Annie and Abed from Community, as Clara and the Nutcracker Prince.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

I started my new job, at a local coffeeshop, about two weeks ago. Before that, I spent three years mostly unemployed. There are plenty of excuses for that, both legitimate and lame, but it doesn't matter. I wasn't unhappy, but it wasn't good for my self-esteem. But I had all this time to make stuff -- art and knitting and jewelry. Laundry and dishes were always done, I usually cooked dinner, the house was immaculate. I had time to do things for my family when they needed me, and I found out that they needed me a lot. They needed me to be there. Sometimes they just needed me to be close.

Every Friday is Family Night. We all get together at Mom's house, and one of us cooks, depending on rotation, and we watch Fringe and sit around and have fun together. It's nice because we're kind of spread out around the island and we don't get to hang out all the time. But since I started this new job -- which I LOVE -- I haven't seen my mom or sister at all, even spoken to them, and I see my husband very rarely. He leaves for work just as I'm going to bed, and comes home after I leave for my work. It's been two weeks, and although I already love my job and adore my coworkers (who already want to take me out for karaoke), and have been offered a raise AND a promotion (a first for me), I've been feeling very lonely. I miss my family. I miss my husband.

We put our Christmas tree up, but still haven't put the ornaments on it because that's a family thing, something we do together, and we haven't had time. I love the sweet glow of it in the living room at night, but it also makes me terribly homesick. Thinking about winters in Ohio, driving through the blizzard with Kit to bring our Dad cookies on Christmas Eve while he worked nightshift at the hospital. Being small and hanging the tiny wooden ornaments from Germany, little skiers and angels and snowmen. Gramma and Grampa. Feeling so contented. It's hard enough missing the people who're gone without having to miss the people who live in the same house as me.

I had wanted to ask my wonderful boss if I could have an extra day off a week, but I chickened out because I know everybody's been working very hard and spreading thin. This afternoon, my favorite coworker told me she was looking to get some extra hours, and I told her she could have any of my days she wanted. I would love to have a day to spend with Kit and Mom, to take them to the beach and out for Dole Whip. I would love to have a day to sit and draw and talk to my dad for like an hour.

Every night when I come home from work, I take a shower, do some dishes or laundry, try to throw some dinner together while J sleeps, and I watch old episodes of Community. I didn't realize until this morning that the characters sort of feel like a circle of friends to me now, because we spend so much time together. They have way weirder issues than me, but there they are, making me laugh and feel good.

Tonight I watched the episode "Mixology Certification", in which the group takes Troy to a bar to celebrate his 21st birthday. Like so many episodes, it hits you suddenly with a sad sweetness, when you realize how much you can care about these people, when you realize that this is your life, too. I've been Troy, driving that car full of friends home after a strange, bittersweet evening, alone and still surrounded by love, and not just circumstantial love. Love for me, from people to whom I was important. People who were important to me. To realize that you are exactly where you're supposed to be, even if it feels strange. The strangeness will melt away and you will be home again, right where you belong.

Poor J has got a mild hernia. At least, I'm 95% sure it's a hernia. I asked him the questions I knew my physician-assistant dad would ask and relayed them to him, and he reckoned a hernia. He WAS lifting heavy things the day before he started to complain of pressure.

What did J do? He went online, and now he's pretty sure he's got testicular cancer. I mean, this man has been moping around with this expression of thousand-yard gloom, like somebody told him he's got six months to live. I wish I could say it was funny, but when he's genuinely scared, and sick, he gets as clingy as a baby. He slept on the sofa next to me while I knitted. He didn't want me to leave to walk the dog. He's got a doctor's appointment on Saturday, and I don't even know what I'm going to do with him until then.

One of the things my dad asked was whether J had an appetite. I said it was normal, which it was at the time, and mentioned it to J among the other signs that pointed to his NOT having cancer. That may have been a mistake, because his fretting has killed his appetite since then, and he's latched onto that fact. No appetite must mean cancer, or something equally horrible. I'm vexed because I made peppers stuffed with jambalaya, and he had none. Then I made his favorite oatmeal raisin cookies, thinking he wouldn't be able to resist. No dice.

What J has, aside from a probable mild hernia, is major, major anxiety. He's had it as long as I've known him. I had pretty wild anxiety attacks, many years ago, that would send my heart racing for hours, but J's anxiety is a different animal. It's like terminal pessimism. Everything is a worst-case scenario. And i know he can't help it -- he runs through all the logic and reason like mantras, trying to force himself to stop worrying, but he simply can't. I feel like it's going to fuck with him in a serious way eventually. The worst part is that because he has a top-secret clearance, trying to get medication for it could put his job in jeopardy. Of course, that's just what he tells me, and that could very well be his worst-case scenario mentality.

