Blah blah blah blah. Blah.

Do you ever just feel like being quiet? Sometimes, I do. I seem to have dropped the ball on my one-beautiful-thing-per-day commitment. Well, I guess that's life. Who's perfect? Not I. I've seen quite a few beautiful things and had quite a few beautiful moments in the past few days, but haven't really wanted to share any of them. Sometimes and with some people, I think I'm more open than is expected, and it think it takes people aback, and I can't help it, and I don't really want to try to change it. Authenticity or die. But I can be as evasive as the next Jo. Right now, I don't have very much to say. I've been pouring myself out on paper and copper and people. It's been about all I can do.

'Tis the sixth day of Christmas. Six more to go. In some ways, it's been a much better Christmas for me than it usually is. I think that has a lot to do with actually talking about how Christmas makes me feel, which I've never done before. And my mom's having a better time of it than usual this year. I've been rather inside myself this past month, trying to stay afloat despite the ice in the air. I feel like this blog this month has been devoid of content. Sorry about that. The things about which I'm so passionate and I usually want so badly to talk don't have much sparkle to them right now. In fact, I'm only posting this equally-devoid-of-content entry partly out of a sense of duty and partly because, if I let myself get too far out of the habit of thinking "Hey, I have a blog now, I'd better write this down," I'll forget all about it. I'm probably not even going to proofread this. Probably.

I've been in the downward spiral of self-absorption lately. Do you know the one? It's the one where you squeeze your eyes shut and grit your teeth soooo hard against it, try to ignore the voices and the tightness in your chest, but when you peek a little, it's longer and deeper and no closer to going away, because ignoring what your soul is screaming at you to do only makes your soul more angry, more desperate, clingier and hungrier and colder. Every day I'm trudging up to the surface, inches and a few feet and then a few more inches, and then I trip and fall and slide down, down, all the way back down to the ground. Up, up, up, trip, dooooooown, up, trip, down. Argh! (Did I mention that my period should be starting tomorrow, freaking finally? Glory, hallelujah, it can't come sooner.)

The day after Christmas, Kevin's grandmother was placed in the memory ward of a nursing home because his aunt can no longer take care of her. Christmas night, we told her she was going. Oh, she'd heard about it before. But Grandma has no short-term memory. Zero. Zilch. So she thought it was the first she'd heard of it. That, friends, was not a pleasant conversation. And when we all got up in the morning, she'd completely forgotten who Kevin and I were. While the family moved her furniture, I stayed home with her and we chatted about her life, for about 4 hours. We talked about women's suffrage, her work for the Red Cross during WWII, the rationing, her husband's tours of duty overseas, the civil rights movement, integration of schools, racism, sexism, politics, the sixties, the moon landing. It was great. I love to talk to elderly people about their lives. And she told Kevin's mother that I was such a sweetheart, asked who I was, and wondered if I might come visit her sometime again soon. (I don't know why I told that story. I think I'm rambling.)

Last night was a lovely, lovely night. Kevin and I went to an at-home family birthday party (the best kind!) for a beautiful friend and spent time with her relatives from Sweden, which was a super-huge treat! I can't remember the last time I've enjoyed getting to know new people that much. Maybe I never have. They were some premiumly awesomerrific people. I think I might move to Sweden now. The cheer in the air was medicine for me, and there was so much laughter. In fact, I am laughing now, remembering. Yay.

Well, I think that's enough rambling. If you're still reading, thanks for listening. Break time's over, and it's time to get back to ... what was I reading? Uhhh [shuffling paper] ... the indigenous coinages of Persian-period Palestine as an allegory. Wish me monsters!*



*Obscure Joss Whedon reference.