Sorry…

I should be updating more often, I know. *sigh* All my journals have gone wordless lately, despite holidailies. I have a couple of pics to share, and promise to really really be better about updating. I have been knitting A LOT lately.

Currently my Big Project is the mariah from the winter knitty. I’m using Paton’s Classic Wool in dark grey mix. My first sweater! I am skeptical about it really turning into a sweater, but we will see. Almost done with the arms.

For the driving/waiting around in places where it isn’t convenient to be looking at charts, I have started a boucle scarf in seed stitch for myself.

And lastly there’s a secret project that may or may not be a scarf from SnB for the husband. (I was supposed to finish it before christmas, but as it turns out I started it this week.)

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When I Grow Up

So I’m not allowed to work or go to school while I’m waiting out this immigration thing. Which isn’t always so bad. I get to stay up late, sleep in, and almost never have to put on respectable clothing. I can drink coffee all morning and not worry about having to find a bathroom later in the day. I can sit in front of the computer all day, writing nanonovels and dreaming of employment. Dreaming of school, too. But I can’t actually do that.

On the other hand, though, I miss having money. I miss being able to walk into a store and not feel guilty about buying some new knitting needles. I miss having stuff to think about, people who need me. Sure people need me, but there isn’t always that constant hum of stuff going on in the back of my head. No amount of self-directed projects is going to restart the humming.

I’ve always had a fear of the future. I’ve always been afraid to commit to a career. Everything I’ve done has been “temporary” or “just until I figure out what I want to do.” I’ve spent a whole lot of time feeling sorry for myself, telling myself that one day I will go back to school. I’ve even gone back to school a little bit, and failed pretty miserably. In case you guys are wondering, the month after breaking up with someone is not the time to return to school, no matter how much of a good idea it seems at the time. The distraction of school doesn’t keep you from being sad.

I was going to be a whole bunch of things at some point in my life. Nail tech, hairstylist, dentist, which my cousin urged me not to do because I would get AIDS. (This was a long long time ago.) Attorney, and then judge, professional actor/singer/jlo. Damn that jlo for stealing my thunder. Math teacher, computer somethingorother, CPA, Hawaiian studies activist/teacher/Hawaiian issues attorney, psychologist, journalist, novelist, English professor, letter carrier, photographer.

Obviously none of those stuck.

But in less than a month I will be 29. I can remember when my mother was 29. I need to figure this shit out. I need to decide, I need to take charge and deal with it. There was a time when people would pressure me to talk about it. Not everyone can understand the thing where I don’t know what I want to do. The thing where I don’t want to talk about what I want to do. The thing where I’m deathly afraid of picking the wrong thing, of finding myself twenty years from now, unhappy in my career choice. I don’t know how I became this person. The kids I went to school with are settling comfortbly into their jobs. They are commiting to something and making it work, having babies, supporting families. They don’t seem to be threatened by the prospects of a bad choice.

I am still afraid.

Lately I’ve been thinking about my future again. In that obsessive way that I tend to do, where I don’t think about anything else, and read every single thing I can about a given subject. Well, this month it’s nursing. Nursing! I’m really excited about this, but you never know with me. Sometimes I get excited about stuff and then three months from now I have a new thing to be excited about.

It’s a big deal that I’m telling you people.

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Bring Back Christmas

Last night we went to a Christmas party at msh’s co-workers’s house. How the heck do you say that? Two of his co-workers, so it’s not co-worker’s, it’s possessive plural. Anyhow we had a merry time and had way too much to drink. msh ended up passing out on the couch at the party, and I ended up barfing my bowels up several hours later.

Today we are ok. Of course it’s 11PM now and it’s taken this long for me to sit down and be able to write a something without my brain hurting from too much thinking.

Speaking of thinking, I was doing a bit of that today. I was thinking about how msh’s co-workers are really cool and fun. I mean how often is it that you can hang out with people you work with all week, after the mandatory time-spending-together period is over?

Two weeks ago we had mexican night here at our place. We invited a bunch of his co-workers and made party snacks and margaritas. msh made two kinds of salsa and the yummiest guacamole ever. Then he even made 7-layer dip, which was a million times better than the 7-layer dip that the local Safeway doesn’t sell. I made my very own corn tortillas. How bad-ass is that? And then I didn’t stop there! I made taquitos! Full of beefy sour creamy goodness.

