Peace on earth, good will toward men and everybody else - A week in review

It’s late December. It’s 5:30 PM and I was too busy today to stop working for a few minutes to catch the last few minutes of late afternoon December light, and now it’s dark. The 10-day Christmas countdown has begun, and it’s just over two weeks until the end of 2022. This is now the third “don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out” year in a row, and I’ve learned a few things. I’m not going to make any flippant remarks about how happy I am to see the back of this Godforsaken year because the next year absolutely HAS to be better, because what have the last few years taught me except that the next year does not at ALL have to be better, and that it could easily be 100 percent worse. 

God I’m fun, aren’t I?

*****

It’s Friday now and I thought ahead, so I was able to finish my workday at 4:30 and then spend the last half hour of daylight outside. It was a perfect December sunset afternoon, thin sunlight gradually fading as the sky turned gold and pink and orange. It’s cold but not unbearably so. It was still and quiet outside, and I walked fast, trying to cover as much ground as possible and return home before darkness fell. I saw only two other humans: a neighbor boy on his bike, and another neighbor, a swimming friend, out for a late afternoon walk. 

It’s 5:30 and I have to go to a holiday party with my husband’s work colleagues. What I’d really like to do is stay right here in the house where the dark has collected in the corners and the Christmas tree and the TV (MSNBC, on mute) are the only light. I could start a fire. I could read a book or watch “Elf” for the 47th time, because watching “Elf” is the second-best way to spread Christmas cheer. But I’ll go to the party because I said I’d go, and I’m sure I’ll have a good time. 

*****

It's Saturday morning, bright and clear, and the Christmas party was fine. I’m not 100 percent sure that it was better than sitting on my couch would have been, but right now few things appeal to me more than staying at home on the couch. 

I’m just keeping it real. 

Anyway, Christmas Eve is one week from today but before you can experience the peace of Christmas you have to run the gauntlet of the last week of preparation and shopping and social activities. It's going to be a week. Right now I'm on my way to the MLK Aquatic Center, where I will serve as referee for today's meet against Northwest High School. I have the whistle around my neck. I'm wearing my white polo shirt. I hate white polo shirts but I love high school swim meets. 

*****

The meet went very smoothly (because of competent officiating, obviously) and was over in a flash. High school swim meets are short and sweet. We rolled out of there at 11:30 and that's when the real work; i.e., cookie baking, commenced. Unlike most people who love Christmas (and I do love Christmas) I don’t like baking cookies. But now it's done, and I don't have to bake another cookie for a whole year. I started writing this paragraph just as I set the 10-minute timer for the very last batch. When that timer went off, I surveyed what I had wrought - about 300 or so cookies, cooling on racks on counters all over the kitchen, which was destroyed. A veritable crime scene, I tell you. Flour everywhere, and tiny bits of cookie dough stuck to everything. The faucet and the door handles on the refrigerator, oven, and dishwasher; and the countertop, and the salt shaker - the salt shaker! Everything was absolutely encrusted with gosh-dang cookie dough. But the place is clean now, and my shopping is done. 

I’m not out of the woods yet, though. I still have a very busy work week ahead. The shopping is done, but nothing is wrapped. I’m finished baking but I haven’t even started cooking. Peace on earth and good will towards men is a shit ton of work, I tell you what. 

*****

It’s Tuesday now. Last night I remembered yet another thing that I was supposed to do and didn’t do. Well, I should say “hadn’t done,” because of course I stopped what I was doing and did the thing as soon as I remembered it, but my mind is still not at ease because what else did I forget? Who else is mad at me right this minute because I promised something and failed to deliver? 

*****

The winter darkness seems darker this year. The cold seems colder. Everything seems hard, and I mean everything. I have to plan my day around the simplest tasks. I have to steel myself to get up out of bed or off the couch or even out of my desk chair because it’s way easier to keep working than to shift focus and transition to another thing. I’m overcome with inertia.  

What is wrong with me? WHAT is WRONG with me?  It’s supposed to be a joyous and peace-filled time but I feel neither joyful nor peaceful. And I’m just so tired. 

