DELVING BETWEEN THE TOES OF LIFE....I AM TOEJAM


2005-12-21 - 12:20 p.m.

Dear Diary,

Next year, I PROMISE, that I will like Christmas. But please, just one more year, let me be a total bah humbug and let me not feel guilty about it. Please?

Remember those years when I actually wrote out over 1oo Christmas cards and actually MAILED THEM?? Back when I was working two jobs and always had a lot of stuff going on? Oh...but that was back before I started wearing sweatpants or boxer shorts to bed and I actually had to get dressed in the morning instead of wandering around pretending that wearing sweatpants for the day was intentional. That was also back when I got up at 8 in the morning. A REASONABLE TIME. Not 4 am like recent life previous or NOON like life now. That was also before I was an internet junkie. I would get up at 8 am and I would make coffee and while it was brewing I would get a paper (if it was a weekend) or make a to-do list or arrange tasks and then I would sit at my dining room table and LIVE. I would do life like things. Pay bills, write letters, accomplish things, write Christmas cards!! I was well on my way to being a very successful human. I used to decorate my house for Christmas! I used to be excited to buy presents! I used to love Christmas!

And then...Being human lost it's charm.

I got internet. I started using the dining room table for everything BUT life. I started wearing sweatpants to bed. I started working five lunches a week (and six dinners!) instead of just 2 or 3 so getting up at 8 was just enough time to shower and dress and get to work. Christmas time became issue laden and ordealish...I began to hate every last detail about it. I stopped sending cards and eventually lost energy for even buying presents for my family which is something I used to like doing. I feel bad buying presents for my family now because I hate buying presents SO MUCH and I feel like that isn't fair...to give them presents I had no joy in finding for them.

This year we have a tree. A very pretty little live tree that we will plant in the ground when we are done looking at the beaded, glistened version of him.

Also...Christmas is NOT ordealish in any way this year. (though it is still rather issue laden)

And believe it or not...I am a slightly less stressed than I have been in the past. I am beginning to relax every so slightly.

And yesterday I felt a tinge, just a tiny, tiny glimmer, of Christmas spirit. I don't know where it came from or why...but it was there. Maybe it's because here in Spain they don't OVERDO Christmas like we do back in the States. It's subtle here. There are SOME Christmas decorations and there is SOME hustle and bustle added to the stores. And Barcelona WAS a madhouse the other day but the energy people were giving off was not that intense, high pitched stress feel people in the States give off this time of the year when trying to get Christmas done. I wonder if people here load the car down with gifts and children and drive around to this part of the family and that part of the family all day long on Christmas? I get the feeling, NOT. I get the feeling that Christmas here is subtle...maybe after a couple years...living with increasingly less stress in my blood, maybe learning to get up at a reasonable hour and implementing a morning routing that DOES NOT involve staring at the internet for an hour (or more) while drinking my coffee, learning to get out of my sweatpants and into clothes at some point in the day...maybe after a couple years of Christmas not being an ordeal, of dealing with WHY I have issues to beging with about Christmas...maybe in a couple years I won't hate Christmas so much and I will send cards again! I want to send cards again!

But not yet.

This year I am still going to be a bah humbug. Even though I love our little live tree and I get to wear my Mexican circle skirt again on Saturday when we go to Barcelona for Christmas Eve dinner with Alejandro and his family.

Also...by the way...even though I think THREE WEEKS is totally excessive AND the whole FLYING BACK WITH ME thing irritates the fuck out of me....Talking Girl can do whatever she wants. If she wants to stay here for five months, SHE CAN. Because yesterday I picked up my messages from my U.S. cell phone and there she loyally was (she is the only person (except my mother) who has kept me in her life after I left) announcing that she was going to sing me a Christmas carol every day until Christmas. And there were already two carols left in message form on there. And that is just cool and wonderful of her.

Still though...bah humbug.

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