Last friday night I went to a local bar with said co-workers. They (msh and co-workers) had been there since a late lunch holiday-type party. Isn’t it great that after sitting there all day with each other, after working with each other all week long, they are still sitting in that bar (of course that wasn’t ALL of them, but a good number of us were still there until around 11 that night,) having a great time? I don’t think I’ve ever worked someplace like that.

So the point of this entry wasn’t so much to tell you that msh’s co-workers rock and that I’m oh so impressed with how much fun a bunch of computer geeks can have, but more to show you something else.

You see until this year, Christmas had lost a lot for me. It’s not like I lost a family member or anything. I know how that kind of thing tends to put a damper on Christmas, but no, nothing like that. The past few Christmases have been pretty crappy though. I’m starting to see now that there’s a reason for that that has less to do with where I was in my personal life, but more to do with the transition you go through, where your holiday traditions are no longer the same as the ones you grew up with. I feel like there was a grace period. Life is one way when your parents are around, but now that they aren’t, I need to figure this shit out for myself. No one is going to do it for me… Perhaps some examples will make me sound less confused. Let’s take a trip back, shall we?

Last year I actually had to work on Christmas day. Express mail is delivered 365 days of the year. After that I went home. Played with the cats. Loafed. We skipped Christmas. No tree, no lights, no gifts. It was pretty depressing. I was still adjusting to living alone. I didn’t even open my Christmas box and hang stockings. I figured no one was coming to fill them, so I wouldn’t go to the trouble. I worked long hours in the days before and after Christmas, so aside from the fact that everyone else in the world was celebrating, it didn’t seem that bad.

Ok, who am I kidding? It was pretty bad. At least I had cats. And with all that work there was no time for co-worker get-togethers. I’m sure some of them got together in their own little groups, but I wasn’t included in any of those.

The year before was bad as well. Not only was I homesick, but I was trapped in a not so great relationship. It’s sad when you read that entry – you can see how I pretend to be okay with the lack of tree. I pretended to be okay with more than I should have. But that’s not the kind of thing you can see when it’s going on. I had just started delivering mail, so I was totally new to the office. If there were office holiday celebrations, I knew nothing of them.

The year prior to that was lost. The entry, I mean. Swallowed into the depths of the internet. I don’t remember what went on, aside from the fact that it was my first Christmas not with family. The first one I was in Washington for, the first one where hearing my parents’ voice was the closest I could get to being home. I remember that some people had invited us over to their home for Christmas, and we were too damn anti-social to go. I always regret that. We should have gone. And even though he didn’t want to, I should have gone alone.

The people I worked with at the time weren’t the kind of people I wanted to hang out with outside of work. It was hard enough to stomach most of them for the 9 hours a day that I was forced to. Needless to say there was no holiday party at that company.

And the year before that (2000) was the first Christmas I have archived here. In 2000 I was employed by a good-sized company that held Christmas parties for each store, and a large one at a local hotel for the entire company. A small group of us would get together regularly for drinks and karaoke. That was the closest thing I had to this fun bunch of people that msh works with. Of course, that was also the year I went to my friend’s house and that drama with the married ass went down.

Not only is it hard to find a Really Good work situation, but it’s equally as hard to build your own Christmas memories. Likeable ones that don’t suck in comparison to the ones you had when you were a kid. It’s hard to come out of the perfect childhood, move away from home, and try to create new traditions, assemble pieces of happiness, bring back Christmas.

So far this Christmas has been great. I’ve been playing all my Christmas CDs and watching Christmas movies. We got our tree today! A TREE! I’m so excited. We have these two cedar trees in front of our house and msh said we could put lights up! I’ve never had my very own trees outside with lights! This year, aside from the fact that I can’t work and am on what promises to be a long waiting list for that to be resolved, and despite the fact that I once again will not be able to be with my parents for Christmas, will be different. It’s already shaping up to be really fucking good. I have friends and family. I may still be pretty darn anti-social, but I’ve already gone out and done more in the past year than I had in the previous three. This Christmas I won’t be loafing on the couch. I won’t be crying in a closet. I’ll be at home, surrounded by food and family and love. I’ll be busy creating new Christmas memories. I’ll be happy.

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