Just thought I’d get that off my chest.

Beyond wishing that job seekers would make it a little easier to, like, get in contact with them, I think things are going well.  For the most part I’ve been terrifically busy.  Many days I’ve barely had time to make coffee before the people and phone calls and e-mails start coming in.  When lunch time comes, often I have to lock my door and turn out the lights to make people let me eat in peace.  Even then, people knock and peer through the window of the door. If they see me sitting there, they call to me until I let them in, and I still didn’t get my lunch.  I now have a sign in the window which serves a dual purpose of both clearly stating the hours when I am and am not available, and also blocking their view through the window.  So far it’s worked pretty well, and today I even got a little knitting done after I finished my sandwich.

Still, for all that I’ve been seeing lots and lots of people all day, every day, so far the job has been rather, well, lonely.  I am the only one with an office in this trailer, so if I want to see someone I actually know (not just a candidate or new employee I’m meeting for the first time), I have to go find them.  Even then, I haven’t known the other people here very long, so I’d have to have a business reason to seek them out.  I don’t have anyone here that I can go track down just because I want to tell her (or him) a funny story about how the last employee I ordered uniforms for sounded just like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory (he looked kinda like him too), or go to be commiserated with about how embarrassed I was when the president of the hospital (the one who likes everyone looking totally businesslike at all times so much that he’s making us all buy uniforms) caught me on the day I foolishly decided to wear my snow boots to work.

There’s a few people who I think might become friends (the admin in the other trailer, a couple of our nurse managers, the cute security guy who I have to e-mail about getting people their security accesses), but there hasn’t been enough time for that to really happen, and everyone is so busy right now that we probably won’t have time for a while.  The HR team that I’m technically working with are all working out of a building twelve miles and another world away.  The only time I’ve actually laid eyes on them since I started was the day I made an emergency run to pick up office supplies.  Well, and I saw my new Big Boss briefly – she was in the same meeting with the president of the hospital that I inadvertently interrupted the day I wore my snow boots (that was just a stellar day all ’round, let me tell you).  Other than that I’m pretty much on my own.  And it’s lonely.

There’s also a lot to learn.  So far they needed a person out here so badly that they just sorta stuck me in the trailer, and I’m learning as I go.  I haven’t really gotten trained on a lot of the software and things I’m using.  They got me set up with the access, and because I’m fairly good with computers, I’ve just been doing it.  There’s still a lot of things I don’t know, and questions I can’t answer.  The way the benefits work is particularly confusing to me, which is a problem since people keep asking me questions about that, and I’m sure I’m telling them the wrong things.  I really hate that feeling of knowing that no matter what I tell them, I’m probably wrong.  I’ve been reading through the brochures and stuff trying to learn, but some of it is confusing, and there just hasn’t been any time for someone to train me.  Perhaps after we get all settled into the actual hospital building, that will get taken care of.  At least I hope so.  I’d like to feel like I know what I’m doing!

This is all sounding rather negative, which I don’t mean.  I like this job a lot.  I like being busy, and knowing that I am helping to make a positive difference in people’s lives every day.  Today, for example, I helped a woman get a job she otherwise wouldn’t have been considered for.  It’s good for my employer (I think she’s going to make a great employee), it’s good for the managers I work for (they’ve been scrambling to find qualified applicants for some of these jobs that need to be filled yesterday), and it’s good for the woman who will be hired.  And I feel good too.

So, you know, it’s good.  And sooner or later they’ll move me into the actual building, where perhaps I’ll be around people I know on a more regular basis.  And perhaps some of these proto-friendships might mature into real friendships.  And I won’t wear my snow boots to work anymore, even if it does mean tracking through slush and snow in my dress shoes to go to the bathroom.  And sooner later they might actually train me.  And all will be well.

Sigh.

