It is a truly wonderful feeling to be stretched out on my brother Sean’s couch, screwing around on le internet after midnight, with full knowledge that I will be here for many more days. It’s only Monday, and I don’t fly back to California until Sunday. And, even better, just a few days from now, we will all be at Chip’s wedding. I cannot imagine an event more wonderful.

I got a computer bag for Christmas that has to be seen to be believed. There is a compartment and pocket and zipper and velcro for every little thing you might ever wish to have on your person. There is a separate, perfectly situated pocket for travel documents. It almost makes me wish I had more stuff so I could fill every wee nook. I spent a fair amount of time this evening just putting stuff where it ought to go, and it was wholly satisfying. Also, it’s ergonomic. It actually hugs me when I pick it up. If only it would make me both breakfast and sweet love, all of my problems would be solved.

Tomorrow might be the last day that Kent et al will be here. Which means I should probably stop tooling around the internet and sleep. But it’s all been so darn lovely.

The last five Christmases have begun to blur. Ever since Jordana and Tessa joined the family, the dynamic has shifted; they are a glue that bind us together in new ways, and I sometimes have a hard time distinguishing one year from another, at least since we all moved to New York. I remember our first New York Christmas, at Tessa’s place on 8th Avenue, and I know that we went to Iowa once, and the farmhouse several times, but I’d have a hard time putting everything in chronological order.

I can’t believe how different my life is today than it was a year ago when I climbed into bed to write a blog the night before Christmas. I made a Christmas wish last year- I just now remembered it- but instead, something entirely other came true. I guess I got the thing I most wanted, even if I didn’t know it. I wanted a job that I loved, apparently more than I wanted anything else in my life. I have a lot to be thankful for, not the least of which is that not all of my wishes came true.

This will be the Christmas in Queens without mom. There is a lot of family missing this year, scattered in Texas, Utah, and California, but it is only the second Christmas I’ve not spent with my mom and Ian in 32 years. The other year was a horrid one in Kansas City when I was doing a rotten show that had a matinee on Christmas eve and on the 26th- I just couldn’t get away.

I’m sleeping in my mom’s room in Queens, and on the wall is the Rembrandt that has been in my family since I was a little kid… fittingly enough, it is De Heilige Familie bij avond- The Holy Family at Night. I wonder if the Ghosts of Williams Past will haunt me less when I start a family of my own. But for now, I sleep under a roof with Kent, Melissa, Sean Patrick, Lucas, Sean Charles, and Jordana, and I am thankful that we are all here, that Dad is safe in California, that Steve is happy to be in Utah, that Ian and Tessa and mom and Sandy are together- I am profoundly thankful that we have so much damn family, so many people who love us, that even scattered across the country we are all still with our tribe.

HAH! Take THAT! Yep, that’s right, I’m going to New York a day early. Can I afford it? NO! Should I take the time off work? NO! Am I now happier than I’ve been all week? YAAAAY!

I just got the last seat on the afternoon Jet Blue flight to JFK. By midnight tomorrow, I will be freezing my ample ass off in New York. The change fee cost more than my ticket, but hell, I got a raise! I’ll pay it off by June of next year! What, me worry?

Seriously, though, I’ve been suffering mightily this week, doing little more at work than organizing my inbox and trolling the net for grants, i.e., mind-meltingly boring hours that seem endless. I’ve just started work a new grant, so I’ll do that tomorrow morning and then… guess what… GET ON A PLANE TO NEW YORK! Huzzah!

There must be some correlation between what we do on a micro level versus what we feel should be done on a macro level. If I keep eating french fries, aren’t I, in some way, giving the finger to the Everglades, or sticking said finger into the hole in the ozone and swirling it around to make it bigger? I can’t bear how I’m treating myself any more than I can bear the current political goings-on, and yet, somehow I feel i’m to blame for all of it. I can’t hardly even refer to, you know, he who shall not be named who runs our country, because it honestly makes the bile creep up my esophagus. What drives me to french fries- my hatred of him, or my hatred of myself? It’s all very confusing. I’m acting out against something; I just wish I knew what it was so I could corner it, kick it’s ass, and get back to my normal life. It’s very confusing. Even if I knew what it was, how do I kick it’s ass?

I had a remarkably successful evening of self-loathing last night. I am capable of shoving my foot so far down my throat that retrieving my shoe becomes impossible. I say the stupidest fucking things sometimes. These comments come from a horrible, defensive place, and I hate them. A colleague asked me an opinion of someone a few weeks ago, and I replied, “Well, she’s not very smart”. A month ago, another someone said she wanted to fix me up with her friend, but she was concerned that I was a wine geek and her friend didn’t drink. Wanna know what I said? “Does he just not drink or is he a sober alcoholic?” Last night, one of my friends asked me why another one of my friends wanted to have dinner at an earlier time, and I replied, “Well, because we WORK for a living”. All of these horrid responses come from my own ugly fears. It’s fine to have ugly fears, but it’s not fine to let their nasty twisted heads see the light of day in good company. I could go through and detail why these responses were so ugly, so vastly inappropriate, but that’s not the point. The point is, sometimes I say really fucking stupid things, and I hate it.