I've had kidney stones. I've had root rock. I've had breast lumps (just swollen lymph nodes) and an appendicitis scare and a host of other very worrisome and painful interludes, and I think I took them all like a fuckin' lumberjack, because I roll with a healthy amount of logic, and I know that I'm not going to die, at least not soon, barring any freak accidents. I know that our money is not so low that we have to start buying single-ply toilet paper. I know that we will eventually find a house that we like and can afford, and that it doesn't have to be NOW. These are things J struggles with every day, and I have to struggle with him. God knows it doesn't make me love him any less, but it can be hard. I guess this is how it is, to deal with someone dealing with depression, for example; it's hard for me to understand why J can't just look at the long list of reassuring facts and realize that he is going to be fine, instead of fretting himself into an ulcer. It's easy for me, because I'm not suffering with anxiety. It's not something he chooses. He hates it. I wish I could do something for him.

I don't even know why I'm writing all this right now. I guess it just needed to come out. I'm afraid that he's going to be like this when we have kids, and every time the baby's quiet in her crib, J's mind will immediately jump to SIDS or something. That would make me crazy, and I don't think I could deal with it. I would need him to be strong and reassuring with me.

My interview went well, by the way. I still don't know if i have the job, or if I really want it. I'm still putting in other places, hoping for something closer to home. Doing well with commissions in the meantime. The usual. Tonight is Family Night, and I'm cooking manicotti, although I still have four huge stuffed peppers. I hope J comes with me. I think it'll do him a lot of good to get out of the little Mope Groove he's formed in the corner of the sofa.

I hope this doesn't just sound like a whole lot of bitching. I wouldn't be writing about this if I weren't really feeling for J. I know he's scared, and I know how shitty it feels to have stuff go wrong with your body that you don't understand. I feel what he feels. He's my best friend, for God's sake. I just want him to feel better, and I can't do anything else. I've already played the oatmeal cookie card.

I have my second interview tomorrow. I think I'm in. I'm pretty sure I'm in. But still.

I hate this feeling. I wish it was Thursday already. See, relatively small things are like this for people like me, who don't have to have super professional interactions for like three years.

I'm going to press my clothes for tomorrow, shower, then sit and knit furiously while I watch How It's Made until midnight. That will do for now.

I meant to do this ages ago, and I apologize for not keeping this journal up like I used to. I still come and read, always, but I feel like I have less to say and more to show, and Tumblr is easier for lazy people (like me) to use. But I've been busy! Here's some of the crap I've been up to. Click on any picture for the full version.


( +12 | snape, star men & adventures in rainbow [one NSFW]Collapse )

It's been so long since I've put any of my art up here, but I've been a pretty busy bee. Pretty much everything goes on my DeviantArt, but here are a handful of my favorites.



( +5 | love and be lovedCollapse )

Just up the road from the house I grew up in is Kirtland Hills, an extremely green, countryish township with wildflower-heavy pastures cut into forest, twisty streams and pretty vistas that look down to the lake miles away. The Chincapin Horse Farm is on one of these hills, and they keep a collection of retired and rejected horses; old swaybacked riders, skittish ponies, horses with healed broken legs and even a fat little miniature horse. Kit and I used to love to drive up there, park near the fence and watch them walk around.

I used to be afraid of horses. It was their bigness, mostly. One day Kit took me up there with a baggie full of oats and we hopped the fence. In the middle of the field, curious horses came over, one by one until we were surrounded by them, jostling to get some oats. It was a great experience.

J and I decided to visit the horses toward the end of our Ohio trip. We pulled up just in time to hear someone ringing a dinner bell, and the horses galloped toward the barn. It was amazing to hear in the quiet afternoon, the pounding of hooves on the hill. These are the few photos I managed to take before they were all inside for supper.



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Things have been strange. And good, and crappy, and dangerously uncertain at times, and productive, and whatever else have you. I started this so I could talk about it, but I kind of just don't feel like it. I know it's been too long. I miss you guys.

As good an opportunity as any to show you what a baby lovechild Taylor Hanson is, still.





I still see some of myself in him, in the ways in which he's self-conscious and unselfconscious. Where are you even going with all that film, kiddo?

You can't go to Cleveland without hitting the West Side Market. Every ethnic food is represented here, including world-famous gyros and falafel. I almost wept when I saw the piles of beautiful rhubarb, which you better believe I bought and pie'd up. But vegetables is not what I am bringing you in this photopost, no.



( +14 | how can you say no to delicious?Collapse )