Traditional, Christmas Edition

I wrote about how much I liked Halloween this year and how I found myself having Very Strong Opinions about how it ought to be celebrated. I don't care how anyone else does it, but I've got some ideas about what it takes for me to have a good time.

We got to spend Christmas in our own home. I'm 31 years old and I've never done this.

Borrowing a page from my paternal grandparents, I snuck out on Christmas Eve to procure a tree.  My dad and his siblings all have (presumably fond?) memories of waking up Christmas morning to a tree that was not there the night before. It was snowing and there were crowds and I almost scrapped it, but there at the last minute was a tree lot. And lo! Christmas trees are half price on Christmas Eve! What's more -- the tree stand and lights needed at Target were 40% off. My inner skinflint rejoiced.

Tradition #1 and #2: the tree comes home on Christmas Eve. The tree will have previously lived in the ground -- it will not be fake.

We waited until the kid went to bed to decorate it. I hurried to finish Reed's Christmas present. Brian set up the art easel and trampoline, both gifts from his parents that were too large to open when he first got them. The giant penguin they bought him was accompanied by the smaller penguin Brian found for him -- total coincidence, and a happy one at that.  It was a pretty, magical scene. Peak Christmas. We collapsed into bed just short of midnight.

The payoff came in the morning. My sleepy boy toddled out to the lit tree and looked on in wonder, then quickly made use of everything under it.  The trampoline was a godsend, because we've had subzero temperatures all week, and Reed is thrilled to have a place to "Jump! Jump! Jump!" {Side note -- this kid's vocabulary is through the roof these days. Other words exclaimed with enthusiasm: vacuum! ukelele! MOON!}

I had a hunch my homemade gift would be well-received.  Sure enough, after we video chatted with all the family later that day, Reed brought me his house and opened the window to reveal the photo of my dad. "Ganpa!" he exclaimed. Oh, the vindication!

Tradition #3: there will be homemade gifts. Turns out Mama and Daddy are pretty good at making them.

Tradition #4 is that I will order New Year's postcards to be sent sometime within the week before or after Christmas. Postcards because I'm cheap, and a New Year's greeting because I cannot for the life of me manage to get them sent out before Christmas.  I can justify sending a New Year's card well into January. So far my tradition is to order them from Minted, because I am a snob and I like their designs, plus they'll print the address labels on the postcards for me. My procrastination paid off this year, because New Year's cards are 20% off right now.

It was the calmest and happiest Christmas I had in a long time.

Coming to

There may be a page in my journal titled "The Siege". ("Don't call it that," grumbled Brian.) It lists out the impressive amount of things that hit us in November and December -- job woes and loss, car repairs, illnesses. It felt cathartic to make that list, as an acknowledgment that a lot of shit was happening all at once.

Thankfully, life is calming down. Here's what's going well:

• Overall, our health is good.
• I figured out that my occasional nasty headaches following car sickness were actually migraines.
• Why is this under good health? Because now I know what's happening and how they're triggered.
• God bless Obamacare and CHIP. 
• While Brian quitting his job was stressful in some ways, it relieved lots of other stresses. 
• He nailed an interview and was offered a new position at a library.
• We got together because we kept running into each other that fateful autumn back in 2007. One of those places was a library service we both worked at. So, this seems auspicious.
• It's only part time, but it's evenings and weekends. 
• Meaning: we don't have to shell out for childcare.
• This is the first Christmas I will get to spent at my own home 
• I owe this to my grandmother, who talked sense into my mother about her holiday expectations. She had previously told me she was "tired of playing second fiddle" and that she expected all of her children to be at her house on Christmas morning.
• Uh, no. And can we get a GOD BLESS GRANDMA? I am not sure what we'd do with her, which is problematic as she's almost 88. 
• We're making most of Reed's gifts and we're excited for his reactions.
• Our gifts to each other are luxury food items that we like but rarely get: truffle salt, lemon curd, lingonberry jam, fancy pants tea from France

In the thick of things, I started getting hard on myself because I decided I wasn't handling this transition well. Why couldn't I just ACCEPT what was happening? Part of my anxiety issues stem from times in my life when trauma occurred and I developed some defense mechanisms to cope with the stress that weren't actually useful. Or is it that my anxiety caused me to develop poor defense mechanisms? Doesn't matter -- what I realized this past month was that when things got tough this time around, I was able to identify what was happening as it happened instead of getting steamrolled and picking up the pieces afterward. I was transitioning just fine. 

This is progress.