This Blog Is Not Dead

It's just resting.

Well, hello, and happy 2009, everybody! I hope you all had mightily good holidays and are chock full of new year's resolutions. I made some, but I'm not telling what they were; everyone knows that telling is an automatic jinx against your success, so mum's the word. Not telling. Nope. Uh-uh. They had nothing to do with exercise and writing, no, no, they did not, so quit asking. Still not telling.

On an unrelated note: I actually set off TWO (2) smoke alarms while cooking my supper tonight. Two! And weird, the food wasn't even burned. Thankfully, none of my resolutions involved improving myself in the area of cooking, so we're good there.

And how did your holidays go? Mm? Mine went just peachy. I drove the horrendously boring 11-hour trip back home in two pieces, first to Oklahoma City to stay the night with my b(r)other AJ (Hi Jeffrey!) & his family, then the final stretch the next day to the mothership (with two nephews in tow, w00t!). Staying with AJ and his peeps was pure fun, man. I think maybe he was just the skoshiest bit worried about the domestic chaos awaiting me there, but you've gotta remember that I live a pretty quiet life so I was really digging all the crazyass nonsense that comes with stuffing seven people into a house and shaking it hard until something explodes. (Disclaimer: it wasn't really crazyass. I just wanted to say crazyass. Crazyass. Well, it was a little crazyass.) Anyhoo, there was beer and card playing and cursing by minors and guitar string plucking and nail polishing and carousing. Yes, indeedy, there was. It was good. And it didn't scare me at all.

Then it was on to my mum's house, where we packed in the numbers and all got along just fine, if you ask me. High number on the head count was 19, I think, although I might be missing some. I feel so fortunate to come from a family that truly enjoys spending time together, even if we had to (once again) learn that playing Pictionary always leads to the stomping off of at least one player. Hey, we can laugh about it later, as long as that person is out of the room. We played some board games and Wii games and watched a lot of movies. My sister-in-law, Nougat, built us some mighty impressive fires in the fireplace (thanks, Nougat!). I spent the night at my sister's house, where we played Mario Kart and screamed out loud on the tight turns. There was knitting, oh, lawsy, was there ever knitting! You remember Andy, yes? He knitted. And my two nieces have gotten quite good at the fiber arts, I must say. I made two scarves and started in on a bag, and my sister the stuck-up ho made a purse. Down time is good.

I stayed long enough to get really comfortable with having a house full of people around me, which was just so...nice (deep sigh). On the drive home I kept looking around for someone to talk to, but it was just me and my iPod, whose battery was running low. I couldn't make my peace with the quietness, which was a bit of a problem since I live alone and don't make just a whole lot of noise. Now that I'm back, I find myself wishing to return to a house full of peoples, even if it does mean cooking and sharing bathrooms and taking very short, lukewarm showers.

The good news is that I'll see everyone again in six short months at the beach, at which point I will have gotten used to my own simple life again and will spend the first three days wondering why everyone will not just shut the heck up. And then I'll get used to the chaos and start liking it. And then I'll leave and be sad without it. So you see? All life is a circle.

I bet you've missed my little philosophical musings, haven't you?

Enough already. After all, my keyboard's been dormant for so long that I don't want to break it by writing a long post. Let's just sneak up on this writing thing, why don't we, WHICH IS NOT ONE OF MY NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS SO QUIT ASKING ME ABOUT IT ALREADY, WOULD YOU?!

Geesh. Happy New Year.