*****

I told some friends that I am in a bit of a mental health crisis because there’s really no other way to put it. My inclination during such times is to just isolate myself and avoid contact with others. This never works. So I reached out, as the saying goes. And I’m glad I did. I feel a little better about how terrible I feel, if that makes any sense at all. I feel less alone with it. It feels less heavy. 

One of my friends even ordered a UV light for me. She had it sent directly to my house, which was so kind. And I think it’s helping a little. 

I keep thinking that I need a few days to rest; a few days when I don’t have to do anything or cook anything or clean anything or even look at a clock. Just a few days.  

*****

It’s Thursday night now, and I’m finished working for the year. I have a lot of wrapping and cooking and cleaning to do, but I’m sitting on my couch and writing about it instead of doing it. I came home from work at 5:30 or so, filled with good intentions. And I did do a few things, but then the cold and the rain got to me and everything felt overwhelming, and now I’m stuck on the couch. 

I could start packing cookies and treats for the neighbors. I think I’ll do that. I’ll be upset if I let the entire evening pass without trying to accomplish something. And transferring all of my anxiety from my mind into this document does not count as an accomplishment. Especially when it doesn’t even work because I still feel anxious. Now the anxiety is in my head and on this page, all for you. You’re welcome.

I have to say, that did make me feel better. There’s a nice stack of boxes of cookies and treats in the kitchen, and I even wrapped some presents. Lucky I did all that because I woke up sick and ended up in urgent care for two hours today, December 23. I don’t have COVID or flu or strep (which is what I thought I had). I just have some undefined viral infection. I feel sick. I feel too sick really to come up with funny descriptors. We’ll just keep it at “sick.” 

But I feel better in my mind. I know why I’ve been so tired and lackadaisical, and I’m just going to stay inside for the rest of the day and let myself recover. It’s very cold outside but the house is cozy. I have books to read and a movie or two to watch, if I can stay awake. God willing I will evict this virus from my body in the next day or so. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. 

*****

It’s 4:35 PM again, my favorite time of day in December. Absent Christmas, December is trash but there’s no denying the beauty of a late-afternoon December sky. 

Oh, and it’s also Christmas Eve, and all of the presents are wrapped and everything that I can do to prepare for dinner tomorrow is done, and all we have to do now is be together, all of us at home, in the house where once again the dark is beginning to collect in the corners. The Christmas tree is alight with twinkly lights and there’s a nice fire in the fireplace. My husband and sons are watching football while I tap away on this keyboard. It’s lovely to have everyone in the same room at once. I don’t even feel sick anymore. 

I could stay right here just like this all evening but we’re going to Christmas Eve Mass at 6 PM, so we’ll have to get up soon. This is positive inertia. Is that a thing? I’m making it a thing. Positive inertia is when your lack of desire to move is the result of contentment, not anxiety or indecision or just plain tiredness. I feel like a cat in a sunbeam. 

*****

Christmas dinner is easier than Thanksgiving dinner. It’s 3 PM on Christmas Day now and I’m waiting for the last few things to warm up. Most of my Christmas menu lends itself easily to advance preparation or even advance cooking. On Christmas Day, I make some vegetables and I put the ham in the oven, and I warm up all the stuff that I prepared the day before, and I wait for the accolades to roll in. And the accolades do roll in. I’m a mediocre cook, most of the time, but my holiday dinners rule. My Christmas dinner in particular kicks ass, in the most positive purely metaphorical sense. 

It’s been brutally cold here for the last few days but the sun is out today and my husband and I went walking. I was layered from head to toe - leggings under my pants, two pairs of socks, three layers up top, a scarf wrapped around my head, and gloves on my hands. My husband deigned to put on a jacket. We walked a shortish route at a briskish pace, and didn’t see another human. Now I’m finishing the last few minutes of preparation. Christmas is the product of weeks of work and planning, and it’s over in a flash. 

When I was young, I enjoyed it as children enjoy it, opening the presents that our parents bought and wrapped for us, eating the food that my mother and grandmother prepared, basking in the warmth of holiday lights and music and reveling in a week and a half free of school and homework and early morning wake-ups. As much fun as that was, though, it’s more fun to be the person who gives this time to others. My children and my niece and nephew are opening gifts and eating treats and basking in holiday coziness, all of which I worked very hard to produce, and I am all for it. It really is better to give than to receive. Merry Christmas.  

