I’ll be visiting my parents for the holidays as usual. I can’t wait to be home. Since my mom has to work right up to the day of Christmas, I’ll be in charge of cooking Christmas dinner this year. I also cooked Thanksgiving dinner this year. I enjoy it, but it’s hard work. I’m not used to being on my feet in the kitchen all day! Still, I like the idea of being able to cook the meal. I want to get good at it and perfect a few of my favorite dishes.
The boyfriend is also going home with me for the first part of the break, but will not stay for Christmas. I think this is best. Christmas is a big step. We’ll see where we’re at next year 😉
While I’m home, I’ll have sheep to take care of. I want to visit my dearest auntie, who was very sick last week. I want to read a book for fun (even though the unfun books are stacking up). And, I’ll leave a few days before schools starts because I will have worn out my welcome and because I want to clean the house and get things in order before I start a new semester. Incidentally, it will be my last semester of coursework. Yippee! It’s a strange feeling. I love the dynamic of the classroom–the readings, the discussion, and the shared knowledge–but I do not love the seminar papers. I will be glad to never write another one of those again. Of course, those seminar papers will be replaced with “the diss,” and I can only imagine how much I’ll grow to love whatever that turns out to be.
Merry Christmas.

It’s the middle of the night, and I have spent the last few hours typing furiously for papers that are due next week. I’d like to turn them in as soon as possible, so I’ll have more time for grading and cleaning the house before I leave for break.
I had a great night tonight. I ate a peanut butter and honey sandwich on spelt bread (which is better for me, I think). I also ate bites of chocolate and mixed cranberry juice with some kind of flavored, carbonated water. I don’t know. It was a strange night for eating. The snow fell. I did laundry. It felt really good to be alone, peaceful and accomplishing work. I feel guilty for how much I love being alone right now and crave more time to myself. I worry that I am not getting out enough, that I am fostering some kind of agoraphobia. That might be true, and I neither like nor dislike it. It’s true that my social anxiety flares up with some frequency, especially when life is particularly stressful. But, I hope that I don’t build a lonely life. I’ve been lonely before. I’ve had energy and wanted to be with friends when there were no friends. I’d like to have a weekly lunch date. In fact, I think I require a weekly lunch date. Although I sometimes spend months+ by myself, I never really like it. I always like to have someone I can meet with at least once a week. Of course they have to be someone kind of superb.
The boyfriend and I went shopping today, but the stores were crazy. I ate a chicken pita–a meal I always feel like writing about. There were a few, peaceful downtown shops that I enjoyed, but I’ll have to go alone and do a serious shopping excursion before I leave town. I feel like spending money these days, but I have to remind myself that I am still a college student and am still on a very tight budget. One year, a few years ago, I wasn’t on a tight college student budget, and that was great fun.
Today I found out that an aunt of mine had been hospitalized. She’s okay now, I’m told. But, I feel hurt and left out because she was there for a whole week, and I was never notified. It makes me feel out of the loop, like something’s amiss, and I don’t like it at all.

Last night the novio and I drove up to Spokane to help celebrate his grandmother’s 80th birthday. They are mostly nice people, a mellow bunch who wore warm swears and very little make up. (There were a few Christmas sweaters that were over the top in my opinion, but I’ll let that slide.) I’m learning the handful who always have something to say, and then I go stand by that person so it seems like I’m a part of the conversation, with very little effort.
The waiter ask me and the boyfriend if the kids would like children’s menus. That got a good laugh out of everyone. “What? No, we’re not even married.” Blush. And then everyone steals quiet looks afterwards…will they?
This family is composed of doctors. I mean, he has a cousin in law school, but pretty much everyone else is a doctor. They are quiet, unexcitable people. My boyfriend and his siblings have more flare for darkness, tempers, obstinacy, and negativity than any of the other extended family members combined it seems.
Although the fancy dinners and their palatial homes are a far cry from the ranch I grew up on, I fit in well with the family. The jury’s still out as to whether or not I fit well with the boyfriend.

This has been such a strange semester, year, well, last half of a year, for me. I’m having the hardest time living in the moment. That could be because I am in such a strange relationship. My feelings are so mixed and wishy-washy. I exhaust myself! Let alone my poor boyfriend. As I said, I just cannot be in the moment. My head is constantly looking ahead into possible future scenarios (lyrics? yes). Or, I am looking nostalgically into the past. I’m looking at old relationships that never worked out and never should have worked out. I am haunted by their relics, the songs, the sweet kiss, the daisies that took over a small square of garden I had at the apartment complex where I lived next door practically to my then super-cool boyfriend. I am haunted by how easily everything could be so different. I am frightened by it because I am now in a very good place. What if I wasn’t here? I am haunted by love once that burned fast and bright–a mutual love–that burned out and was reignited by his certain way of knowing me. I am haunted by the poetry and the mystery of the traveling man, the rejection, the kiss over the freezing cold bridge in the woods on the road that we never should have driven on–too cold, too icy, too dangerous. I am haunted by brave emails that confess a certain affinity for trying to describe the color of my hair, the curve of my lips, the piercing look shared across a room, down a hallway, in a room full of strangers.
Tonight I’m having one of those honest to god grad school nights where I stay up late drinking mint tea–one with honey, one without honey–frantically typing an essay that’s due tomorrow, one that’s plenty full of some drivel with a few good ideas sprinkled in for good measure. In the morning, I’ll wake up late, exhausted, shower quickly, and face the 1° weather, that will feel like 1° and will have the capacity to break my wet hair in two.

My thoughts and words are all bottle necked right now and have been for the last few weeks, which is okay because I need to save it for end of semester essays anyways.