Holidays On Our Terms

The holidays can be a really tough time. It used to be a lot harder, but this is a time when grief can jump up and twist my ear, bringing tears instantly. A couple years ago it was an unexpected stab from the movie A Christmas Story, yep, the "You'll shoot your eye out!" one, but that scene where they watch the kids come down the stairs and that magic... oof, it hollowed me right out. Even so many years later. A week or so ago I had a sudden hit of sadness, holiday-related, but I just couldn't put a finger on it. Just general "I'm sad we don't have kids" tied to this time of year, that isn't debilitating but does still pop in to say hi. 

Grief is like that -- you can think you're fine and healed and doing great and then just the right trigger reminds you of loss. But the great thing is, the more time that passes and the more acceptance of life as it is, not as it was hoped for...the less it ruins your day. 

Anyway, because we don't have kids, we can tweak our traditions. We can rearrange things to suit our needs. 

And so, we had our Christmas today. Like, full on breakfast/stockings/music/under-the-tree presents, the whole deal. Why today? Because tomorrow we will be on the phone with, on zooms with, and in person with family. This is a good thing -- but in the past we would open a present (we are very slow and appreciative of each one), then get a call, then get back to our thing, then get a call, and people always thought we should be done by the time they called. We never were. It made for a very interrupted experience.

So, when it's just you and your husband and the cat, you can say "Guess what? Christmas Eve is now OUR Christmas." No one calls, the day is totally ours, and we can draw out our traditions as much as we'd like. It is quite delightful. 

We also moved our big tree. God, that sounds bougie. We got a fake tree a year or two into being in this house, and we've never looked back. I think it's 7.5 feet tall, which is monstrous, and we usually rearrange furniture to put it in front of a big window in the living room. We also have a smaller tree that has moved around (sometimes in our bedroom, sometimes on the stairs landing in the window, sometimes in the first floor bedroom/guest room/Bryce's D&D room). It looks kind of like a cedar (particularly if you squint) and we hang an assortment of owls, gnomes, and wooden snowflakes on it. 

Well, we didn't like the idea of rearranging furniture, especially because we were behind on getting the tree up. We also really like the seating setup we have now. So...we put the cedar tree on a table in the living room, and put the big tree in the dining room. Because we can! We have a smattering of snow in the following pictures because we had a brief covering that promptly melted, but for a second we had a white pre-Christmas.

We keep some traditions just the same, like our photo card:

I loved the picture of Lucky on the back so much that I ordered a photo ornament so he can always be an angel on our tree. 

And, my annual Book Flood from Bryce that I am SO excited to crack into: 

Also, Eggi enjoyed the new tree locale (doesn't hurt that Bryce made the lowest ring of ornaments cat toys):

And we have some fun new ornaments: 

D&D ornament from me to Bryce

Annual Danforth Pewter ornament for us (I also get the annual Snowflake Bentley ornament)

Per Bryce's tag to me, a "literate sea unicorn"

And from the side, since it's so stinking cute! 

We love our traditions. We love that we can shake them up every once in a while to make them more us. We love our family of two (plus Eggi). 

Happy Holidays from our family to yours! 

Lightening the Load/Getting Rid of "Stuff"

I am finally on Winter Holiday Break! Wahoo, two weeks of rest and rejuvenation. 

But also, two weeks with space to do some work about the house that I tend to push to the back burner more often than not. 

Bryce and I are dedicated to getting rid of things. Going through, sorting, deciding, and letting go of things we do not need or are hanging on to out of obligation or "shoulds." 

Sometimes it's hard, though. 

In our craft/guest room (that now has a sign on it declaring it my best friend's "place"), we have a recliner. It's quite comfy, but HUGE. Mostly, because it's a recliner, yes, but also a glider. And it was originally bought for our nursery. By my mother-in-law. 

Technically, the nursery was too small for it, so it was in the nook outside the nursery.

Now, it's in a room where it takes up a ton of space, and with the futon taking over the daybed, we don't really need it.

Yep, that's a Jeff Goldblum mermaid sequin pillow. That's signed on the back.

Now that I've taken a picture of it, it doesn't look as abused as I feel it is. You can't see all the places the cats (mostly Lucky) have shredded the piping and the upholstery with tiny threads we keep snipping. I think we could give it to Goodwill (with a good vacuuming). It just holds a lot of emotional weight. 

