Happy New Year

2006-01-03 - 3:33 p.m.

Ha -- I'm back.

I'm sure I'll work up a lengthy and reflective entry eventually (ho ho ho) but for now:

• I got my hair cut. Oh, it feels great. The people who've cut my hair lately have all been people who don't really have a clue what sort of hair would look good on what sort of person. This person actually looked at my hair and how it grows, and listened to what I told her I wanted and then came up with something that's what I wanted and that looks good on my head. Hooray! I'm never going to anyone else again!
  Also, I sort of liked her. I mean, I bet she reads books or knits or something. Also, she didn't tell me I needed to get my hair colored. She actually liked the white stripe in the front. Also, the way she cut it sort of feathered in the gray bits. It looks good, I think.
  
• It's really raining! And the new house isn't leaking.
  
• I've been doing load after load of laundry. I can't wait to live in a house with internal access to the laundry machines. It's pretty miserable to have to 1)put on clogs and 2)go out into the rain and gale force winds to find out that 3)your clothes aren't dry or worse 4) that they aren't dry and judging by the temperature of the dryer they have been sitting there, wet, for quite some time. Pooh.
  
• Pittsburgh was great. It's a really nice town and I think I would move there in a second. It seems to have lots of cool neighborhoods and shopping and bakeries and delicatessens. It seems like a very livable city. My brother-in-law has a great house in a great neighborhood. They've bought a new house that they're renovating that seems, to us, to be farther away from everything and less groovy. But it's close to an urban park, and I guess they wanted to be near the woods. I'd like to buy their old house!
  
• Visiting was a little stressful. K's brothers both have small children, and cooping 4 small children up in a house for days on end is a bit wearing on the children and their parents. It wasn't wearing on me, since our kids are long past that. But it was wearing on the people affected. Also, my MIL is still very anxious. She's always been an anxious person, but the death of K's father and then her deciding to move to Pittsburgh (which was a good decision) has her really really anxious. It's completely understandable, but it did make the group decision making that always goes along with these things and which is itself always awful, really really awful. I'm afraid I lost it once when she started worrying about 5 hours before our flight about how we'd get to the airport. (We'd already agreed that Ks brother would drive us. It was not a problem.) I was ready to go sit at the airport for 5 hours just so she would stop worrying about it. But hten I made her feel bad, which I'm sorry about. She's driving herself crazy, too -- Not quite sure what to do about this.
  
• We (the four of us) had a nice time together. N and M got along well together. K and I and N and M all got along well -- we did a few little things together (like shopping for a coat for M) which were really fun. That made me really happy.
  
• Nice Christmas dinner with my brother and his boyfriend. They hung around until late playing A**les to A**les, which is clearly the game of the season.
  
• Lots of nice social events, mostly spontaneous. It was fun.
  
• Clearly it is a sad and lifechanging event when your spouse dies. It's got both Ks and my mother feeling completely extraneous. Not sure what to make of this either, but it seems to be a fact.
  
• Saw Brokeback Mountain with N and M and 3 of N's friends. I think they were a little shocked. Hmmm.

I guess that is the wrap-up, after all.

Happy New Year!

out of print - new releases

find me! - 2008-02-12
where I've gone - 2008-02-07
Where I've gone - 2008-02-05
where I've gone - 2008-02-01
New - 2008-02-01