/pity party

My third rule is that I don’t blog about politically or religiously divisive topics.  I feel very strongly about a number of things, but I don’t like arguing about them.  When I argue, I don’t like the way I act towards or think about the people I’m arguing with.  I’m not thinking about how to love them, or lead them to the truth, I just want to win.  I tend to go into a particularly vicious take no prisoners style that might leave me victorious, but also leaves a lot of collateral damage.  I’ve hurt too many people that way.  I have a lot of people in my life whom I care about deeply who do not share many of my beliefs.  So I tend to be very careful about how and why I get into arguments.  Plus, on the internet, discussions about religion and politics tend to get very nasty very quickly.  I don’t really want to have to deal with that.  So I don’t blog about it.

However, something has happened that is so egregiously wrong that I can’t not blog about it.  Yesterday Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that under the new health care legislation, all organizations would be required to provide and pay for 100% of the cost of elective abortion and contraception.  This means that not only would Catholic hospitals be required to perform abortions and dispense contraceptives, but that Catholic doctors would be required to do the same, and all Catholic institutions (schools, charities, parishes and diocesan offices, etc.) would be required to cover the cost of abortion and contraception for all of their employees.  The only way to get out from under the law would be for all Catholic charities and institutions to only employ other Catholics (putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work), and require a person to prove that they are Catholic before they provide them with any services.  Can you imagine them asking for Baptismal certificates at the line for the St. Vincent’s homeless shelter?  How about Catholic Social Services (one of the few providers of free and reduced cost mental health services) requiring applicants to pass a Faith Test before letting people in?

The Catholic Church has one year to comply with this legislation.

This is so completely and utterly wrong.  On so many levels.

First of all, let’s ignore the whole abortion and contraception issue.  From a certain standpoint, that’s irrelevant.  If you take this down to bare bones, what is happening is that the federal government is ordering one particular group of its citizens to either actively violate their deeply held religious beliefs, or no longer participate in areas of public life.  This is like telling Jewish people that they have to eat a BLT before they’re allowed to teach in school, and that if their synagogue employs any non-Jews, then everyone at that synagogue must partake in a ham dinner or else disband the synagogue.  It’s like telling the Amish that not only are they no longer exempted from the draft, but now every able bodied adult must do compulsory military service.

Our government, led by the guy who proclaimed that he was all about transparency and freedom, has already made it legal for the federal government to detain any US citizen for any reason and hold them indefinitely.  The government then did its best to take down free speech by destroying the internet.  And now they’ve launched a major attack on freedom of religion.

How many more freedoms are you prepared to lose?

The most recent news is that Saturday night we had our much-anticipated Beer Tasting Party.  The idea for this party actually came from a blog post I put up last September about a visit to Mr. & Mrs. Darwin’s manse in Columbus, and the Founder’s Breakfast Stout that I drank while I was there.  There was much beer discussion in the comments, and when I put forward the idea of a beer tasting, both Dove and Sugar Ray were enthusiastic.  The only difficulty was scheduling.  I tried at first in October, but between wedding prep and people’s schedules, it just didn’t work out, and I put it on the back burner.  Then on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, when my Catholic young adult group was at South Park Tavern after going to Mass together, Sugar Ray brought up the subject again, and asked me when I was going to schedule it.  I opened up my calendar, and decided that it was going to be on January 14.  And it was.

The party itself was a good time.  We crammed in just about as many people as the house will hold, particularly since it was much too cold to spill out to a fire in the back yard like I was originally hoping.  People brought so much food that I had to open up the extra leaves on the dining room table.  This included the Vat o’Beer Cheese supplied by my sister Mariah, who borrowed my six quart crock pot to make it in (it was darn good, btw).  Sugar Ray brought some of his home brewed beer, I went to Belmont Party Supply and filled up two boxes with whatever looked good, people brought some amazing new things with them, and we had a great time.  Here (in no particular order) are all the beers we tried:

• RJ Rockers Son of a Peach Wheat Ale
• Bell’s Two Hearted Ale
• Yuengling Traditional Lager
• Celis Raspberry
• Brooklyn Brewery Black Chocolate Stout
• Sierra Nevada Biggfoot Barleywine Style Ale
• Samuel Adams Irish Red
• Samuel Adams Latitude 48 IPA
• Samuel Adams Winter Lager
• Samuel Adams Octoberfest
• Samuel Adams Holiday Porter
• Leinenkugel Berry Weiss
• Leinenkugel Fireside Nut Brown
• Newcastle Brown Ale
• Abita Purple Haze
• Perre Jacques 2011 Belgian Style Ale
• Wild Blue Blueberry Lager
• Pepe Nero Belgian Style Ale
• Wernesgruner Pils
• Emelisse Imperial Russian Stout
• Rogue Shakespeare Oatmeal Stout
• Heavy Seas Gold Ale
• Great Divide Wild Raspberry Ale
• Brekle’s Brown Ale
• Southern Tier Imperial Choklat Stout
• Point Belgian White
• North Peak Darkangel Cherry Porter
• Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat
• Young’s Double Chocolate Stout
• Ovila Dubbel
• Founder’s Breakfast Stout
• Belhaven Scottish Ale
• Framboise Lambic
• Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout
• Fort Collins Brewery Chocolate Stout
• Original Sin Hard Cider
• Crispin Natural Hard Apple Cider – honey crisp

You may notice that the list is rather heavy on the stouts and porters, particularly chocolate stouts.  This is mostly because I like them, so I bought a lot.  Maybe next time I’ll have more variety, but then again, maybe not.  I do love my dark beers!  We also tried Sugar Ray’s home brews, and did a side by side tasting of the Founder’s Breakfast Stout, and his own version.  It was pretty darn good.  Over all, I think my favorite was the Ovila Dubbel, contributed by The Pessimist.  It was smooth and caramel-y and delicious.  It also won my personal Bernadette Award for Best Beer At The Party.  When I was out shopping for the party, I decided that we needed to have prizes.  (This had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that those really cool big ornaments filled with chocolate pralines were on super sale.  Nothing at all.)  I had three things to give out, so I decided that they would be for Best Beer, Best Snack, and Person Who Amuses Bernadette The Most.  So The Pessimist won for Best Beer (though he left before I could give it to him), Mariah won for Best Snack, and Pippi won for Most Amusing.

The one thing that disappointed me about this party was that I had carefully, and with mischievous intent, hung a sprig of mistletoe in the greenery still decorating my house.  (What?  Christmas isn’t over until Candlemas!)  You would think that if you fill a house with mostly single young adults, supply them with lots and lots of beer, and then hang a sprig of mistletoe, that there would be at least a few kisses by the end of the night.  But no.  Not a single one.  It made me sad.  Though I do know of one girl who got asked out at the party, so that’s good.  But still… sigh.  We’re going to have to work on this.

Before rejoicing sometimes comes sorrow.  On Thursday we marked three years since my brother Jacob died.  This is always a hard day.  I had been thinking that I was doing very well with things this year, but as soon as I got off work Wednesday night the reality of what the next day was hit me like a brick.  That night and the next day were very hard, especially since I wasn’t able to take the day off this year like I did last year.  One thing I am grateful for is that in the afternoon, while I was alone in the office and feeling rather melancholy, three of the A/V tech guys (the closest thing I’ve seen to computer geeks since I’ve been on the new job) came in to get new badges made.  I hadn’t realized how much I had been used to being surrounded with geeks & nerds until they came in, and were so lovely and familiar that they felt like old friends even though I’d never met them before.  They were being utterly ridiculous, making funny faces into the camera, and teasing each other like geeks do, and it was all so great.  I laughed until tears came – the good kind.  It was an unexpected blessing.

I never told you guys what the results were of the poll you took a while back on what kinds of blog posts you would like to see.  The results surprised me.  Not a single person voted for the video posts, which, combined with the fact that my new work apparently Does Not Approve of youtube, means that you won’t be seeing any of those again for a while!  Most of you seem to really like the newsy posts about my life, followed by posts about my family.  To be honest, I had started doing links posts and picture posts and video posts because, well, sometimes my life just isn’t that interesting.  I swear.  Plus it starts to feel a little weird, talking about myself all the time.  But you guys seem to like it, so I’ll keep on.   I haven’t figured out a new blog schedule yet.  There’s no way I can post long, newsy posts about myself five times a week (it’s that not really that interesting thing again), so this does mean I’ll be posting a little less frequently.  But hopefully as I settle down into my new schedule I’ll figure something out.

And that’s as much time as I have to write today.  Tonight will be (God willing) my second ever visit to the Dayton Knitting Guild.  Good times ahead, my friends!

• Knit myself a sweater.  Any sweater.  Ideally a really cute cardigan, maybe Audrey in Unst, or Cityscape, or that cabling trial by fire Gwendolyn.  Sure, there are a lot of baby sweaters to be knit as well, but it’s getting a little ridiculous that I, a dedicated knitter, don’t have a single decent hand-knit sweater to wear.  This year I want to knit myself a sweater.
• Get my house organized.  I struggle with keeping my home in decent order in general, and the total upending required to get rid of the bed bugs has continued to add to the chaos.  Half of our belongings are still sealed in plastic in the basment, waiting their turn to spend a week in the freezer before being brought back into service.  This makes returning the house back to something like decent order quite a challenge.  However, I am recognizing more and more that I really do need to have things in order around me, and I’m hoping that before the year is out, I’ll have things in better shape.
• Travel to at least one Lindy Exchange or other swing dancing related event.  Because when it comes down to it, I just want to dance.
• Start going to daily Mass more often.  This is one of those things that I want to do, and think longingly about from time to time, but almost never actually make the time for.  And now I have a job that starts before most of the early Masses get out, and doesn’t give me a long enough lunch hour to make it to a noon Mass.  I suppose I could get up to go to the 6am Mass with the Marianist brothers at UD, but I don’t think I’m ever going to be that much of an early riser.  But still, there’s got to be a daily Mass that I can make it to at least sometimes.  I’m just going to have to do some research to find out.
• Spend more time with my family.  I live a block away from a significant chunk of them, you would think I would see them all the time.  But I don’t.  And I should change that.

And that’s all I have at the moment.  We’ll see how I do.

This place where I’m working, which has this miraculous multiplicity of windows, also happens to be a trailer, but we don’t press that point.  We overlook it.

As you may have gathered, I have now transitioned from multiple jobs into only one job.  I have cleared out my various desks, taken my things down off all of the bulletin boards, including the drawing of a buff young Jedi Indy drew for me on the back of a Panera paper bag during a somewhat boring CL meeting years ago, intended to illustrate my future young Padawan learner, the postcard from the NE Girl Jam I went to years ago (still the best design for a swing dancing event postcard I’ve ever seen), the prayer card from Sae & Mr. T’s wedding, and lots of other little things I’ve pinned up over the years.  I pulled my boxes of tea, the ziplock bag of powdered milk, and my bottle of Tabasco sauce from the bottom desk drawer, washed my coffee cups and the big plastic tumbler I use to make blackteawithmilk, and packed everything into a spare grocery bag.  I transferred all my files onto my external hard drive, deleted everything personal off of the office computer, and turned my work ID, office keys, and official letter of resignation in to Boss J.  By the time I was done it was well past quitting time, so I shut the computer down for the last time, and gathered up my stuff.  Big Boss walked me out to my car and gave me one last hug, and then I was done, driving away into the dusk.

There was more to it than that, of course.  Job2 gave me good-bye bagels and a gift certificate to KnitPicks.  Job1 threw me a good-bye luncheon down at Jimmy’s Ladder 11.  There were a lot of people there, which was nice to see, and they all said lovely things about me.  For my going away present, they gave me a Coach bag, which was awesome.  I’ve been needing a new purse since my beloved black and silver bucket bag irretrievably bit the dust.  I’ve found a few temporary things since then, but nothing was just right.  Either it wasn’t big enough to hold all my stuff plus my knitting (one of the most crucial factors for a bag), or it was so open that stuff fell out at the slightest provocation, or it was made from cheap material, or something.  I knew exactly what I wanted, and for the last couple of months I’ve been periodically stalking it on e-bay, but I still hadn’t found quite what I wanted at a price I was willing to pay.  Apparently I told one of my co-workers more about my search than I realized when we were hanging out after the Christmas luncheon, and she decided that she was going to find me the perfect bag as my going-away present.  And I think she just might have succeeded.  It’s big enough to hold all the stuff that I carry, made of black leather (which means it will last), with a top that closes securely, and in the classic, unfussy style I prefer.  Time will tell whether it’s really as perfect as I think it is, but so far it’s just right!

I think the reality of me switching jobs hasn’t totally sunk in yet.  I’ve gotten used to working at so many different places over the last few months that this feels rather like just another temporary change in venue.  It was very hard to say good-bye.  Many of my now ex-coworkers were very melancholy about it.  The sad thing is that, while I like most of them very much, I’m not so close to them that the relationship will continue once we’re not in the same building every day.  There are a few that I hope to stay close to – Boss J in particular – but I know that I’m not good at staying in contact with people.  I have good intentions, but my life is busy and it’s easy for me to get distracted.  Next thing I know, it’s months since I last talked to a person, and then years.  I’ll even write letters, and then forget to send them.  It distresses me because I do genuinely care about the people I’ve lost contact with, still think about them fondly and want to see them.  I’m just horrible at actually picking up the phone.  But hopefully I’ll be able to overcome my tendencies enough to stay in contact with at least a few of my old co-workers.

And now we’re heading into a busy weekend.  Tomorrow morning I have the First Saturday Women’s Group, then tomorrow afternoon is the wedding of one of my ex-coworkers, and then tomorrow evening is the CL Epiphany Party.  On Sunday we have both a Roommate Cleaning Day and Extended Family presents in the late afternoon.  I’m supposed to bring an appetizer, and I’m torn between Jalapeno Popper Dip, Cream Cheese Sausage Meatballs, or maybe a Stuffed Baguette.  Opinions? 

On New Year’s Day, I was thinking how different this year has been from pretty much every other New Year’s Day going back just about as far as I can remember.  Usually, New Year’s Day means the Huge Family Party, in which we pull out all the stops to entertain about forty of our nearest and dearest.  This means that we would have pulled ourselves out of bed early after days of cooking and cleaning (plus one night of revelry), ready to face a tight schedule of more cooking, cleaning, arranging, and then entertaining.  It would be a great party, a great way to start the new year, and definitely worth it.  However, it would also be a lot of stress and everyone would fall into bed at the end of the night totally exhausted.

This New Year’s, I got up in plenty of time to make it to Mass at my home parish, ate breakfast at home, and then headed over to the Family Homestead in time to see Indy and Rosie off to the Bengal’s game.  After a little while of hanging out, the rest of us headed off together to watch Tin Tin, which was awesome.  When we came out, we decided to see how many of us we could squeeze into the instant photo booth.  The answer was five (see evidence above).  The Duchess, Sae, and I were on the bottom, and AnniPotts and Fleur were on top.  I’m particularly proud of the picture on the bottom, where I managed to get at least half of my face into the frame.

After the movie, we headed home and cooked a quick dinner of pork chops, sweet potato fries, green beans and salad, and ate together around the big table.  Then there was dishes, and then I headed home again.  It was a little surreal to be heading away from my parents’ house on New Years Day, so early and so rested, but it was nice.

The night before was very nice too.  Mariah had her annual New Year’s Eve Party, complete with breaking a pinata in the front yard.  The pinata this year was the most adorable dinosaur, with big brown eyes, and a long neck that made him look disconcertingly like a llama.  And how can you hit a llama?  It’s just not possible.  It was a good thing it was dark, and we were blindfolded, otherwise we might have been totally defeated by The Cute.  Still, somehow we were able to overcome.  :D

After the pinata was properly subdued, we all headed back inside for more fun until we crowded up stairs (that’s where the tv is) to watch the ball drop in Times Square and toast the New Year.  Then, of course, there were noisemakers and poppers on the front porch.  But there was more.  I had gone into the house, and was tidying up the upstairs room when PM came to get me.  While he was gone in the wilds of Indiana the past year, he was apparently so lonely that he resorted to ballroom lessons.  I had told him that I wanted to learn Hustle (which is his favorite), and he had decided that I was going to have a lesson right then.  I’m always up for dancing, so I followed him downstairs to Mariah’s dining room, where I got my first Hustle lesson.  And then, since turn-about is fair play, I taught him some East Coast swing.  And then all the girls who had been watching wanted to learn swing too.  So I ended up starting off my New Year by beginning to learn a new dance, and then giving swing dancing lessons in my sister’s dining room.  Not a bad start, that.

Now I am in the midst of my last week at Job1 and Job2.  Tomorrow is my last day at Job2, and I’ve gathered that there is going to be some sort of good-bye luncheon.  No one has actually told me this, but they keep accidentally copying me on the e-mails.  Then I’ll take down the things on my bulletin board, return the cup I borrowed from one of them when mine disappeared, make a few last contract files, and say good-bye.

I really hate good-byes.

Sigh.

On Wednesday we had our Family Gift Day, which was mostly lovely, the first part, anyway.  This year AnniPotts and Boy-O collaborated on their presents, which included cleaning out the used book store.  Apparently they found a whole series of really ridiculous romance novels with nerdy heroes (The Nerd Who Loved Me, Nerds Like It Hot, Talk Nerdy To Me, My Nerdy Valentine, etc.), and gave one to each of the girls in the family.  Except Fleur.  She’s not old enough for even the most ridiculous romance novel.  Mariah had already given me my Christmas present (two very nice cardigan sweaters when I was freaking out about not having an office-y enough wardrobe), but she threw in a license plate cover from Fiber Works that says “I’d Rather Be Knitting.” I thought that was pretty cool.  I gave up on trying to finish Mr. T’s cabled socks, and instead gave him a gift card to Olive Garden.  I figure the socks will have to be a birthday present after all.

The hard part was that after we’d done all the fun present giving, Mariah brought out the last of the boxes of Jacob’s stuff, the ones that have been sitting in her living room for months, ever since we moved them out of Sae’s basement.  It seems like no matter how much of Jacob’s stuff we go through and distribute, there’s always more.  Or there was.  I have it on reliable authority that this was the last.  And it better be.  It took us five and a half hours.  It felt like infinitely longer.  At one point I thought we were never going to get out of there.  But we did.  I now have custody of what was Jacob’s stuffed R2D2, his George R.R. Martin books, the letters I wrote him while I was on NET, his The Tick figurine that used to balance on a bit of plastic wall until somehow we lost the wall, and his Baptismal candle, among other things.  And now we’re done.  I think.  I hope.  Please, God, let us be done!

Thursday was better, though I felt like I had a hangover most of the day from the emotional overload the day before.  I kinda just wanted to go home, crawl into bed, and not come out again until the next day, but CO2 was in town for Christmas, and had volunteered to lead our Catholic young adult group in a Posada.  This is a Mexican (and other Spanish speaking countries) tradition in which you act out the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.  Afterwards you have a party, complete with a pinata.  I love pinatas!  So I packed up the vat of Buffalo Chicken Dip I made in my slow cooker, crackers, napkins, rope, and a whiffle ball bat to hit the pinata with.  And I was glad I did.  There’s nothing like whaling on a pinata to chase the holiday blues away.  And our pinata, a very jaunty blue pony, put up a fight!  Everyone got a turn blindfolded, and then we started whacking on it without the blindfold.  It was pretty sweet.  Once it was finally eviscerated we cheerfully adjourned to our meeting room for food & hanging out.  And it was good.

Tonight, in a few minutes I’m heading out to the Welcome Back Dinner for PM (my long lost Minion).  After dinner people are heading over to Tank’s, but I don’t think I’m going to.  I’m just tired.  I want to stay in and, I dunno, paint my nails.  Or something.  Tomorrow is Mariah’s Big New Year’s Eve Party, and then New Years Day is another family day.  We’re not having our Huge Family Party this year.  (We’ve thrown three weddings this year.  That’s enough parties for a while.)  But we’re still going to get together and hang out, and probably go watch Tin Tin.  And somewhere in there I swear I’m going to get some sleep.  Really.

Anyway, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, why, yes, we’ve been having a very nice Christmas.  :)  It’s been an odd Christmas.  Quieter.  Different.  We’ve got kids in the family again, particularly a treasured step-niece who has four families to divide her Christmas between, so we went to the afternoon Christmas Eve Mass instead of Midnight Mass.  This small change meant juggling around our whole schedule for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  For the first time ever in my life we opened our Christmas stockings on Christmas Eve instead of waiting for Christmas morning.  Christmas Day became an odd, formless day of hanging out with the family in between meals.   The most excitement we had was when Boy-O and AP ganged up on me Christmas morning, turning what had been a comfortable coze on the couch into me being tickled mercilessly, while wheezing helplessly with laughter and making a token attempt to defend myself by sortof flailing one arm around in the air.

A lot of us have been moving a little slower this Christmas.  Rosie fell down the steps at Aunt B’s house the day before Christmas Eve, scraped up her arm pretty badly, and twisted her knee horribly.  She had been over there helping paint Aunt B’s living room, her Christmas present to Aunt B and Uncle J.  So she spent her holiday walking with a cane, and icing her knee every twenty minutes.  Yesterday she was able to bend at least mostly comfortably for the first time in days, which was great.  Between her knee and her still-recovering back, she’s been giving the ice packs a work out this December!  I fell also, on the same day.  I caught my foot somehow when I was at the top of the steps on Mom & Dad’s front hill.  I couldn’t catch my balance again, and when I realized that I was about to take a swan dive down the steps, I managed to tip myself sideways into the ivy-covered slope of the hill.  This would have broken my fall almost entirely, if it weren’t for the small terraces Mom’s made in the hill, edged with river stones standing on edge.  Still, I got off pretty easily, with a bruise on my hip and missing some skin on one forearm.  It’s funny – when I get injured, after the being shook up part passes, I feel like a little kid showing off their latest scab or scar or whatever.  I take it around to everybody and make them admire it.  Of course, then I get things like my Dad kissing it to make it better, so maybe there’s a method to my madness.

I had grand intentions of Getting Things Done on the day after Christmas (aka The 1st Day of Christmas).  I was going to maybe finish knitting Mr. T’s socks, and at least get started on sewing myself that gray wool skirt I’ve been daydreaming about, and do some housecleaning, and maybe even a load or two of laundry.  Needless to say, none of that happened.  Well, I did clean the house some, but unfortunately just to that point where the uncleaned parts of the house look even worse, before anything looks any better.  And then somehow it was 6:30, and I needed to get cleaned up before I headed out to Mick’s birthday celebration.

Today has been one of those days at work where time just disappears, like it’s been one long, gray movie montage, and suddenly it’s five o’clock and time to go home and you think, “How did I get here?”  Because of all the holidays and things, I only have one more day here at Job2, and one more at Job1.  Today I got accidentally copied on the e-mail announcing my going away luncheons, and the collection for my good-bye gift.  I’m very excited about my new job, but still, this is hard.  I’ve been very fortunate in my co-workers every place I’ve worked.  I’d like to say that I’ll keep in touch with them, but the truth is that I’m really horrible at keeping in touch with people.  I have the best of intentions, but I never remember to call.  I write letters and then don’t send them.  I still care, I’m just awful at showing it.  So this really is good-bye.  I hate saying good-bye.

Still, it’s Christmas, and a good Christmas, a better Christmas than I’ve had in years!  Tonight is my parents wedding Anniversary (over 40 years – woot!).  All of us are going to gather at the Family Homestead, and make hors d’oeuvre-like things, and hang out.  Maybe we’ll watch a movie.  Mr. T and Sae will hopefully make an appearance, though I heard this afternoon that The Duchess and 007 won’t make it to Dayton in time.  But still, we will be together, and it will be good.  And then tomorrow there will be presents.  :D

Right now my hands smell like pine.  It’s fresh, and clean, and it smells like Christmas.  My hands smell like my house, which right now is rendolent of the fresh pine garlands swagged across the arch between the dining room and living room, and festooned on the lighting fixture in the dining room.  There are even sprigs of greenery poked in among the figures of the manger scene on the mantel (Baby Jesus is hiding behind the big candle off to one side until it’s time for his appearance at midnight on Christmas Eve), not to mention the massive swag currently on the front door.

All of this Christmas green is from the trip AnniPotts, Indy, Mariah and I took out to the Christmas Tree Farm this afternoon.  You see, in my family we don’t decorate until Christmas Eve, and then we decorate up a storm.  This year we’re  having a more low key Christmas than usual, which means taking it easy on the decorations.  For example, we haven’t even opened the box of my grandmother’s antique glass ornaments.  We’re doing just a few things, the really important things.  However, this means that whatever we are decorating, we’re really decorating.  And that means fresh pine.  And while we were picking out things for Mom & Dad’s house, I somehow managed to pick up just a few things for my house too…  And now my hands smell most deliciously of pine.

If you’d like to see more pictures of our Christmas Tree Farm excursion, Indy has posted them over on her blog, including this great one she took of me.  It’s such a perfect Christmas card picture that I had to share it with you guys too.

And now I will go knit some more on Mr. T’s socks.

Then a bit after five, when we decided that we might as well tidy up our desk and head home (or off to the college basketball game, in the case of Big Boss and Boss J), I looked at my calendar, and realized that I was supposed to be at Hospice training down by the Dayton Mall by 6pm.  Well, at first I thought I was supposed to be there by 5:30, but then I double checked the start time and just about melted in relief.  So I hustled myself out the door, and headed to my third session of training to be a Vigil Volunteer.

So by the time 7pm rolled around, I’d already gotten drunk and sobered up again, thrown my last Christmas luncheon for my division, and spent about 45 minutes thinking deeply about death and the dying process.  I was due for some down time.  Wednesday night is swing dancing, but that doesn’t really get going until about 8:45 or 9pm.  I thought about going home for a little while, but the idea of fighting the holiday traffic twice really didn’t appeal.  So I ended up heading over to one of the Big Bookstores, and settling into a chair with a silly romance for a while.

Then, of course, I had a hard time getting up out of that chair again.  I almost didn’t bother.  What made the difference was that I knew that a particular guy was going to be there.  You see, there’s this guy who used to dance in Dayton.  He’s actually the one who taught a lot of the people who taught me.  A while back he moved out to California, and now he only comes back to Dayton once a year at Christmas.  So one night a year, he shows up, and I usually get a dance with him.  He never remembers me, but it’s always a really great dance, and the last two years it’s included him telling me what a wonderful dancer I am.  That’s almost as awesome as the dance.  :D So even though I was tired and in a very weird head space, I got off my duff and went to the dance.  And I’m glad I did.  I kept putting off asking him to dance – first he was hanging out with the people he knows a lot better than me, and then the music wasn’t stuff I wanted to dance to, and then I was getting tired.  But right about when I was ready to leave, a song came on that was just right.  He seemed deep in conversation with one of his friends, so I got Mr. Zoot to go ask her dance so that I could snap him up.  And it worked.  And it was a really great dance.  And now I owe Mr. Zoot an R2D2 beanie.

Today is another weird day.  It’s my last day at work before Christmas, and I’ve got Senioritis real bad.  You know, when you won’t be here much longer, so nothing you do seems to matter all that much.  I’m doing my best to combat it.  I brought in Cinnamon Raisin bread from Panera for the office, and I’m drinking my coffee and trying to stay motivated.  But all I want to do is listen to the same three songs off of Michael Buble’s Christmas album over and over again (White Christmas, Blue Christmas and Cold December Night), refresh Handmade Ryan Gosling looking for updates, and think about sneaking off to the bathroom to knit some more on Mr. T’s Christmas socks.

Man, this is going to be a long day.