Tannenbaum

When you have a Christmas tree that needs decorating, and no one in your household seems to have time to do the job, you should hire a six-year-old girl. They are crack decorators and they generally work for pretty much free. 

It's not going to decorate itself. Trust me. 

In my house, this year’s Christmas tree decorating proceeded in stages. My husband picked up the tree on his way between work appointments. He dropped it off on our front porch, and went back to work without so much as a hello. I was working from home that day, and I never even knew that a tree had been dropped on the porch until my son came home from school. “There’s a Christmas tree on the front porch,” he said, because he generally tells it like it is. I told him to text my husband to verify that it was in fact our tree. With that question resolved, my son set up the tree, sorted the lights into working and not-working piles, and strung the working lights onto the tree. 

The next day, someone bought two new strings of lights, which were duly added to the tree. We have a few Star Wars ornaments that plug into the main strings of lights, and so those were added. The rest of the ornaments were in boxes on the floor next to the tree, where they sat for the next three days. 

If you know me at all, even a little bit, then you know that stuff sitting around on the floor, in or out of boxes, is one of my least favorite things in life. I’m all about neatness. I’m all about a place for everything and everything in its place. And I’m REALLY all about getting things done right the heck now. Note that I said “getting things done” and not “doing things” because I didn’t have time last week to decorate that tree. And no one else did, either. But sometimes the cavalry shows up just when you need it most and in my case, the cavalry was one six-year-old Girl Scout who has very definite ideas about what a Christmas tree should look like. And I was more than willing to take direction. 

And it’s a good thing, too, because she’s more than willing to give direction. That is the thing about six-year-old girls. They like to work. They like to be busy. But they also like to be in charge, and their management approach is best described as “authoritarian.” 

When the children arrived (nine-year-old nephew was there to watch football with my sons, not to decorate), I asked my niece if she’d like to decorate the tree. She nodded yes immediately, and then looked right at the boys who were sprawled in front of the TV. “Actually,” she said very pointedly, “I like to decorate the Christmas tree WITH OTHER PEOPLE. I don’t like doing it all by myself.”

The boys pretended not to hear her. “Don’t even look at them,” I said. “I gave up on them two days ago. But I don’t like doing this all by myself either. So we’ll work on it together.” 

And we did. She hung a few candy canes, and then helpfully began giving direction. “Put one here,” she would say, pointing at various spots on the tree that she felt were in need of additional ornaments. “No, not there - THERE.” 

“We need some up high.” 

“You need to put more pretty ones in the front and put the ugly ones in the back.” (Harsh!)

“That one is making the branches bend over. We need to fix it.” 

She’d step back every few minutes, survey our work, and give additional direction. 

We (I) finally finished, just as I had begun to feel a little browbeaten. “My boss doesn’t bark orders at me like that,” I told her, “and he was in the actual Navy.” 

“We can eat the candy canes, right?” she said, blithely ignoring my subtle criticism of her communication style. This ability to deflect and distract will serve her well in her career as a dictator or a tech billionaire. 

“Yes, we can eat them,” I said. And we did, one each. They were delicious, and the tree looks beautiful. Merry Christmas. 

On deck

What's better than a swim meet on a Saturday in December? How about two swim meets? It's Saturday morning and I am working at the check-in table at the Potomac Valley Swimming Turkey Claus, a four-day swimming extravaganza at the University of Maryland. Never mind the insanity of kids missing a day or more of school just to compete in a swim meet. My son missed school yesterday but he swam in the winning medley relay, so I guess it was worth it. 

I thought that the check-in table would be a more fun place to work than the pool deck but having now seen the grass on both sides of the fence, I have to say it's not any greener over here. My son’s club is hosting the meet, and the University of Maryland is charging a lot of money for the use of the aquatic center, and the money has to come from somewhere, and "somewhere" means an admission charge for parents who already hand over a lot of money to the swimming industrial complex. It's not an easy sell, but I have to say that most of the parents are pretty understanding. And I can talk the rest of them around. I'm pretty good at talking people around. It's one of my special skills. 

