introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- pretty good year the day before the last good day - thirtieth of december, 2002 "tears on the sleeve of a man. don't wanna be a boy today."~tori amos its been a wierd couple of weeks. work finally wrapped up for the year on the twenty second and i'm temporarily gainfully unemployed, collecting my unemployment checks while enjoying a break from the bustle of the mall. and its really nice. sleeping in. getting up and cleaning. cooking and enjoying the days by myself and the evenings with toby and the occasional visitors. my little brother and sister are home from their respective distances: my brother from penn state, ever the neo-hippy; my sister from boston and her job at northeastern university. its strange to have all of us in one town again and quite frankly, i like it. christmas morning was gorgeous with our tree all lit up and glowing against the cream and gold of crystal and glass. it was a taste of the christmas' we used to celebrate and i can't wait for my little brother (the only one of us besides myself that still celebrates it on some level) to see it. i forgot how my father's glass icicles made the tree look. i am very proud of our first christmas tree. and i know that we're lucky to have these ornaments....when we thought that dad had smashed them all, a few ellusive boxes at the back. its like having a few shards of my family when it was different. and i know they're worth a lot of money...but there's no way i could ever sell them because that would be like...selling the memories of my family together on christmas mornings opening presents in our pajamas. of my mother in her nightgown. my father in his slippers. wrapping paper in neat piles...we were never rippers. but this year was beautiful. we didn't get to nashville and i know toby was sad and missed his family, but i don't think this was a half bad effort. there were a million presents under the tree and stockings overflowing and it was just the two of us. after we opened presents, we went to my mother's house. she made belgian waffles and strawberry sauce and we each enjoyed the traditional can of reddi-whip of our christmas waffle past. it wasn't christmas breakfast...just breakfast, this year. but it was all of us...except for my dad, who was on the road. after breakfast, we went to the movies....something we never really did on christmas. toby always went but we usually just stayed home and spent the day together. my little brother and toby and i saw the new LOTR and mom and my sister saw Maid in Manhattan. we all met back at the house afterwards for dinner. there was a lot of snow. things are going well, save for our car whose transmission has tragically died a death that left it melted to the engine block. but thats all covered and the galant will be back on the road tomorrow. i've been not eating red meat for about two months now and have lost a healthy amount of weight. the first marks the no more meat date. i've decided to keep eating fish and seafood, however, because i like them too much to give them up. and its not like i'm forever munching on lobster tail, anyway. i'm pretty excited and have found a few cool recipes that we've really loved including some vegetarian chili. it looks like its going to be a really good year coming up. we've both got jobs. we've both settled into each other comfortably and times, no matter how hard, have become challenges that just make our relationship stronger. there are so many goals this year....plans for returns to college, moving... its been a rough year for us. but we've had good friends, tight family, and each other to get us through. its been character building. still, pretty good year. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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