There are a handful of things, mostly in that room, left over from the nursery. One is the dresser that I use to hold gift wrapping and packing things, and the other is the 6-cube shelf that butts up to the daybed and currently holds mostly my embarrassingly huge puzzle collection. I'm thinking of putting the dresser in the closet to make more space and to move things we don't use that often out of the main space. 

We'd like to put our musical instruments in this room, and figure out how to make it a bit more...cohesive. Maybe I should give a more honest picture of the current chaos (it is also the Wrapping Room currently!): 

It's also where my exercise bike lives, and the Puzzling Table/Wrapping Table that handily drops both leaves.

Good gracious this is a terrible view: dresser, cube, wrapping organizer, craft supplies, puzzles

Music stand, unmanaged detritus... 

See how easy it is to make things look different than reality with camera angles? Ha. 

I did take my violin out recently (I need to get new strings and have it tuned up/inspected). I was happy to learn that I haven't forgotten how to play (although man I have to build up callouses again, my poor fingers!) Bryce has several guitars, and he's more likely to play them if there's a dedicated, uncluttered space. It makes sense to move/get rid of stuff in that room.

This room has literally never been a child's room -- the people who lived here before us were flippers, and the people before that built the house and never had children. This was a craft room then too, but held a giant dollhouse (not creepy at all). It feels different than when we repurposed a room that was meant to house a child.

It will probably feel uplifting to move out some of the repurposed nursery things. But also, we feel a tiny bit of guilt. Even all these years later, to get rid of something someone bought us for a baby that never was feels somehow ungrateful. Logically we know that's not a thing, but emotionally it feels icky. 

Still, getting rid of things we don't use/need and making space for the things that bring us joy is a priority right now. We joke that all our stuff is destined for Goodwill anyway (no kids to inherit), but there is sadness in that. Looking at people who are ahead of us in years, it will be so much easier if we chip away at things before we have to downsize. 

I think we'll reframe this task as a Lightening, rather than a loss. We are making sure that our home suits our purposes and doesn't become a burden of things. We are prioritizing what matters to us and jettisoning the rest. 

Bonus Day

Last week was rough. Honestly, this whole school year has been particularly punishing. I have been eating my lunch anywhere from 1:30 to after 3, I'm pretty sure I gave myself a UTI by not peeing enough during the day, and I feel like I'm flitting from one crisis to another. The kids are lovely -- sometimes there are dysregulated moments but it's nothing I can't handle. It's more my schedule, the two grade levels, the adults, and interesting choices made by upper administration. It becomes SO MUCH. I was at school until 7 multiple days last week and just fried when I got home. If teaching were solely about the kids it would be amazing, but there's all this other crap that bogs us down.

I made it to Friday morning despite the full moon and the lovely "do more with less" and "make it work" structural philosophy of modern public education. I was exhausted. I went to crawl out of bed around 6:30 (late for me) when my phone buzzed. 

It was a somewhat cryptic message from the school district -- "We are aware of the widespread power outages impacting our schools and families, please stay tuned for more updates."

Then, just a little bit later, "If your child is waiting for a bus outside, please bring them inside. If your child has already been picked up by their bus, they are warm and safe. If we close they will be returned to your home." 

Okay, that sounded super promising. I was faced with a dilemma -- get dressed or don't get dressed? I chose to get dressed, because reverse psychology of course. 

And then... the "we're closed" text and call came in. 

What a wonderful, wonderful time to teach in my district but NOT live there! I had power, and heat (it was 9 degrees F out). 

If you aren't a teacher (or don't live with one), there is no way to explain the utter joy of an unplanned bonus day off. Whenever we take time off, either a personal day (which are very limited) or a sick day, we have to make sure we have plans that cover every minute of every day. We have to take what often lives in our head and make it doable by someone who we may or may not know, depending on availability. It is sometimes a lot easier to just suck it up and go in. If we have planned days off, that's typically when we have doctor's appointments and obligations that we can't do during the school day. So a bonus day... it's nothing but freeeee! 

I didn't go back to bed, but I did sit on the couch with my book. I cocooned. I took two naps. I worked on a puzzle. I got back in pajamas. IT. WAS. GLORIOUS. 

It was exactly what I needed. 

I thought about my friends who also teach in my district but don't live there, and how the ones with kids would have some free time since their child/ren would be at school and they didn't have to be. 

I also thought about how lovely it is that I can just veg on the couch and not have to take care of anyone else. It was one of those "because I don't have kids" moments that make me smile. 

I am proud that I didn't fill my time with work. I am proud that I didn't open my laptop ONCE. I took the rest I needed. (And oh, did I need it.) 

What a lovely, lovely gift.