After prelims this morning, we will make our way to the Kennedy Shriver Aquatic Center (KSAC to the initiated) for Rockville vs. Richard Montgomery, the first meet of the high school season. My youngest is a senior, so it is his and our last season of high school swimming. 

*****

It's 7:30 on Sunday morning and I'm back at the Eppley Recreation Center pool for the fourth and final day of Turkey Claus. It's a clear and cold early December day and I'm looking out the floor to ceiling windows on the far side of the pool. It’s a lovely view. Early winter morning sunlight is streaming through bare trees in the little wooded area just outside the pool. My older son goes to school here but I don't think I have ever noticed that the main campus at UMD is really a very pretty place. Well, parts of it are. Yesterday, I lost my car in the Terrapin Trail parking garage, which is very much NOT a pretty place. That garage is dead to me now. 

My son made finals in breaststroke last night and he finished fifth. He wasn't happy about missing the medals but 5th place out of almost 130 is pretty good and we'll take it. This morning will be low key. I'm not volunteering, he's swimming one event in which he will not make finals, and we should be out of here by 11. 

*****

We were actually out of there just after 10. I brought a book with me so that I'd have something to do during the twenty-plus heats of the two events that preceded my son’s sole event but I didn't end up reading for two reasons. One is that they added another medley relay event that included my son, and the other is that I was engrossed in the other races. I'm usually so busy at a swim meet that I forget that I really love to watch swimming. My son's club swept the last minute relay, winning first, second, and third place. He finished somewhere in the middle of the 100 freestyle pack and then we went to the College Park Diner where the boy ate an astonishing amount of breakfast. Swimmers can eat, I tell you what. 

And that was Turkey Claus. There’s nothing but easy-peasy high school swimming until January. 

*****

It’s Wednesday night now, and I’m writing because I write every day, and because it’s just as good a way as any other to avoid cooking dinner. Dinner isn’t even hard. I know what I’m going to make and the ingredients are sitting right there. I’ll get right to it just as soon as I finish cleaning out my already pretty clean desk drawers. 

This is how I act when I’m out of sorts, and I’m out of sorts. Seasonal affective disorder is no joke, and the darkness and cold are combining with overwork and exhaustion and inability to see the light at the end of the busy-all-the-time tunnel. I wish I could sleep. Three months should do it. I’ll sleep until the middle of March and when I wake up there will be daylight until 7 or so. 

But of course, then I’ll miss Christmas, not to mention this last high school swim season. And the house will be a mess, too. They’re all pretty neat, my family, but they’re not compulsive. They’ll leave the folded laundry on top of the dryer for a week. They won’t vacuum unless there’s actual visible dirt. They won’t even think about the refrigerator shelves. And the bathroom? No, this won’t work. I’m going to have to wake up every day, at least for a few hours, or the whole operation will fall to pieces. Plus I have a job. There’s always a flaw in the plan. There’s always some damn detail. 

*****

It’s Thursday now, and I’m in a much better frame of mind. I was out of sorts yesterday, but I replenished my stock of sorts, and things are looking up. Yesterday wasn’t rock bottom, but it wasn’t far from rock bottom and the slope seemed slippery. I do hate those days. I hate feeling sad and I hate feeling sad about being sad because what on earth do I have to be sad about? I don’t lack for a single thing. How dare I? 

I’d never tell another depressed person to snap out of it. I’d never even think it. But that’s what I tell myself. And sometimes it actually works. It worked yesterday. A few hours sleep, a little pep talk (to myself), and “Here Comes the Sun” (the Richie Havens recording), and I’m right as rain, pretty much. 

“Here Comes the Sun” works every time. 

Tomorrow is Friday and I’ll work from home, and then we’ll go watch the Capitals play the Seattle Kraken. On Saturday, I’ll be on the deck with my clipboard for Rockville vs. Einstein. And really, what’s better than a swim meet on a Saturday in December? 

High voltage

It was 5:30 on the Sunday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend when the lights went out, abruptly and completely. It’s pretty much night time around here at 5:30 PM in late November and so we were, as they say, plunged into darkness. 

