I have 500 things left to do before we leave Wednesday morning, and not enough time for any of it, and the check my mother sent to reimburse us for the $300 we spent on game systems for her computer guy’s kid still hasn’t cleared paypal, and stress is running out of me the way water runs from a Hansgrohe faucet, and my head hurts, and I feel hung over, but it’s not from alcohol. It’s from carbs.

Oh, the carbs. And the cream.

For yesterday was the Feast of the Turducken, which is a mythical southern beastie comprised of a stuffed chicken stuffed into a duck, which is in turn stuffed into a turkey. It tastes better than it sounds. Really. Also there are like six drumsticks and assorted wings, but no other bones, so the end result is the poultry equivalent of one of those caravan sandwiches that are often served as party nibbles.

The rest of the food was equally tasty: mac-n-cheese, squash-n-cheese, creamed pearl onions, cranberry sauce, whipped yams, and, in a bow to healthy eating, steamed broccoli (with ginger) and a salad. All of this was, of course, followed by pumpkin pie.

The food was excellent, if lethal, and the company was of the sort that is equally comfortable discussing the merits of mac vs. pc, high speed internet options, and trashy movies.

It was a lovely interlude.

But I still feel panicked.

I used to be very much in love with my grandfather’s watch. It wasn’t a pocket watch or anything unusual. Gold face, gold band, analog, not digital – he liked the weight of real workings inside the case, I think – wrapped around his sturdy, tanned wrist like something precious.

My thumb would brush across it sometimes, when he reached down to hold my hand, crossing a street, or walking down the beach. It would catch my attention and I’d look up at him and ask, “Let me hear it tick, Grandpop,” and he would patiently remove it from his wrist and hand it to me, and I would hold it up to my ear, and listen to the steady ticking sound.

Tonight at a dinner party I watched an old woman go from giddy to weepy, overwhelmed by friendly faces, and sad for all the things she doesn’t have, and while I completely empathize with the friend who is her house-mate, and bears the brunt of her many sour moods and bitter words, I also understand the sense of loss she probably feels every day, and can’t adequately articulate, and so gets angry and cruel.

There is no time limit on grief.
There is nothing more beautiful than making someone smile.

Right now, I’d give anything to sit with my grandfather, and wait for him to give me his watch.
I want to hear it tick.

8:30. I wake up because a small dog has planted himself on top of my bladder, and I can’t take the pressure any more. “Zorro, sweetheart, could you move please?” I ask, and he does, though he gives me the patented “slitty-eyed look of doom” that only chihuahuas really know how to give. He will get even with me, later. So much later, in fact, that it might not be til after I come home from our trip, but he will do it.

8:55. Miss Cleo, who began the night under the covers at the end of the bed has wormed her way up to the pillows, squeezing her warm furry body between Fuzzy and me. She moves in her sleep, dreaming – chasing something – and her feet hit my lower back as she paddles them. “Cleo, move!” I mutter. She does. Barely.

I sit up in bed, turn on the laptop and try to decide if I’m in a fit state to get out of bed. I chat over Skype with Rana, at whose house we’ll be partying tonight. She’s making a terducken and a whole mess of southern creamed and fried foods. I am bringing cranberry sauce, steamed broccoli, pumpkin pie, and a veggie tray. It will be fun.

9:34. I decide this “awake” thing is over rated. I reset the alarm for 11. I go back to sleep and dream of music.

11:00. Not ready. I make a woozy Fuzzy give us one more hour on the alarm. I can’t reach. There’s a dog in the way.

11:36. I blog about it.

So what was your Sunday morning like.

I turned on NPR while I was filling the tub for my bubble back a couple of hours ago, and was delighted to find that tonight’s programming was a celebration of Storytelling. I realize that there are those who think public radio exists only to play infinite hours about business performance management and such, but they do have some really interesting entertainment programs, (mostly on weekends) and they’re not even borrowed from the BBC.

Tonight, while I soaked in hot sudsy water lightly scented with tea and jasmine, I listened to an entrancing Indian stale about frogs, guava trees, courtship and Coca-Cola, and heard the distinctive voice of Sonia Manzano reading micro-fiction written by a prisoner taking part in an adult literacy program called “All Write.” (Sonia plays the part of Maria on Sesame Street, for those who don’t recognize her name.)

