Silent Night
This is always the quietest time in the blogosphere. It’s as if a giant snowstorm has buried all the keyboards. Even when it’s not a White Christmas, there’s sort of a figurative snow.
I sort of imagine all of us like dots on a board — little pinpricks of light when we’re online and a sea of darkness when we’re offline. Most of the time, this fictive board is an expanse of white light — people furiously typing and reading and typing and reading. And then this two day period rolls around and suddenly the board is mostly black except for tiny pinpricks of light like stars that pop up across the board. One person here and one person there, and you can suddenly see that we are all individuals with our own dots of light vs. part of a large expanse of electrical energy.
I sort of like these quiet times.
I am here, online most of the day while I simultaneously read and drink hot chocolate. If you are online and would like to pull up a chair and bring over your own cup of hot chocolate, let us know what you’re doing today or what you’re thinking about or how many drinks you’ve had to get through the festivities or the movie you’re watching. In other words, if you want company, it’s here for the taking.
22 comments
Today is the day we visit our in laws for Christmas. I would need a few drinks to get through … although that may loosen my tongue too much and lead me to say things I really mean like “if you don’t have anything nice to say, say nothing at all”!
Gypsy Mama — Ha — will be in your back pocket during the visit, so feel free to whisper snarky things to me via telepathy so they don’t escape out your mouth. Good luck!
I have not been in a very festive mood lately. However, watching the girls unwrap their Christmas pj’s from one of Santa’s Elves (not Elf on a Shelf, we don’t do that) and seeing their excitement has gotten me in better spirits. That and a half day of “work”. I’m here at work but no work will really be done today.
I’m at work for most of the day, and then I have to go to my MIL’s house…where everyone is already tense because they can’t organize properly. (Who’s bringing the potatoes?! Looks like I’ll be stepping up, but it’s going to be mac and cheese, because I’m contrary like that. And we just had potatoes on Monday, so I don’t feel like making ’em again.) Should be a fun time…
Oh, but once I’m done with that, I have nothing to do (except visit the Science Center) until Jan 6! Gonna watch some movies and bake and maybe clean the house…
Hi Mel. I am here too. Despite this being a happy time for our family, for the second year in a row I can’t shake the memories of sadness around this time. PTSD after over 10 years of TTC and the holiday season feeling so lonely I guess.
I like the quiet times too… Gives me time to catch up and remember my place in this community.
I’m here although I’ve been absent from the blog world the last week or so. This is the first Christmas that’s been really hard and I find myself at a loss for words. Not that the Christmases weren’t hard before but this year is almost like a silent but intoxicating grief. I guess probably because the part couple years my friends were all childless and we were trying. But this year they all have children and we’re still trying. That’s hard.
So I am just trying to absorb all the joy while we spend Christmas with my in-laws and not let any sadness creep into this happy day…. Despite its best efforts. So I am here, reading along side you with hot chocolate and wondering what everyone else is up to.
I am unfortunately working today but afterwards my parents are coming over for an early Christmas since we leave for Spain tomorrow afternoon!
I’m working this morning. I mean, I’m “at work” this morning. How much work will actually get done will likely be minimal. I had to seriously talk myself out of pouring a little Bailey’s in my coffee cup this morning. Don’t worry, I’ll make up for that later.
That thought, all the pinpricks of light, so beautiful…
This Christmas is strange because it was so overshadowed by my grandmother’s death, and all that came with it, and so we were just talking this morning over breakfast about how un-Christmasy everything feels. We didn’t get a tree because we’re traveling, we didn’t put all the decorations out, we never sent cards (or even MADE cards), we bought lights but never strung them… it’s a lot of unfinished business. However, we have today and tomorrow just the two of us and are going to do everything we can to make it festive. We have roasted duck breast tonight and Chicken Marbella tomorrow and wines to accompany them, we WILL watch Elf or White Christmas or It’s A Wonderful Life (or all three plus Bridget Jones’ Diary, which I solidly count as a Christmas movie). We’ll put our presents to each other around the fireplace without actually setting them on fire, and we’ll stay off Facebook and the onslaught of Baby’s First Christmases that lives there. So I guess it will be pretty darn good! (We’ll celebrate with family afterward, but we claimed the holiday for ourselves…12 days and all that.)