I had just been thinking that it was probably time to cook dinner. I knew what I was going to make, which is, for me, half the battle. It’s like writing - if I know what I’m going to cook, or what I want to write about, then the rest comes pretty easily. But last Sunday at dinner time, the early dinner planning availed me nothing, because not only was my kitchen completely dark, I also have an electric range. 

“We’ll give it half an hour,” I said. “If the lights aren’t back on by 6:00 or maybe 6:15, then we’ll get in the car and go eat out.” Not gonna lie - I was hoping that the lights would stay out because I love going out for dinner. 

We decided that we’d go to Villa Maya, a Rockville neighborhood favorite. Then my son looked up from his phone. His girlfriend, who lives about two miles from our house and around the corner from Villa Maya, had just texted him that power was out on her street, too. 

“Well,” I said. “No point going to Villa Maya - if they don’t have power they can’t serve food and if they do have power, then the whole neighborhood is going to descend on them.” Then, as if on cue, my phone started to blow up. 

"What's going on?" "Do you have power?" "Our lights just went out - what about you?" One friend had been away for the holiday weekend, and she arrived home at 5:45 to find that the entire neighborhood was pitch dark. Another texted that he was on his way home from picking up a kid from a friend's house, and that the traffic lights were out on Georgia Avenue from Olney all the way to Silver Spring. This is a long distance, about five miles or so, and this text was my first clue that this was a bigger deal than our average normal neighborhood power failure. 

We all started scrolling and didn't see anything on social media or news sites, not right away. I called Pepco and got their usual outgoing voice message. Then my husband turned on the battery powered radio and tuned to the local all-news station, where we finally heard the first report that a small plane had crashed into a high-voltage tower, taking out power to the entire eastern half of Montgomery County. 

We all naturally assumed that the crash had killed the plane's occupants, and we were sad for their families. Then we heard the unbelievable news that the pilot and passenger were still alive in the plane, which was entangled in power lines, half stuck in the tower and half dangling, over 100 feet in the air. 

I couldn’t even imagine how terrified those poor people must have been. They must have been sure that they were about to die in one of several horrible ways. They could have been electrocuted 100 feet in the air. The plane could have exploded, or it could have plunged to the ground. All three of those things could have happened, really. So many dreadful possibilities that must have seemed all but inevitable to the people trapped in that tiny cockpit. Terrifying. 

But as it turns out, death was not at all inevitable. If you follow the news, you know that the two people actually survived after seven fearful hours suspended in midair in the wrecked plane. First responders from Montgomery County and the state of Maryland and the Potomac Electric Power Company got the people out, got the remains of the plane out of the tower, and restored power to almost 100,000 people. They did all of this in about seven hours, in darkness and fog. 

*****

Sunday evening is really not a bad time to lose electric power. We had candles and flashlights and a radio and plenty of no-need-to-cook food to eat, and the evening was very pleasant. The power was restored at midnight and so I went to sleep knowing two things: The plane crash victims had survived, and I’d be able to make coffee on Monday morning. Win and win. 

*****

People can be the worst. We really suck sometimes. But when we are good, we are very very good. And this is when we’re good. When a human is in danger, there are no lengths to which other humans won’t go to save their lives. 

Later, I read a news story about the pilot. This was not his first plane crash. He crashed another small plane in 1992. Thirty years later, he chose to fly his small plane from New York to Maryland at dusk in already dangerously low-visibility conditions. By his own admission, he knew that the fog made flying dangerous. By his own admission, he was flying too low. I stopped reading at that point. I didn’t want to know if he had some compelling reason to endanger his life and the life of his passenger and the lives of anyone on the ground who happened to be underneath his plane had it happened to fall to the ground or if his decision to fly that day was driven by selfish hold-my-beer look-at-me-I’m-a-pilot bravado. Of course, I’m happy that his life was spared. But that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be any consequences for his actions. 

*****

And so while some people risked their own lives to save two people in danger, others endanger the lives of innocent people in order to make a stupid political point. Last week’s power outage was an accident, as far as we know. What happened in North Carolina yesterday was by all accounts not an accident. I hope that people there won’t be in the dark for too long. I hope that the pilot who entangled himself in a high-voltage tower in Maryland loses his pilot’s license, and I hope they catch the people who sabotaged the grid in North Carolina.