Today was the first fiscal day of the new year, the new work year, the month, and I was granted an auspicious beginning to all three. It came in the form of an email message responding to a virtual note in a bottle cast into the sea we know as the Net.

Specifically, I have an old, dear friend whom I hadn’t spoken to in a couple of years. Last night, in a fit of nostalgia, I googled his name and last known location, and found an email address. I shot of a message, expecting a server error.

Instead, I got a real message back. And not just “yes, this is me” but, actual sentences with real information. Groovous! Typical for me, I snapped off a reply, replete with long sentences and self-interruptions (and you thought I only wrote this way in my blog. Hah!).

The response to my reply was a phone call. Alas, I was chatting with a friend on the other side of the planet, at the time, and chose not to answer the call waiting. (I think call waiting is rude, but I get a cheaper phone bill for including it among the various options on our phone line, so I just ignore it.)

After that call was over, though, I called back, and we chatted for far too long than is really acceptable over the phone, but it was a nice conversation, full of laughter and catching up.

He mentioned that he’d read my 100 Things post, and went down the line mentally checking off the things he knew. And the scary thing is, he’s one of the few people who actually knew those things before I posted them. Even the bits about cello, and my penchant for micro-point pens.

It’d be wrong to say that he doesn’t know me as well as Fuzzy does, because in some ways he knows me better. It’s more accurate to say that he knows me differently.

While I admit that I once (in high school) had a pretty serious crush on him, in retrospect, I’m really glad our relationship never went in that direction, because ultimately, our personalties would have clashed violently, and too often. And truly, I value him as a friend more than he knows.

Our friendship hasn’t always been perfect. There’ve been gaps of months or years when we have completely lost touch, even before this most recent one. He missed my wedding, and I missed his. (I wanted to go, really, but it was a bad month money-wise, and then other stuff happened). I once blew up at him for treating me like a consolation prize, though I learned soon after that such behavior was unintentional and inadvertant.

And now?

Now we’re people in vastly different places in life, who’ve known each other twenty years. I have a husband whom I love and cherish, and who understands me better than anyone could hope to (and, more importantly, puts up with my moods, plans, schemes, and ideas). He has a fabulously funny, seriously sweet, beautiful and intelligent wife (someone I wish I knew better), and they’re expecting a baby very, very soon.

I’m adding a resolution, a specific one, to the vague list I cloaked in one of my posts last week: I will not lose touch with him again.

There are sounds we hear every day, that are part of our lives, but that we never stop to notice. It’s easy to write fifty words about the sound of rain on a roof, because the very word conjurs up images of cozy evenings, or mad dashes between awnings, or brightly colored umbrellas on parade.

But what about those other sounds? Who waxes lyrical about the sound of attic turbines, the steady hum of the refrigerator, the soft whirring of a computer fan?

Tonight as I was making tea, I paused for a moment, entranced by the soft sizzling hiss of the sugar spilling into the mug. It’s a unique sound – sugar falling into coffee doesn’t hiss, and the sugar substitutes that come in pink or blue packets don’t either, even in tea. I smiled to myself, thinking that this was a cool sound, planning research on whether or not there was a chemical reason for it.

But I didn’t research it. Instead, I stirred the sugar into my drink watching as the white granules dissolved into the hot brown liquid. I added a splash of milk, and I watched as it formed cloudy shapes before turning the entire contents of the mug a tawny brown color.

Hot water. Dried Leaves. Milk. Sugar.
A moment of peace and possibility in a ceramic mug of tea.

I’m curled up in bed with two sleeping doggies and a stack of pillows, wearing my favorite ratty formerly-black-and-now-kinda-greyish sweatpants and an almost as ratty red t-shirt with a bow-sporting Scottish terrier on it. I look frightful, but I’m comfortable, and when I don’t feel well, comfort is key. (Actually, even when I DO feel well, comfort is key, which is why I don’t wear heels, or lace.)

We slept until about noon today, me because Nyquil is my best friend, just now, and Fuzzy because he was up til four playing with a server. While he was showering, I was outside stripping lights off the trees. About half the neighborhood still has their lights up, but once the calendar page turns, I find such things depressing. The tree will be tomorrow’s project, if I’m feeling well enough to climb up on the step-ladder and retrieve the smallest ornaments from the highest branches – when I have colds everything settles in my ears and my balance is nearly non-existant. This is bad enough, but worse in combination with tiny glass ornaments.