Sometimes I eat french fries, and I hate it.

And sometimes I am still so fraught with sadness, with despair, at where our country is going, and who is at the helm, that i give up and think, “Well I might as forking well keep eating french fries, cuz it’s just not going to matter.” It’s not like me to feel hopeless, but some of the choices I’m making are pointedly in that direction. I feel shame so deep, so wide, that sometimes, most times I don’t want to leave my house. Because who could want what I am.

I can’t stop dreaming. I never sleep the night through these days, which may be why I have bursts of energy and then all I want to do is go back to bed. But each time I wake I have to disentangle myself from whatever brilliant-hued imaginary life I’ve been living for the last hour or so. I have to realize that I’m not a vampire, that my tongue is the appropriate size, that there is no crazy shattered casing surrounding my teeth, that I am not Jewish, that my friends did not just thwart my attempted rape in a country club (?), that I am not going to Iceland with one of my mormon aunts, that my brother Steve is not out walking aimlessly in the Netherlands, that no one painted a beautiful picture of my 6 foot tall Mediterranean husband and I sleeping face to face. Oh yeah, and that I’m not married to an incredibly gorgeous 6 foot tall Mediterranean guy.

And this is just in the last two days.

Each dream is complete, all of them tinged with woe. I read once that dreams are 70% negative, 30% positive, but I can count the truly *good* dreams I’ve ever had on one hand. I used to have recurring nightmares, when I was very young, about having to save my parents from some evil- there was always a hot air ballon in these dreams- and the bad dreams have followed me into adulthood. But I can’t figure out why I’m dreaming so much these days. About a month ago I noticed that I wasn’t dreaming at all, and hadn’t since I moved here, and then that part of my brain switched on with such vehemence that it wakes me ten, twelve times a night. My dad suggested I write them all down, but I’d never get back to sleep.

I don’t know how much dream content is actually relevant. But I would love to know why these are the topics that haunt me, that won’t allow me to sleep more than an hour or two at any time.

My dear friend Elizabeth stopped by yesterday while I was working from home, and we chatted about the parts of our lives that are brimming with goodness, and the parts of our lives that are black holes. I was left wondering how many people in the world love both their job and their life partner. It almost seems to much to ask… hell, I’ll ask for it anyway. But I wonder if my dream life has been inspired by my waking creative life, or if I’ve been dreaming this much my whole life and I only pay attention to it during certain times. Do I only pay attention when I’m busy asking myself questions, like the ones Elizabeth and I were discussing yesterday?

The guy who tried to rape me last night in my dream was tall and bearded. He looked like Paul Bunyan. My friends totally kicked his ass- I hit him so hard that my whole arm jarred. The Mediterranean guy? My goodness. He was a piece of work.

I’m going to try to keep paying attention, but I don’t know that anything will be clearer for it.

In July of 1997, I started work at a Kansas City restaurant, now closed, called Parkway 600. I interviewed there because they had a beautiful flowered patio and it was one of the few places left in KC where my boyfriend and I had not had a fight. We’d only been there once. My first week there was a little hard, because the women were excessively clique-y, and the men all too pretty. I was introduced to everyone at family meal. “This is Michelle, from Chicago,” said my manager. “Please make her feel like home.” They didn’t so much. But the next week, there was another new blonde. “This is Hayley. Please make her feel like home.” Hayley had long blonde hair and was dotted with freckles and had the hugest brown eyes this side of the equator. After family meal, as I remember it, I overheard Hayley say quite loudly, “I just got back from college and I don’t have any friends. Will anyone be my friend?” I sidled over to her and applied for the job. We went on our first “date” that night, moved to Los Angeles together a year later, then to New York two years after that. She’s now in Chicago, and I’m here in Napa, but pictures of us line my cottage and I think about her all the time.

We’ve had some crazy stuff happen to us during the last seven years, stuff far too delicate and precious to discuss. We have managed to get the other in plenty of trouble, and then find the way out every time. We’ve nursed each other’s hearts (and hangovers). She watched my cats for three months when I took to the woods, I slept on couches and floors for two months looking for a place for us to live in New York. We’ve seen death and life together, and fought and played and celebrated like any two sisters in the world.

