Christmas meme

Courtesy of Lady Tess.

Your Name: Katy

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Oh, this is a tough one... Egg Nog, partly because it's really only available around now. (Yes, I do the kind that comes from the supermarket. My dad made it with eggs once and it was nasty.)

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? He wraps them. Sometimes he uses newspaper. He's very creative and tricky.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? White on the tree. None on the house.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? No...

5. When do you put your decorations up? No earlier than a couple of weeks before. My own little protest against the decorations that go up before Veterans' Day.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish? I'm torn between meat-stuffed manicotti and English Delight (which is what my father called a toasted English muffin topped with bacon, a tomato slice and cheddar cheese that was broiled so the cheese melted--it's a Christmas breakfast tradition that goes back years.)

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child: I don't have one, not from childhood. Favorite Holiday memory? My beloved buying me an upright vacuum cleaner. Why? Because he listened when I told him I really wanted it.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I don't remember, but I know I was telling my younger brother and sister when I was six (and they were four). The repercussions from that are one of my childhood holiday memories .

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Not any more.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? With crafty ornaments, glass balls and rocking horse ornaments.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? Neither--mostly just endure it.

12. Can you ice skate? No. I used to have such a bad sense of balance that walking was an adventure...but that's improved and I'm in generally better condition, so I've been thinking about trying to learn.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? The vacuum-cleaner notwithstanding, my favorite gift is Ken Burns' The Civil War on videotape. The beloved noticed that I kept watching the tapes I'd made and that they were in rough shape, so he got it for me. I would never have asked for it and I loved it.

14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you? Family time.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? Donuts.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? This will sound whacked, but my sisters come over and we pretty much spend the day eating and watching HBO's Band of Brothers. (One sister and I gave the other sister the DVDs one year. I hadn't seen the series, so we watched it, and thus was a tradition born.) Though, really, it's spending the whole day with my sisters.

17. What tops your tree? Nothing. I don't have a topper I like and I'm not feeling the lack, so none.

18. Which do you prefer giving or Receiving? I like receiving but I love giving when I think I've found a great gift.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? Tough question, with a list for an answer. Greg Lake, I Believe In Father Christmas. Sting, Gabriel's Message. U2, Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home). And now I have some lovely, golden woman's voice singing, "I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams."

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or yum? One is yum, more are yuck.

Consider yourself tagged...

And then...

And then, after all that work, that disappearing act, I didn't end up giving the workshop after all. I got sick, sick with the worst headache of my entire, occasionally migraine-plagued life. It still lingers, in fact, but it's manageable now, which is more than I could have said Sunday. I spent most of the day in bed, waiting, waiting, waiting for the headache to lift, unable to eat or drink anything (including a girl's best friend, painkillers) because anything that went down promptly came back up.

It was awful.

Yesterday morning I could (and did) get some pharmaceutical assistance to remain in my system and that drove off all awareness of pain. Thank goodness.

And my chapter, bless their hearts, have asked me to try again in February. I wish I hadn't let them down, but I intend to use the intervening time to make the workshop stronger. Because, you know, you've got to make use of what life hands you.

Disappearing Act

I'm pretty much popping in to say I shall probably remain among the missing for another week. I'm the speaker at my RWA chapter meeting next Sunday, and I'm talking about something new, so the workshop is in the workshop, so to speak, still being tinkered with. The ambitious plans I had have crashed, hard, against reality. (Why, oh, why did I think it would be easy to plot out a novel that's stalled three times already? Oh, wait, I know why. It's the same reason I write in the first place: Excitement always trumps experience.)

Anyway, whatever's really going on with me, it's consuming most of my creative energy and all my thoughts are directed to figuring out who these people are and what they want, and how to keep them from getting what they want right away so I have an actual story, the plot of which I can discuss developing on Sunday.

I take comfort in knowing that this time next Sunday, it will all be over.

All Souls' Day

Yesterday, All Souls' Day, was my birthday. I'm now mumbledy years old, and I wouldn't be a day younger if you paid me. (But that doesn't mean I have to say how many years mumbledly are.)

All Soul's day, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, is a commemoration of the faithful departed. It's also all about those souls who went to the great beyond with a little venial sin still clinging to them, so they couldn't quite get all the way. The prayers of those who remain on earth can help clear those last unsightly blemishes and let the soul finish the journey.

Well, that's my paraphrase of the theology, anyway.

I don't remember how old I was when I found out my birthday was All Souls' Day. I think I was rather disappointed--it seemed so gloomy and minor key. But because I am occasionally contrary and always stubborn, I turned and embraced All Souls'. I embraced the sinning dead. I embraced the gloom and gray I associated with the day. I embraced the fact that no one I knew had ever heard of, or perhaps remembered, what All Souls' was all about. (I'm rather fond of things no one else knows about--not in a smart-alecky, "I know something you don't know, neener, neener" kind of way, but in a love-of-obscurity-and-the-byways-of-knowledge kind of way.)

As time went by, my embrace extended to encompass the whole month of November. I love Samhain, when the walls between worlds are thin, and There bleeds a bit into Here; I relish, in a dark way, Veterans' Day; and Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, trumping all the rest. But for all my love of the whole month, the pinnacle is still All Souls', the day that is mine.