We ventured out to buy dogfood after that, but detoured to Barnes and Noble (in Cedar Hill), then Half Price Books, then lunch at Panera a frou-frou bakery/cafe we’d never heard of – it was cozy, with a fireplace and really good chai, as well as lots of gorgeous carb-laden artisan breads.

After lunch (I had a smoked turkey sandwich on sundried tomato and ale bread, and Fuzzy had roast beef on asiago baguette), we went to Arlington (because that’s where the dog food store is), and another Barnes and Noble – because I’d passed on a book at the first one, hoping to find it at Half Price Books.

Of course, we forgot that places close early on New Year’s Day, so the pet store was closed by the time we got there, but Fuzzy still insisted on a trip through Fry’s before coming home. I stayed in the car and read by streetlight. I just wasn’t in the mood for the sensory overload of Geek Mecca.

And so we are home, with no new toys, but a few books for me, including The South Beach Diet, because we’ve been eating too much crap lately, and we both need to be healthier, a ST:TNG novel, because I needed some brain candy, and A Faith for Skeptics, which was written by the Canon Theologian to the Bishop of Forth Worth, and highly recommended by Father Young, at St. Andrew’s here in Grand Prairie. He (the author) was one of the celebrants of the lessons & carol services, and it’s always cool to read a book by someone you actually know, even peripherally.

Many of my bibliophilic friends have been posting their reading lists, but most of mine was lost just before we moved, and then, I haven’t been keeping up with my bookblog at all, so I’ll try to be better about that this year.

I’ve already finished re-reading Memoirs of a Geisha, which is just phenomenal, even the second time around, and I’m about ten pages from the end of Star Trek The Next Generation: A Time to Be Born, the first in a nine-book TNG series that fills the gaps between Insurrection and Nemesis, and which I’m reading in eBook format, with the exception of book three, which is the one I picked up at HPB.

So, not a very exciting beginning of a new year, but a comfortable one, headcolds aside, and really, one could do worse than bread, books, and bedclothes.

I was going to call this entry ‘tea and sympathy’ but the reality is that it’s actually pizza, coca cola, and Nyquil. It’s new year’s eve, and instead of going out, or cooking a sumptuous dinner, I’m sittng in bed, pumped full of cold meds, and in a kind of drug-induced Otherspace where everthing seems a bit warped and reality and I aren’t quite connected.

I posted about resolutions last night, so nothing to cover there, and yet, there’s something about this date screams for an overview of the past year, and a plan for the future.

The thing is, I’m just not a goal oriented person. People ask me where I want to be in five years, in ten, and I can come up with socially acceptable answers, but they’re as vague as my resolutions were.

I’m not sure whether this is good or bad.

And just to be clear, it’s not that I’m without ambition, it’s just that naming goals means you have to stick to them, and what I want now might be very different from what I want five years from now, which would mean that I spent five years working towards something useless, or at least unsatisfying.

Anyway, I’m sitting here with a small dog keeping me company (Zorro, because Cleo flees in terror if I sneeze) watching cheesy Disney movies because I don’t have to use my brain to keep up, and trying to come up with something coherent to write about.

Except that I’m not coherent at all.

Cuz I’m in Otherspace.

I looked up from my desk about an hour ago, and saw the most fabulous evening sky. The main part of it was all grey and wintry, looking colder than it actually is, with feathered clouds above the trees, and then, from the west (which, because my office window faces south is the right), streaks of vibrant pink and orange appeared. Alas, the camera was downstairs, and even if it hadn’t been, the angle was wrong to attempt a picture.

Just as it’s evening, as I write this, so today is the evening, nay, the night, of this year. I’ve thought a lot about resolutions, and such, but I’m not going to post a whole list of them, or anything. I have this theory, you see, that the reason most of us don’t make good on our resolutions is that we try to change everything, all at once, and it gets overwhelming, and so we give up. So, just as I’ve tried to make it a rule that I do at least one productive thing every day, I’m going to resolve in very vague forms: to learn something new, to make a new friend, to help someone, and to do something to improve myself. Is this cheating? I don’t think so.

Despite what I posted yesterday, I did not take down the Christmas stuff. I’m going to enjoy it all for another day or so, and then take it down on Sunday, and as a reward, I will change the calendar page – it was always something I looked forward to doing as a child, and I still find a small bubble of delight in doing so as an adult.

Sometimes, at least, I’m easily pleased.

We woke before dawn so that Fuzzy could take my parents to the airport. I didn’t go along because they had two more bags than they arrived with (due to their nearly incessant shopping), and because Fuzzy was going directly to work after leaving them off. The plan had been that I was going back to bed, but did that happen? Of course not.