I wish you all peace, and booze if you’re boozing (because it helps), and hope that this is the last holiday like this if you are still in the waiting camps. Happy holidays to you and your hard-won family if you are in the finally-there camps! 🙂
Oh, I’m intermittently wrapping and ‘resting my pelvis’ after my super fun (read: terrifying) bleeding episode on Monday. DH will be home from work soon, and we’re off to the Italian seafood eatathon with my in-laws. The hot cocoa sounds nice!
My holidays are over and I was planning on doing some sorting of stuff, with the occasional coffee thrown in. I had planned on being online during this time, but have lost the internet where I’m staying (long story) so now will only be around on the days I’m out in the world. That said, I’m in a ridiculously happy and rather peaceful mood after a stressful last week that had nothing to do with the holidays.
I will forever think of the blogosphere as points of light now, because of you. What a stunningly beautiful image. Thank you.
I’m here! In between taking batches of cookies out of the oven and putting in new ones, and mixing up a batch of pumpkin bars. Our festivities aren’t until tomorrow so today I’m baking up a storm, wrapping my last few gifts, prepping deliciously fattening little smokies wrapped in bacon, and watching hubby make seafood linguine for dinner! 🙂 it’s a good day!
Raising a mug of cocoa to my ALI sisters. Thanks for the space to do this.
This was a nice gentle post. I am feeling pretty guilty for not posting anything expansive the last two days. I’ve been really cranky and was having a hard time figuring out why…
As I was chopping vegetables to take to my inlaws tonight it occured to me the last two Christmas’s with them were really hard. Two years ago, we were in the midst of our infertility struggle & found out one of the SIL’s was expecting. While exciting news, I was crushed. Then last Christmas…it was all out, everything we had been struggling through and having to tip toe past holding the new addition…but this Christmas will be different. I know there are others out there like myself & I’ll be able to sit and enjoy time with just my hubby & focus just being happy, healthy, and warm.
Thank you for your blog, it’s a great place to stop and just feel comforted or laugh.
Thank you! Hope your hot cocoa was really good
ICWL week
I’ve had trouble getting into Christmas this year and I don’t really know why. I’ve punted on a lot of traditons and am counting on my kids being small enough to not care. We’re at my IL’s and I want to go hole up and be quiet and sad but there are too many people here for that. I’m usually a Christmas fiend, but right now I’m just kind of ready for it to be over.
Hi sweet Mel! I am lying on the guest room bed at my parents house, the same house I grew up in. Trying to wrap my head around the fact that my husband of 10 yrs will soon no longer be my husband, as we are divorcing. Feeling sad & peaceful & relieved & scared & hopeful all at the same time.
Lovely post. I am constantly on FB right now feeling not very charitable or happy and just bogged down with domestic drudgery and a sense of loneliness. How could this be? Last Christmas I was sick as a dog, heavily pregnant, paranoid about the baby inside me. Now I have an eleven month old delightful baby on my chest and a rambunctious 4 yr old in the living room staving off bedtime.
I guess the bottom line is I’m grateful to have my family and after all we have been through I am so lucky in that I gambled and got good odds. I just can’t get excited or happy about effing Christmas. And everyone posting pics of their big happy families. Why can’t I be happy with my miraculous nuclear family of four? I am most other days of the year. Is it the reminder of all the family that I have lost, my parents, Susan’s parents, a beloved aunt, my brother far away and not intending to visit? Is it that the constant struggle of a stressful job, being constantly broke and Susan’s health issues and her chronic lack of a job that gets her into her long awaited chosen field don’t go away because it’s Christmas? I know my Ali sisters may not appreciate these sentiments but they are there and real right beside my gratitude for my beautiful babies.
As Raymond Briggs’ very real Father Christmas says, “happy bloomin Christmas, everyone!”
I worked half a day today, and then did the full Christmas meal. For the past few years that’s what I’ve done- Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve for my father, husband and self. (and the furbabies). Tomorrow we go to my BFF’s mom who has all but adopted us since my mom died- which for me helps with the change of tradition. Christmas just us without her leaves me with a huge hole. And I highly recommend the new Bailey’s Chocolate Cherry for the drinking….;)
I feel that too, but is like it because it helps me let go of the guilt for all the things I’m not doing and enjoying the being.
Sitting outside under an umbrella at my mother’s house, expecting another summery day. My niece is sitting beside me in the high heeled shoes I got her for Christmas (my feminist conscience is grappling with that!) and we’re about to head off to meet some family I haven’t seen in many years. Not sure if I’m looking forward to that either! The Christmas spirit is weak in this one this year.
I love the imagery in this post. 🙂