she has that feeling common to students (at least in my experience) that things will work themselves out and time spent in school isn't time to worry about money. I'm a little frustrated with the attitude myself, but that might just be because I am a perpetual worrier, and financially fixated besides.
On the upside, Christmas is within striking distance! So it is almost over, thank goodness. I've got most everyone done--my mother is the last person I need to buy for at this point I think, and I stayed pretty well within budget for everyone except possibly her (I'm doing her stocking this year, so I've kind of gone overboard on the small-but-expensive items, like makeup and fancy beads, that I would want in my stocking, because thats the way I want to do it, I'm not going to cheap out on my mom, thats just not cool). But it is sort of troubling, you know, the massive commercialization of Christmas--really of holidays in general and the huge emphasis on gift giving . I don't have any children, but I have friends with small children, and its becoming apparent that this may be the last year I get away without buying toys--or books, I suppose, but boy could that get expensive fast!! I read an article or blog entry (and I don't remember quite where, so no link) about some people who made a conscious effort not just to not have children, but to not make friends with people with children so as to avoid the costly outlay for various holidays. I do think that is a little extreme, but at the same time I wonder if there may not be some sort of drift, over time, where people who have children and people who do not may begin to have less and less in common and a certain amount of annoyance for one-way cost cropping up on the child-free side of the line.
Not that I'm opting out of ever having children, just with circumstances the way they currently are, I'm pretty sure its not in the 3-year-plan anyway.