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Last night I went out with a friend who was in town for the holiday weekend. We decided we wanted to go and have a drink and she suggested a new place, a restaurant I didn’t even know existed (so that should tell you how often we go out right now) that had a very fancy bar. It did indeed and the classic pub next door where we used to hang out has apparently become a college hangout. The two restaurants are connected, but one is definitely for the 30+ crowd while the other looked pretty much like any collection of students I see on campus, just a little more dressed up. Being at the fancier bar, I was surprised to see more men than women, and not all that surprised when a woman I know talked about her boyfriend, and his wife who was at the bar with someone else. Life gets complicated after a certain point and all of us who date or have dated after 30 know that *everyone* comes with baggage. At that point, you’re not middle aged and your life isn’t over but chances are you’ve had some of the knocks that come with living. The trick is not to let the knocks take you over, but to continue to open a soft heart with love to possibility.

If you ever get a chance to read Eat, Pray, Love — she says it better than I ever could. There’s always possibility, even right on the other side of pain. But I also have to say after hanging out last night with the well-to-do older set, just how glad I am not to be dating anymore.

Am sitting here with eggnog in my coffee, waiting for the right time for a turkey sandwich and working (sort of) on my presentation for NRC next week. Mostly Chris and I are surfing web news sites and shouting out headlines to each other. Surfing for the most up-to-date news works best when there’s two of you to do it with. And I have absolutely no intention of going near any mall and/or store (other than perhaps the drugstore) today. One person was trampled to death this morning on Long Island at an opening of WalMart at 5 am; a woman at the same store miscarried. Haven’t we figured out yet that this Christmas is going to be different? There won’t be so many gifts or additions to the credit card balances all of us carry. This year should be all about how less is going to be more. Right?

All I want for Christmas is for our families to be healthy, for Chris’ phone to ring often, for us to be happy. Simple things, but ones I cannot control. Getting gifts is lovely and fun, but getting to see the people I love is so much better.

Happy beginning of the Christmas season, everyone.

I love Thanksgiving. It’s about all the right things — family, food and not about buying a car just so you can put a ginormous red ribbon on top. The ads for this year’s “holiday season” are garish bordering on sad — every time I see a Circuit City ad, I am reminded that they filed for Ch. 11 earlier this year. There’s a desperation to Christmas even on the best years — who will get the best toys — and this year, while we have the chance to do it right: spend less, save more, be with people more than gifts, all the retail stores are praying for us to change our minds and add to our debt.

This Thanksgiving is just Chris and I, but I know we’re thinking about family hither and yon, and realizing how many things we have to be grateful for.

Little details, deadlines upon deadlines, gray days, behind for next week’s conference, coffee and cigarettes to get going, checking things off my list as I work throughout the day. Sure, that’s the deal, little things build up to big ones, and everything matters — at least until tenure. But sometimes you hit the limit of the little things and only one thing can save you. Cable television.

perfect for chaining myself to my desk and searching for more good examples of teacher and student blogs. And reading and working on my proposal for NRC next week — although on days like this, my comfy bed and stack of books waiting to be read call out to me, ever so sweetly: “Daaaaannnaaaa. Come and cuddle, the cats will keep you warm, no one needs to work all the time (even in front of the tv set? I wonder)…. there are things to read and read about that are absorbing and interesting and much less worrisome than sick family, an economy in shambles….”

Must. Resist.

We went to Staten Island yesterday for Thanksgiving. Yes, I know the actual Turkey Day is on Thursday, but this is the nature of the world of marriages and divorces, extended families and close friends: you get to eat Turkey. A lot. Or you get to open presents under a series of Christmas trees, dotted across the landscape (or even the country). Here in NJ, down in NY, out to Colorado. From this Thanksgiving through to New Year’s, I will be all over the map (with a conference trip thrown in there for good measure).

This holiday season feels even more important to me. Perhaps it’s being newly married, perhaps because as we get older, illness and change mark our families in new ways. I can’t seem to come up with a gift idea for my parents because all the things I want: the economy to turn around, everyone to be healthy aren’t things you can easily get — not even on the internet. I guess that means we’re growing up and growing older — although I have to admit I still get excited when I see wrapped packages.

Although of course never as much as I would like, and always with the specter of next year’s tenure decision hanging over my head. I haven’t been this stressed about writing since when I wrote my dissertation in six weeks (had my job, had to get the diss done first) and of course it was nowhere near what I wanted it to be. I want this book to be different — to be good, to be as good as I can make it. Yet a desire like that presupposes a lot of time to work on it, and I just don’t have it while teaching three courses, overseeing two capstone master’s committees, and etc. I need two of me — one for writing and one for teaching and service. Has the science of cloning gotten there yet? Or should I just give up for the day and curl up on the couch with a book? Decisions, decisions.

We had five gray days in a row, with intermitten rain and a moist, dense feeling to the air. Despite my happiness with the election, by yesterday I felt either homicidal or ready to become a hermit for the immediate future. No one should have to go that long without the sun — I don’t know how people in Seattle and Portland do it. I really don’t, having grown up in a place you could always count on the sun to come out before too many days went by. The longest gray stretch in the 20 years I lived there was the four days after Columbine — almost as if God were crying too.

Now I sit here with the worst case of writer’s block I have ever had. It’s the book, I know. Even saying the word book in connection with something I am supposed to be doing makes my stomcah drop. I don’t feel up to it; am afraid that what I write won’t be good enough. I had an article rejected from a journal this week (not for the writing style, which was described as “engaging” and “compelling” but for the reporting out of findings — I cut too much to make the page length requirement. I need to go back to another version of it). That didn’t help. How can *I* write a book, I keep thinking.

For the first time since I can remember, Colorado is shaded blue on the US map. So many people I know who had either never voted or hadn’t in years, voted in this election. This morning I feel there is a new possibility in this country I have not felt since Clinton won in ‘92 and I worked with the College Democrats (before I quit to go into journalism and be the managing editor of the college paper). Clinton bitterly disappointed me in many ways (no, not the sex thing — his policies, his broken promises to the poorest, most disenfrnachised parts of this country, his lying under oath and participation in Whitewater, just to name a few things). It seems as though we might be able to move past the last eight years, although that leaves enormous burdens on Obama’s shoulders in this “post 9-11 world” (pundits were throwing that term around yesterday).

So much seems possible this cloudy November morning.

Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States!!!!!!!!!