Oh Dear

It's been many many days since I posted. I missed opportunities to post news on NGLTF's response to the NY Times coverage, impromptu reviews of the second to the last ever Pixies concert (yes I was there), and Kerik, Social Security... the latter two are rather grim so it may be just as well that I haven't had much to say. Mainly, I have been dealing with some transition in my job and have been desperately trying to make up for the fact that I am not a very well organized person and need to put several large file drawers in order than someone else can make sense of. This is my worst nightmare really and I have been putting in some long focused hours in the office.

How boring.

At just the moment I typed the word boring, my cat sunk his long claws into my arm in protest of being called off the couch. Be careful what you wish for.

Tonight though, after a long evening in office, where I ate a ridiculously large amount of Thai food much too quickly so I could get back to my cleaning, I came home and started wrapping Christmas presents. I seem to have developed some of my own single-person Christmas rituals. Not surprising since by parents are intensely ritualistic at Christmas: Advent candles and services every night for four weeks, decorating the tree with the same family friend every year, the Messiah every Christmas morning. My Christmas ritual involves the late afternoon when I unpack the Christmas presents I have managed to collect during the last Saturday before Christmas and I start wrapping presents with Christmas music. I make something hot with booze in it and I go from Grinch to Ms. Santa in 30 minutes. I forget my holiday depression and anxiety for a few hours while I play with tape and red paper. The angst and sadness always comes flooding back, usually on the 26th or 27th, but the lead-in to Christmas is very pleasurable. I buy my parents presents I can't afford, wrap things I bought while travelling for my cousin's children, and write Christmas cards. I pride myself on writing something in every card I send, although maybe I am just being a Christmas hotshot. Perhaps I should get over myself.

Tonight the Christmas music was Everything but the Girl's acoustic, which is not Christmas music, but you see, I was given that cd at Christmas, so I listened to that cd the two weeks after Christmas. I find it to be the perfect Christmas depression music, sweet, reflective, melancholy, and a tiny bit obsessive.