I’m pathetic. As soon as everyone was gone, I made a cup of tea and sat staring at the Christmas tree. Honestly, I’m thirty-four years old, and should not miss my mother five minutes after she’s out of the door. It’s not as if we don’t email daily, and talk almost as often, by phone. But it’s not the same. On a visit, emotions are heightened, and we’re both far more mushy, snarky, and sensistive than we would be if we still lived in the same neighborhood.

I finally went back to bed around seven, after watching a couple episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on television, more for noise than because I really wanted to watch it. I mean, they were episodes I have on DVD (my collection, thus far, only goes through season four – must fix that.)

In my family, we generally leave Christmas decorations up until at least New Year’s Day (and sometimes Epiphany), using that day to clean up mentally as well as physically, but suddenly the tree seems dejected without extra people here to enjoy it, and so I’m considering tearing everything down tomorrow rather than waiting for Saturday. It’s only two days, but it makes a difference.

While I don’t generally get depressed during the holidays, the post-Christmas blahs hit me hard. I think it’s because the lights and pine-scented happiness hide the dinginess of winter, and make the cold, bleak weather seem cozy, rather than confining.

Added to my sudden blah-mood is that Fuzzy’s got to go on a trip to Virginia in a couple weeks – far too soon – and while we’d talked about me going, I really don’t want to spend the money when we’re just getting into the flow of things here, and while I WANT to see Virginia – I don’t particularly like to travel in January.

In any case, I’m sure by morning I’ll feel better – a good night’s sleep and the realization that my house is MINE again tend to do wonders. Meanwhile, I’m mulling over the concept of New Year’s resolutions, but that’s a separate entry.

My mother has become addicted to the game Bejewled while she’s been visiting me. Every morning, I’ve found her sitting at my desk, moving the glowy shapes around the screen, and smiling at the sounds – clicking sounds – like pearls on a necklace rubbing together, shattering sounds – like the most gentle glassy crash through a window, explosive sounds – the perfect cherry bomb, and fantasy sounds, not unlike the U.S.S. Enterprise‘s transporters.

Admittedly, it’s my own fault that she’s hooked on this game. After all, if I hadn’t purchased a new cell phone, and started playing it myself, if I hadn’t downloaded the game from Pop-Cap, she’d never have heard of it.

But I did.

Then, of course, I made the mistake of showing it to my stepfather, who things computer Solitaire is the alpha and omega of gaming fun. I thought he’d find, as I do, that there’s something zen-like in the playing of this game. (All through NaNoWriMo, I’d do 500 words, then play two games, 500 words, then play – it kept me sane, and let my mind wander to the next scene I needed to write.) Instead, he said, “No, it’s far too overwhelming for me,” and told my mother to try it.

And so, more often than not, she’s excused herself, over this last week, to “go check email” only to give herself away by not lowering the volume on my computer, when she begins to feed her digital addiction. “I like the sounds,” she says, in the same tone a pot-smoker would use to share the joys of being high. “They’re so pretty!”

She’s already displaying disturbing junkie-like tendencies – whining that she wants to play right now, and that I should turn off my game to allow it. “I’m leaving in the morning. I’m your only mother. I birthed you from my loins.” If I hadn’t handed her a mug of strong coffee not five minutes prior, I’d have been convinced she was in caffeine withdrawl. As it is, I think her hands were trembling.

So, what did I do? Well, I have not given up the computer yet, as evidenced by this entry, but I did make her unpack her data-key (aka USB drive) and, because I’m a good daughter (even if I don’t keep the fridge stocked with Milano cookies all the time), I gave her a copy of the program. (Shhh! Don’t tell!)

I’ll be logging off soon, heading to bed so I can see her off tomorrow morning at five. And she – she’ll be up here, playing Bejewled.

At least the game uses the mouse, which keeps her from banging on my keyboard, the way she usually does.

Note: The actual game is Bejewled 2 Deluxe.

As we do whenever there’s a news event with global impact, we spent last night and most of today fluttering between our individual activities and CNN, watching coverage of the Tsunami aftermath in Southeast Asia. We have friends in Malaysia, Thailand, and India, and are understandably concerned.

I blame my mother for this disaster. Well, not really. But it has to be more than coincidence that something happens every time she visits – this tsunami, an earthquake in California last Christmas, a flu epidemic in Languedoc when we were there, and the time she visited me in South Dakota we woke up the morning after her arrival to find that Princess Diana had died.

