mk's day off (cue song by Yello...)

(**bawp, bawp, chk, chickachickaaaaahh**)

What does a girl do when she's coughing her brains out, can't hear out of one ear, and feels like her eyes will go popping into her soup with the next sneeze? Why, blog about it of course!

I won't add any more grisly details, to spare you the discomfort I have experienced for 5 days now. I've got medicine and it's starting to work, but for a "common cold" it's stayed uncommonly long. During that time I have swum through (swum? swam? very awkward word) life; a golden bowls party at my house, the lights in Hampden, and a super kid's birthday party (his dad made his cake look like the legion of doom, complete with dry ice and swamp that it hovered over mysteriously). It was awesome. Hack hack, sneeze. 

So this morning I dropped off A at school, and D arranged to have his sainted dad pick A up after school. They're still over at the house, playing cards and eating candy, no doubt. I spent my day watching the Food Network, How It's Made, and What Not to Wear. All day. I did crochet a couple of animals, but this is the most "wasted" time I have had at my disposal for a long, long time. I really love TV. Especially when you can pause it and skip the commercials. I know I would feel terrible about myself if I did watch that much tv every day, but I could easily do it. My sisters can tell you that all other functions shut down when I am watching TV, making me apt to miss entire conversations unless someone hits the mute button. "Wait, what?"

I avoid the TV, then, as a hazard to my productivity. But when the plan is to be sedentary, it's the best place in the house. 

I'm just praying that I can feel better before Saturday, which is the big company Christmas party. It's the most I dress up each year, usually, but I'm not feeling very festive if a box of tissues is on my accessories list. And last year I laughed so hard during a friend's very bizarre musical performance that I lost my voice for a week (you can sortof hear me once or twice in the video. luckily I was too far away to embarrass myself). And losing my voice is like, soooo five weeks ago.

Besides being sick a lot this Fall, I can't remember when I have felt more at peace. After all of the soul-searching and hemming and hawing about taking anti-depressants, feeling somehow like it was a lazy way out and the ubiquitous guilt and, surprise! depression, now I can joyfully eat my words along with all the doubts. I feel like a sortof normal person now, instead of one who can't deal with the little things in life without exhaustion and misery. I don't like the idea of being medicated, just from my own self-sufficiency standpoint; it feels like a failure to need medication. But when has success ever taught me anything? It's my failures, both from my actions and from just being a fallen human, that have brought me back to reality and not the fantastic notion that I can do and be everything (right, Barbie?). In the eyes of the world, all of these failures are unacceptable. I must be the BEST mom, artist, crochet designer, business woman, daughter, wife, cook, housekeeper, chipper bible study leader, go-getting graduate of prestigious art education program etc. And be singing all the livelong day. It cannot be done, and it's a fool who tries to make it so. 

It's so liberating to crawl out from under that mass of unrealistic expectations, look it over, and feel like I have choices. It's paradoxical, that admitting one's humanity and weakness can give one a phenomenal sense of power. I am choosing which things to prioritize, and can focus better (not perfectly, by a long road) on the present without all the other imagined obligations intruding on the moment. It sounds so very self-helpy but it's actually very Biblical. Jesus never sat around bemoaning all the people he could have helped that day while he was "only" healing a few lepers and saying a few parables. And the ultimate failure, being killed by the government in the most shameful way possible, was turned to the world's greatest success of the resurrection. It really puts "taking little happy-pills" into perspective. 

With all this peace has come so many more opportunities than I have ever had to serve. I have always been hyper-ambitious, egotistical yet insecure (a deadly combination!), wanting desperately to be in charge of everything and never quite getting the chance, then resenting the people who were in leadership or despising the people who didn't understand the complexities of Art, yadda yadda. It's kindof sickening to read it all. Especially when my own art is largely comprised of Smurfs. One can only go so deep with Smurfs. But now, I still feel like art is extremely important, but I don't hate the people who have other priorities. When I have felt more charitable to others who disagree or aren't on the same radar, lo and behold, people have been more eager to listen to me. Duh, but it's taken me a long time to see that. When I stopped grasping for authority and learned how to support people in authority, somehow that authority was given to me. It is, to use a very over-used term, humbling. That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown. 

socking-stocks and rit-mit-reeeeeeeeeth

A is occupying himself in the exquisite, silence-inducing act of painting. Whenever he paints, he enters some other part of consciousness that is found in no other activity. It must be truly Right-Brain-Land he's enjoying. The thing is, I am a recovering control-freak, so the "It will make a huge mess I need to clean" part of my mind usually outweighs the "I love silence" part. And really, he only makes a huge mess when he has huge amounts of paint to work with. These are the weeny little paint cups manufactured in some god-forsaken Chinese factory, with tiny brushes that he is expertly dipping and cleaning (!!! a kid who cleans his brushes??). He did learn from me, consciously or not. I'm kindof a freak when I paint.

So it's Christmastime. I listened to the entire Christmas-album-bonanza by Sufjan Stevens yesterday, as A and I put up our new fake Christmas tree. The old one was a shorty, which we used for several years after we moved in. The great advantage of a short tree is putting it on a table, just out of reach of Mr. Curious, and having lots of room for presents underneath. Now I can just about trust A with all our ornaments, and he helped me put them all on the tree. He has a "fravrit shecshon" of the tree, with all his most cherished ornaments in a group: the Bat Signal by my sister Molly, the Batmobile, a popsicle stick manger he made in preschool, and the " 'dominal snowman" from the Rudolph special. I haven't corrected these mispronunciations, since they are so entertaining and cute, and it reminds me of Pepe le Pew when he was covered in snow; "I am zee abdominal snowman, no?"

He also calls stockings "socking-stocks," and gets them mixed up with Woodstock, Snoopy's friend. At the moment he's painting socking-stock ceramic ornaments we got at the craft store, and doing a fine job.

Another of my family's odd traditions, if one could call it that--phrases, maybe--is calling Christmas trees "rit-mit-reeeeeeth!" in sortof a nasally, not-too-intelligent voice. Probably the association for cognitively delayed people would be offended, but it isn't making fun of anyone, I swear! When we passed a stand of trees, that's what my mom would say and it stuck. Much like saying "you'll freeze your winkies off" if one goes out without a coat. What's a winky, you ask? No idea. But you don't want it frozen off, so put your stinkin coat on.

A gift which will not spend any time under the tree is my new Mac Book laptop. It came in the mail today, an exquisite present from my lovely husband, and I can't wait to hook it up and use a computer that doesn't make me feel like an idiot. Even the packaging was gorgeous. They know how to put a thing in a box at Apple, lemme tell you. It may not seem like a big deal, but these are the things I notice and prefer paying a little more for. If I got a new PC it would probably come with Vista, too, which is a big stinking pile of an operating system from all I hear. So it's a joy to look forward to a nice clean interface, and get used to having my toolbars in different spots again. It's got a boatload of memory as well, and no hot-running fan to get clogged with schmutz from my desk and threaten to catch fire. This computer has lasted through many a challenging year, but it's time to start fresh.

Merry Rit-Mit, a little early!