the early bird special

It looks like we're just standing awkwardly, but really that is me ice skating with my sister, Diana, and my brother, George.

Other Christmas highlights included:
A retro kitten apron from my mom
Many many Tom & Jerrys
Rhymnocerous & Hiphopapotamus
Crab on Christmas Eve
Drinking beer and falling asleep on Tamara's couch
Etcetera

I’m back in Seattle after 10 truly lovely days in the Bay Area. I imagine that someday I will find a better way to articulate the hard spot in my throat and the empty, prickly sensation in my stomach that I get when I’m driving to the airport in San Francisco. I guess that that someday will probably coincide with the point in my life when I start feeling less torn between Seattle and the Bay Area. I keep thinking that all my problems will be fixed when I align my life in a way that facilitates me moving back to San Francisco, but at least when I throw a party here in Seattle, people show up. Even knowing that, I miss being close to my family in a terribly acute way; I saw them so much this fall that waiting until June for my brother’s college graduation seems interminable.

On my last day in town yesterday, my family and I walked downtown to see Juno with Angelica. As we intersected Magnolia we ran into Eric, who taught Boys’ PE at my grade school walking with his mother and new baby daughter. He was the first person to tell me that life and boys and the universe wouldn’t suck so much once I was out of junior high, or at least he was the first person to tell me that who I thought was credible and might actually know something about it. Even though his parents live on the same block as my parents, I hadn’t seen him in probably ten years, and I’ve frequently reflected on the advice he gave to me as an awkward and miserable 8th grader. I wish we would have exchanged email addresses or something.

In this, the last day of 2007, I feel like I should do some sort of philosophical round-up or re-cap, and maybe I will eventually, but for now I feel exceptionally lucky to be onward and upward of where I was at this point last year, or even worse, this time two years ago. Geographical problems aside, I feel on-track and on-task. And tomorrow I am going to plant tulips.