Macy's Parade Rest in Peace

This is going to be a hard holiday for me this year. When my sister was well and we all thought we were invincible, I would fly to her house after finishing work on Wednesday so we could cook together. Naturally, her being a chef, she would have done all the shopping already and have some of the stuff prepared. I used to beg her to wait for me, but she had these lists, and they were made in order of prep and they had to be accomplished so that everything could be turned out on time.

She was a master at cooking, she made everything look so easy and it was fun besides. We would be in our own little world in her big kitchen, laughing, listening to music and making fun of the dog, Reggie, waiting for a morsel of food to drop. The best was when he got a garlic clove. We couldn't go near him all day. The dinner time was the absolute best, with great friends and family, jokes, and telling old stories, and then, of course, the big napping and snoring during the afternoon digestion.

Last Thanksgiving, only one year after one of those memorable ones where she was running the entire deal, she was bedridden and unable to eat anything. She thought she might have felt well enough to come to my Dad's, just have something to eat, and go home, but she felt tired and needed to spend the day in his bed while the rest of us ate a somber dinner at the table, trying to convince ourselves we would get through this. My little sister slipping away from us and I could do nothing to stop the rock rolling down the hill.

On the back of my Ipod I had engraved, "It was grim. Move On." because, like now, I can relive this with gut-wrenching accuracy, and I cannot keep doing that. I am going to a house of laughter today, my extended family of dear friends with whom I share a history and shorthand of language and I will have fun because I am still here and I have to live for both of us.

Drama Tonight

Just getting ready to teach my psych class in the graveyard slot - 7-10 after these folks have already worked a full day. Tonight they are going to enact a school meeting and I hope their acting chops are accessible. It has been fun to try to make these classes fun, stimulating and to have them learn something they can use. Being the professor is weird to me, but I'm getting used to it. The students are bright and challenging and I have grown to care for them and want them to be successful counselors. I heard someone say once, "On your way up the ladder of success, pull someone up with you". Macaroons await after class for my two friends who let me stay at their "hotel" so I don't have to make the long drive at night. Family, especially at the holidays, looks very different to me these days.

Slave to Home Delivery of the NYTimes

Getting the Times delivered to my door every day has enslaved me to getting dressed earlier than I want to so that I can walk to the end of the driveway and not freak out the neighbors in my sleepwear. I must stay on top of the swiftly mounting pile of yesterday's news and then lug them to the friendly recycling center, which adds a new assignment to my supposedly carefree regime. The other assignment is feeling compelled to read it cover to cover every day or suffer overwhelming guilt of "wasting" something I am paying for. Is there such a thing as being too informed...the worst is starting to read a story about discovering skeletons of torture victims in Guatemala and then seeing the bright shiny object in a Kenneth Cole ad and abandoning the article while I swoon over that beautiful jacket, shoe, watch....

Tonight I ordered some Christmas gifts including some hot sauce called Possible Side Effects for my cousin to whom no sauce is ever quite hot enough for him..

Baby Steps

This is one way to get me writing again. In the past year I have gone through "enormous changes at the last minute". Not going into that yet. Sunday night and it has been a few months of these where that dread of Monday morning is not there anymore, now that I don't have to report anywhere for a nine to five. Today was a great day. I cooked a lot and my 83 year old Dad came over and we actually fixed my shower together. There was no way I thought what he was telling me to do would solve the problem, but, what the hell is a monkey wrench between family. When it worked without water running down the wall, it was like having him back in that magical arena when I was a little girl and he could astound me with anything.