I also heard the warmest storytelling voice ever, a woman named Diane Wolkstein, share a Haitian folk tale about a magic orange tree. As a result, I’m now craving oranges, but aside from that, I’m entranced with something she said: that good storytelling, because there is connection, and because there are silences, is like a conversation, “…the best conversation…” she said.

I have a great appreciation for storytellers, who are sometimes writers, and sometimes actors, and generally a bit of both, and I have an even greater appreciation of stories themselves, and not just the epics. I like the small stories. The twists and turns of every-day life.

The best conversations.

“I need a treadmill,” I informed Fuzzy the other night, when I called him in Utah. “All this cold and rain make walking outside almost impossibly uncomfortable. Zorro won’t go beyond the garage door, and we’re all antsy.”

He agreed that it would be a good idea, then teased, “But we’ll have to get two small ones for the dogs.”

I have this image of the three of us on our little treadmills, walking and watching Animal Planet (Miss Cleo likes the bird shows; Zorro prefers Meerkat Manor), nice and cozy and dry. But it’s just an image, at the moment. A fantasy.

Fuzzy agreed that I could go shopping for a treadmill when we get back from vacation, but in the meanwhile, having been cooped up inside for the better part of a week, the dogs and I are all antsy. The lightning and thunder outside aren’t helping them, but I rather like it, because as long as it’s stormy I can blame my restlessness on the weather and not the fact that I haven’t come close to being ready for this trip. Not close.

So maybe I am antsy, after all.

My neighborhood is lit up like a Las Vegas hotel, and the house is decorated, and I have seventeen thousand things left to complete for work, and – how pathetic is this? – all I can think about is that tomorrow night – one more sleep from now – Fuzzy will be home.

Teasing, I asked if he missed me, and he allowed that, “The bed is too big, and there’s no Lovey in it.” But then work called him and the dogs needed to go out, and there wasn’t much to say that can’t wait til tomorrow anyway.

Most times, I don’t mind it when he has to travel on business. Most times, I use the time to indulge in endless bubble baths and eat froufrou foods he doesn’t like and write all hours of the night, but so close to Christmas, I resent this trip. We should have been spending this week wrapping presents and curling up by the fire, and watching cheesy Christmas movies, and instead, I’ve been alternately hot and freezing, and completely unfocused and stressed about our upcoming trip.

But one more sleep will bring him home, and one more sleep will find me refreshed and ready to face all the tasks as yet undone.

It was a cold and misty day here today, of the sort that makes me extremely glad that a) I work from home and b) my work can be done from bed, without ever changing out of pajamas. I wasn’t feeling well in the first place, so the fact that I could be productive and cozy at the same time was the only thing that kept me remotely sane. I’m not sick, I don’t think, as much as just a little tired, a little cranky, and getting overly excited about Christmas. I love Christmas. I celebrate it largely secularly, but I totally buy into the magic.

I like misty days for the same reason. There’s something magic in mist as well, in the way it lets you see the world through a soft filter, blurring sharp edges and gentling colors, and giving even the steadiest of lights a bit of twinkle.

I like that twinkle. I like coming home in the mist-wrapped darkness and seeing the reflection of lights in the rain-slicked pavement, and witnessing the way our neighborhood, especially on the streets around the park, turns from a normal suburban environment into a veritable fairyland at this time of year.

Speaking of twinkles. I like the twinkle in the eyes of the neighborhood kids as they race around on their bikes and scooters and skateboards in the afternoons, and I like the way they stop and wave when I’m walking the dogs, and ask how they are, and know their names. I like seeing even the “coolest” of them let out their personal bubble of delight when they enter the park and the lights are on. I love that even though we don’t have kids, we live in the kind of neighborhood where it’s safe for them to play basketball in their driveways, and even in the streets, because cars don’t speed here.

Wednesday night, there’s a concert in the park. It’s the annual Christmas fete thrown by the HOA, and it’s free to anyone who lives there. “Bring cookies to share,” they ask. And so tonight on the way home from playing elf for a friend of my parents, we stopped so I could stock up on chocolate chips and red and green sprinkles.

As we drove back home, I stopped talking, and watched the lights. This weekend will see the peak of the neighborhood decorations, but when we get home they’ll have started to take them down – some of them.

Fuzzy pulled me back from the door as I was about to open it, and smiled at me, and kissed me.

I think he could see me twinkle.