She’s never felt as far away from me as she does right now. She’s making a life with a truly good man, and she’s finally following her greatest passion and talent. Maybe that’s what it is; maybe she doesn’t need me like she used to. We both struggled, searching for that path that would finally make us feel some degree of satisfaction, any sense of worth. And she lept, lept far from New York, and as she fell she found not just a net but a web that will lead her to the life she wants. I saw her briefly last month, just for two days, and it was bittersweet. I used to worry about her all the time, like I worry about my brothers or my mom, and during those two days I saw that she’s not on my watch anymore- not right now. We will circle back in a few months, or a few years- it doesn’t matter, I’ll know her as long as I live- but for now, she’s building a life and a future and a *self*. And it’s just not about me. We were symbiotic for so long, and now we are both doing exactly what we should be doing, separately. But I look forward to the day, or year, that we live near each other again, and we will pick up right where we left off.

For the first time in seven years, I forgot Hayley’s birthday. This realization knocked the wind out of me, because birthdays are sacred to us, and every one of my last seven are distinct and memorable because of Hayley. So, finally, my dear Hayley, my beautiful friend, a belated, but very happy birthday to you- I hope it was wonderful and sparkly and ridiculous fun. I should have been there, and barring that, I should have remembered. I will do better next time.

Love,

Michelle

This I understand. I also understand that writers read. I am deep into Stephen King’s brilliant “On Writing”, and it is haunting me day and night, even worse than the clown from “It”. I get it, I get it, writers write and writers read. They do these things almost constantly. I read like crazy, I write like crazy, but he (and all the others- Lamont, Kingsolver, Dillard) insists that writers have a schedule. He’s got my panites in a bunch over this whole schedule thing; apparently hellfire and brimstone and utter despair is all that await the unorganized writer. He wants me to churn out 1000 words a day, at least. I double that number every day I’m at work, but none of them are for my own project. I have to leave for work at 8:30 AM at the latest, and I (albeit feebly) run in the mornings, and even if I didn’t, I still couldn’t write 1000 words between 7:30 and 8:30 AM. And that’s if I don’t bathe, which is problematic. My evenings are about 75% full, and when they are not, I leave work some time between 6-7, getting home around 7 or 8, and then it’s the end of the day and I’m too…

I was about to say that I’m too drained to write, but it’s not true. I just do everything better in the morning hours. I could tuck in right now and do that 1000 words, but truth be told, I’ve had a nasty cold for almost a month and I’m about to go to bed. Because apparently that’s the OTHER thing I should do- stay healthy. Where does the full-time job fit in with the healthy and the reading and the writing and the schedule? I understand that lots of writers write at work. Lots of writers have subsistence jobs where they actually have time during the day to put pen to paper. Not only do I not have one of those jobs, I have a job for which I am constantly WRITING. Which is great, hey, I’m not complaining, but I am having a helluva time trying to figure out when I can schedule my three hours- three hours a day, is that asking too much?- in a row that I can close the door of my study and write for me. My mom often bemoans that she’s tired of working on other people’s music, because it starts to interfere with her own. I finally understand. Mom, apparently it’s all about schedule.

Could I swing it from 6-9 PM? I’d have to leave work on time, and stop dating entirely. Wait, maybe that’s not such a bad idea. But it is the holidays, and I am booked most nights. Could I start getting up at 6? Even then, I’d have to be in the shower by 7:30, and that means no run. Could I start going into work at 10? UGH! HOW CAN I DO THIS?! My characters are going to become unfamiliar and stale and my plot will start to fade and everything will be ruined IF I DON’T GET ON SCHEDULE!

Did I happen to mention that the lovely board of my super arts non-profit offered me a new contract with a raise? AND we’re having a holiday party? Now if only I could figure out my writing schedule.

yet another obstacle in my schedule…

I have this friend- we’ll call her “Stacey”, who I’ve known my whole life. I got the rare opportunity to spend a week with her last month, and although I’m a little concerned that she brought home a tapeworm from Vanuatu, at least she gets to eat all the cookies she wants and she gets to stay super fit. We lived in the same town for a year during college, but I was going through a particularly joy-less phase and my boyfriend kept hitting on her friends so I didn’t see her nearly enough. A couple of years later, she moved to Chicago, and had her own unfortunate year, but I didn’t even stick around to see her through it- I left on tour about three or four months after she moved there. So our visits have been short but totally and completely awesome, and I’ve found that if she’s around, I do stuff I should do but that I probably wouldn’t have done. I walked the Brooklyn Bridge, only once, saw a grotto in Wisconsin, only once, dove fully clothed into Lake Michigan at sunset in the middle of a bike ride, only once, and had the fates been better to us, I would have gone to Vanuatu to visit her. Alas, instead, I went to Iowa, but I am certainly not complaining.

Next year, in late fall, Stacey and I are going to Peru. We’ve decided that I’m going to learn Spanish for the trip, and I’ve found the perfect class at my local college. On separate sides of the continent, we are drooling through our guide books, trying to decide how best to use those two weeks. Last night, I saw “The Motorcycle Diaries” and watched Che and his chubby companion climb the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. Stace and I will do the same, and maybe by then neither of us will be chubby.

We are going to climb that trail, wander Machu Picchu, take the train back and drink tequila with the locals, just like we did in Iowa: