Here we are, between the end and the beginning, between major holidays, just poised and waiting for a new year/phase/life to begin (with apologies to TiMoune in Once on This Island). Christmas was good, with several days of feasting and celebrating, and now it’s quiet, with my girls gone to their other houses, and much of the business world stopped or in slow motion. I’m still running behind on about a hundred projects (maybe not that many), and trying to plan my new year. There’s that list of things I want to do, and the list of things I have to do. There are the fun things and the “wish…

I get giddy around the holidays. I already blogged this, so hit the snooze button now and move on. But I just love Christmas. (Lather, rinse, repeat…) Did I mention that I love Christmas? I do. We have been shopping and bustling and baking and decorating. We’re having about three different Christmases, if not more, as kids come and go to and from various houses. It is weird not to have one Christmas Eve and one Christmas Day with everyone you know and love all together in one house. But this is more like the Twelve Days of Christmas, I suppose. I’m trying to like it, even if there are…

It’s official. I had my annual Christmas meltdown last week. I had been running around trying to meet these ridiculous expctations that I had set for myself when I finally sat on the top stair and burst into tears. I’m glad to have gotten it over with so early. I usually like to have my Christmas meltdown a little closer to the actual holiday, but I had out-of-town relatives coming in to visit, and for crying out loud (har har), I couldn’t not be ready. I blame my family entirely, of course. My sisters are excellent cooks, my sisters-in-law handy with the gift baskets, my brothers are wine connoisseurs, and…

Faith, hope, love, these three abide, but the greatest of these is love. Really. What do I believe in now? Not sure. But I know that I believe. In something. I have written here how I lost my spiritual faith in the loss of my marriage (collateral damage, I guess), and how I have spent the past few years fumbling in the darkness toward — something or nothing, never quite sure what. I was pretty sure that it would never return because what is faith but a crock of shit anyway? Like believing in aliens or crop circles, like believing in fairies and dragons, something for children to play with,…

(Brilliant idea shamelessly stolen from Joshilyn Jackson) 1. He makes me laugh.2. He makes our kids laugh.3. He makes my friends and family laugh.4. When he laughs, everybody laughs.5. His eyes are this beautiful gold-brown color.6. They light up when he laughs or smiles.7. He knows some really obscure trivia (sports, music and otherwise).8. He also knows everything you ever wanted to know about music in the 70s, 80s and beyond.9. Sometimes that kind of knowledge can be frightening.10. He is a good dancer.11. He likes to stop whatever he is doing and take me on a little foxtrot around the room. Usually when I’m doing dishes or cooking.12. He…