I don’t have words to describe the sympathy I feel for the victims of this disaster, or the survivors. They’re in my thoughts, though, of course.

I do have words to describe the fact that whether my country aids other countries, or not, is based on political advantage, but I’m not going to utter them here. You can guess what they are, I’m sure – most are four letters long.

My brain is tired tonight, my muse evidently sleeping. Sounds like a plan to me, so goodnight, and see y’all on the flip-side.

WarriorPoet(2), a friend of mine from Open Diary, suggested that I write an entry about an alternative life in which, instead of ever meeting Fuzzy, I was an international jewel thief. On the surface, it’s a romantic notion – going all Carmen Sandiego and hopping from continent to continent, spending a week browsing through the Louvre, or having romantic one-night stands in Barcelona or Milan, dancing through Carnival in Rio.

But the thing is, even in my fantasy, that’s not a life I’d want. Oh, I can appreciate the romance of it, the thrill, the sense of daring and fun, but a life on the lam is no kind of life at all.

Here’s my real fantasy – I want to be an old-style foreign correspondent. There’s this book called Paris to the Moon that I read a couple of years ago – it’s a series of essays about an American couple with a young child experiencing life in Paris. The author was freelancing for The New Yorker at the time, and the book is a compilation of his work. The life they led – writing in the morning, experiencing life in French and English – going to cafes and public swimming pools and museums – that fascinated me. That’s what my alternative life would be – me holed up in a garrett or loft in some extremely quaint European city, and having little adventures disguised as trips to the market, an afternoon of shopping, late evenings listening to jazz in obscure clubs, early mornings sipping coffee and nibbling on croissants or beignets – and writing about it all – for money.

I blame these romantic notions on my mother, who has a Sweet 16 lecture we all received as we hit that age – “See Europe!” she told my cousins and me.

I also blame Jo March, the fictional character created by Louisa May Alcott in Little Women. When I was nine years old I stapled a red bow to my black velvet beret, and tucked my hair up inside it, whenever I wanted to write. I filled pages and pages with nonsense, none of which was ever complete. (I do the same thing now, when I have time, except that my vocabulary has improved and I don’t wear the hat any more.)

Rilke once told a young poet who sought advice, that if you wake up and all you can think about is writing, you’re a writer.

Words flow through my brain on a near constant basis, and I am ever so madly in love with pen and ink and text on screens. Writing isn’t all I want to do, but it’s the thing that never goes away.

But it’s just a romantic notion.

It’s been a quiet Christmas at Chez Meliss, but that’s not a bad thing. We spent the morning opening presents – I now have a spiffy new hat, scarf, and bag to add to my collection of accessories – and sipping coffee, spent the early afternoon brunching on ham and eggs courtesy of a recipe gleaned from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and spent the rest of the day puttering – my husband napped, my stepfather worked on editing a document, my mother fed her addiction to Bejeweled on my computer, and I finally learned how to thread the sewing machine she gave me four years ago.

This evening, we broiled salmon and steamed asparagus for a simple but tasty dinner, and watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which dvd was provided for me by Santa Fuzzy. (I’m actually watching it again as I type this, and letting the fanfic part of my brain ponder some new ideas. I haven’t written any fiction or fanfic since NaNo, even though I’ve been writing every day, and Snape is starting to whisper to me again…and the thing is, fanfic warms me up for writing my own stuff…also, I got a nifty book of Latin quips (also from Santa Fuzzy) that I’m dying to use.)

I’m hesitant to list the rest of the gifts I received, because really, it’s not ABOUT that, but I’m tickled by the two books on quilting that are currently sitting by my bed – I’m planning a wedding quilt for a couple of friends – and I received a pair of throw pillows that my mother designed and made, using scans of greeting cards I’ve given her, and some really amazing fabric. They’re gorgeous.

Tomorrow (Sunday) my aunt and cousin are driving over from Shreveport, LA, and bringing food – we’re cooking a London Broil to go with whatever they bring – and that should be nice. Or at least interesting. I’m so accustomed to family being 2500 miles away, that I’m a bit thrown by having anyone within driving distance.

My parents will be here through Tuesday evening, and as much as it’s nice having them around, I’m also happy that this visit is drawing to a close. I’m tired and cranky from living on a ‘normal’ schedule instead of the sort of off-kilter schedule that Fuzzy and I generally keep, and I am anxious to hole myself up in a room with music and quilt pieces, and not have to be social.