2001-12-25 - 11:00 p.m.

I'm about ready to pass out from exhaustion, but am leaving town tomorrow and won't be back until the 2nd. So no updates till then. In between now and then, I have some decisions to make, but am going to try hard to relax this week. There have been further developments on the job front that are complicating my plans a bit. A job, one that I have a good chance of getting has just opened up, which is good. I have lots of friends there, and it will put me in a different market, which I've been wanting. However, it will be difficult to get in touch with them and make it happen by Thursday. Which is the day I told the last company I'd make my decision. So, I'll have to make some calls tomorrow and see what I can do. Brain is still in vacation mode, and I'm dreading it, I have to admit.

My Christmas was really good, and we have the same traditions every year. The seven fishes for Christmas Eve, and an open house afterward, where our friends and more removed family stop in and out all night. It's traditionally a very late night, and last night we finally went to bed around 3:30AM. After a half an hour of ridiculous giggling and staggering around with Jane, both of us drunk and silly and recreating high school, where we'd go out and then sleep at my house, giggling about boys and beer in the bathroom and trying not to wake my parents.

Getting ready for this party is an enormous ordeal, as well as the dinner my mother has on Christmas Day. It's a two day frenzy, involving my mother, my grandmother, Jane and me, chopping and cooking and shopping and centerpiece-arranging. We learned to make my mother's homemade manicotti, and we filled and rolled them, and covered them to be baked on Christmas. We made fish, and antipasto with my grandmothers vinegar peppers from the summer, and saffron clams. We got out the china and crystal and ironed the tablecloth and lit candles , and drank gallons of coffee. Every year. And every year there are little stresses, and family tensions, and the usual issues that the holidays bring. Every year, by Christmas night, I am exhausted, and overwhelmed by thought of washing another pot. I have moments where I long to be able to lie on the damn couch and read a book.

But every year, we do it. All four of us. It is beyond ritual, it's what Christmas IS to us, and it is the kind of thing that makes my mothers world spin on its axis. And so I do it, and even though I'm tired, I'm sitting in a room filled with my friends and family, people I haven't seen since last Christmas, and that feeling of security and belonging is the reward for the work, no doubt. But mostly I do it for my mother, to pay her homage every single year,now, while she's alive. It's the thing I can do to say thank you to her for everything that she is to me.

And I just wanted to get that down, before I go. Happy and Peaceful New Year to all of you, and you know who you are.

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