A Toast to One More Christmas Miracle!

Honestly, gang. Yesterday was one of those days that, for the most part, did not go very well.

The leg issues continued to make it really difficult for me to do anything that required that I get out of bed. It was discouraging and frustrating and then the director of Tell My Bones, who is still here from NYC for the holidays, texted me midday to say that he and his husband and a small group of influentials from town (meaning the whole LGBTQ infrastructure — arts, symphony, theater, politics) were getting together for brunch at the Granville Inn. Would they see me there?

No way. My god. Not only could I barely walk but I had officially gone into the realm of having “sea hag” hair — I mean, my hair really looked that bad. So there was just no way that any kind of networking whatsoever was going to happen with me yesterday, and that was depressing.

You know, I really like to make a memorable impression on people, but not because I have the most hideous hair imaginable.

Plus, I’m not 100% sure yet how I feel about networking in the town. I don’t live in the town, but the town is only 20 miles from here. And I moved here to be isolated and anonymous and tucked away in the middle of nowhere so that I could have a ton of privacy and just write. Have peace and quiet. Because I actually am an amazing networker, but once I get going, my life gets stupefyingly busy. And these days, seriously, I just want to write.

Still, it was depressing — the whole situation with my legs. And I have some family garbage going on now, too (adoptive family), which wasn’t helping my mood at all.

But then, at around 9 pm, for no discernible reason whatsoever — because I hadn’t even been able to do yoga since Friday — my legs suddenly were completely fine. Back to normal. No pain. No hobbling around. No problems doing the stairs. Nothing. I was just back to normal. And I’m still fine here this morning.

Clearly, a post-Christmas miracle, gang!

However, now I think there’s something the matter with the sun. It is almost 7:30am here and the sun hasn’t come up. It’s not even close to coming up — except for the streetlights, the world is dark outside my windows. So maybe at 9pm last evening I died and went to some sort of Purgatory and I just haven’t figured it out yet…

Either way, dead or alive, I’m planning to have a really good day. Wash my hair. Manicure. Pedicure. Probably even shave my legs, although I wouldn’t want to get too exuberant. The dead of winter is still ahead of us (more snow coming later this week) so who the heck is going to actually see me in all my loveliness, unencumbered by an arctic coat, scarf, mittens, ear muffs — well, I just don’t know. But still it makes me happy to know that underneath all the deep-freeze stuff, I will look super presentable.

All righty.

I’m thinking that either New Year’s Day or the day after, I will spend the day taking down the tree and putting everything away. And I’m going to try to figure out a way to pack everything so that I don’t end up feeling overwhelmed again when unpacking it next Christmas. I want Christmas to be happy again.

I feel like I’ve been doing a really good job of letting go of the past — the old house, in particular. And since 98% of the Christmas stuff I have now comes from the old house, there are potential minefields all over the place for me. You know, there was so much about the old house that I loved — especially Buster, Bunny, and Fluffy, who all came with me from the East Coast. And my piano. And all of my roses — I had so many roses at the old house, including old garden roses, which I just adored. I had so many flowers there, in general. And an old maple tree, and several mulberry trees, plus an arbor and an old swing — all of it is gone now. And that whole period of my life wound up being an absolute nightmare. Just unbearable. So I just don’t have the luxury of “looking back” in any way. Just keep moving forward. Do whatever I can to disconnect myself from that whole era.

And I think I’ve been doing a really good job. I had a happy Christmas. A quiet one, but a happy one. I know it’s not going to stay quiet like this forever. In 2020, I’ll have to leave home a lot more, go out into the world again, meet more amazing people. But for now, I’m here in my sanctuary, loving every moment of it. Feeling just so blessed that I lived long enough to find this place.

The sun seems to be coming up. Apparently it is quite an overcast day out there. But we’ll see how it goes. I am once again out of milk! So, clearly, I have been drinking too much coffee around here this month. (You know, there was a time when I drank one cup of coffee a day and the rest of the time, I drank tea. And really good tea, too. The kind you had to order specially, in those beautiful tins. And I still have a number of teapots, but I don’t know — somewhere along the line, my life became all about coffee, and subsequently, all about the milk…)

Wow, well, the sun seems to be trying to come out. Here is what it looks like outside one of my bedroom windows right now. (In winter, you can more easily see just how close I live to the church, which is why, during the summer months, when all the windows are open, I can hear the church bells when they chime — a thing I have always loved. The church is just behind that white house with the black shutters.)