The times (and years), they are a-changing

Joe asked for a dinner for Christmas and this is what I delivered. Mushroom stuffed pork tenderloin, bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, steamed spinach, cranberry sauce. Not pictured was the divine cheesecake that I made using Anna Olson’s “Perfect Cheesecake” recipe. The bottle of wine was delicious, a pinot noir from France.

Only thing missing was our family.

Joe had to work this Christmas and New Year (both eve and day) and so a few of our family traditions were missed but not forgotten. We both stayed in Toronto and celebrated with the kittens. Christmas Eve was spent exploring downtown Toronto and then coming home to make our feast. We both drank rum and eggnog while everything cooked and by the time we were eating dessert I was about ready to pass out. And so we did. Thankfully Santa visited and we opened our gifts with my family over Skype. We ate lefse (another post in the making) and hard boiled eggs. New Years Eve was spent puddling around, as has been my favourite activity for the past little while. Joe arrived home around 1am and we shared a midnight (Manitoba time) kiss and toasted the new year with a glass of sparkling orange soda (yet another post for later). And then we ate supper and watched a couple episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

The past year I spent a lot of time thinking. Even more time than I spent puddling around or watching Deep Space Nine. The kind of thinking one does when one goes through serious amounts of change and has the opportunity to start fresh. The blog has been quiet because I’m defining things for myself and I’m not sure what I’m sharing where. And I have a lot of balls in the air and I’m not sure which ones I’m going to catch. And because I believe firmly that I can jinx things by talking about them prematurely, the blog has been quiet.

Though there were so many defining moments, but on 10/10/10 I forgave myself. Things have been good since then, but I can’t take a chance for a day like New Years (at least for those of us who follow the Gregorian calendar) to make more changes. Again it mostly lies in forgiving myself the transgressions of the past year (not finding steady employment, not keeping the house clean, not properly unpacking) and focusing on the person I want to put forward today and all the days after that. I’m cutting myself some slack on the cleaning bit and not worrying too much about that until February when I will follow the Chinese New Year tradition of having my house clean for that new year.

I’m going to listen to a lot more CBC. Today’s post (and the upcoming post on lefse) are inspired by Sook-Yin Lee and her “family ritual” themed episode of Definitely Not the Opera. Last night I listened to Jian Giomeshi’s interview with Sarah Silverman. I never thought I liked her until I listened to what *she* had to say, instead of the character that she plays.

Made me think of what I have to say.

I take things quite personally. Too personally sometimes, but that is something I’m working on. I’ve let a few people say things that hurt me right to my core and made me change who I was. Or am. Or will be? Whatever me at whatever time has not been saying and doing things for fear of being hurt. Of being judged. Of being laughed at. Of being denied. And I can’t really blame me. I’ve had my heart broken open, I’ve been told I didn’t deserve to be in the public service, I’ve had people throw things at me and say they were harpooning a beluga whale, I’ve written tens of job applications over the past year and only had one contact me to say I wasn’t right for the position. I’ve got a lot of reasons to be afraid.

But I can’t hide in my apartment forever. I’ve conquered many of my demons (the whale demon is still out there) and there is a world out there to explore. There are words to write down and photos to take. There are panic attacks to tell you about. There are recipes to share. There are jobs and other mysterious things to apply for. There are fingers to cross. There are bills to pay.

Happy New Year folks, at least if your year starts today. For those if you who celebrate later, I’ll join you then. For those of you who don’t celebrate, we should have a beer or lemonade or glass of wine. Maybe we should think together sometime.