I just dropped one of my kids back at college, and Christmas is over, and the get-together I was looking forward to this weekend as a post-holiday pick-me-up is over, and now I am An Entire Mood.

Add to that Mood the fact that we are now in An Election Year. William is 18, and so last week he registered to vote. He knew more than I did about our president’s recent decision to assassinate a top Iranian commander, and mentioned it in the context of being worried about being drafted. I decided NOT to attempt to comfort him with something I read about how we don’t actually need to worry about another draft, because all of us would die from nuclear explosion/fallout LONG before there would be any call for involuntary soldiers.

I have been having a weird few weeks. Christmas is always a little fraught anyway, with all the work and stress and expectations and so forth, plus of course the pressure to reduce work/stress/expectations and Really Be In The Moment and Truly Cherish the Things That Truly Matter and so forth. My two college kids were home for winter break, which was a strange mix of SO DELIGHTFUL (having them near; seeing them safe and well; patting their tall flannelly shoulders as I passed by; hearing them talking with and teasing their siblings; having Christmas and New Year’s with all seven of us together) and very non-great (hearing their cynical takes on my parenting; worrying that one of them is literally up all night and sleeping the entire day away and also talking to himself at a level that might be fine or might be An Early Warning Sign; being irritated/enraged that I guess I still have to tell them NOT to leave their nighttime cooking dishes for ME to do). I pre-mourned bringing them back to school, and now I am at one-half still pre-mourning plus one-half present-tense mourning. While simultaneously looking forward to getting back to normal, and feeling stressed that “normal” now means “without 40% of my children.” It is all such a rich tapestry. And we never did do gingerbread houses, and the bags and bags of supplies are taking up space in my china cabinet.

Listen, do we feel like we can hang on until Galentine’s Day? It’s only five and a half weeks away. Last year I had friends over, and we did a classroom-style valentine exchange, and for my valentines I taped little paper Wonder Woman valentines to cans of sparkling seltzer in pink/red flavors, which I’m going to do again this year, and which I recommend if you are looking for an idea. Furthermore, I highly recommend THE WHOLE THING: I highly recommend hosting a Galentine’s party, and inviting your gals, and seeing if everyone can get rides so that you can drink a lot of cans of spiked seltzer. (You will have leftover non-pink/red flavors.) (Especially if you deliberately buy a bunch of non-pink/red flavors.) Make it an appetizer/dessert potluck. Bring a big heart-shaped box of chocolates.

I couldn’t remember if I made resolutions last year, so I went back and found last year’s New Year’s Eve post which reminded me we were still neck-deep in the move and I was pretty busy thinking about how if Paul were to die suddenly I could move back to my old house. That was not the right head-space for making resolutions.

I do have a resolution this year, and it’s to put up wall art. I have put up three things total, all on nails that were already in the walls when we moved in. I have not put in a single additional nail, because I don’t know which walls are horsehair plaster (it’s most of them, but some renovations allegedly were done with sheetrock), and I also don’t know if we have the kind of horsehair plaster walls that do okay as long as you’re gentle / use special horsehair-plaster-coddling techniques, or if we have the kind where you try to hammer in a nail and a baseball-size chunk of the wall falls in powder to the floor, and then as you look on in despair, a crack begins a slow gradual spread from the chunked place outward across the rest of the wall. One of the kids rocked an upholstered chair too hard and it bonked into a wall and left a deep shattery powdery dent, which makes me think it’s likely we have the latter kind of wall.

But Paul has said that if I tell him which wall art and where I want it, he will figure out the nails. And I think wall art is important—or at least, I know each time when I took DOWN the wall art when moving, the whole apartment/house suddenly felt bare and echoey and generic and sad. I think putting up my familiar wall art would make this house feel more like mine, and it seems like a bad sign that it’s been more than a year and I haven’t done it. So I would like to do that this year.

We are going to an afternoon, kids-invited-too holiday party today (we are bringing one kid, the one who is friends with one of the other family’s kids), and I am still trying to decide what to bring as a little hostess gift. Normally I would bring a bottle of wine, and I do think that’s an excellent back-up idea, but for an event that includes kids and takes place in the afternoon I’d wondered if I could think of something a little more familyish. I’d thought we were all set with our idea to bring a box of chocolates from a local chocolate shop, but then I looked around at our own house and I thought probably everyone else is also drowning (happily! but plentifully) in an abundance of treats.

We don’t know the other family well, which makes it more challenging. But also: we’d LIKE to know them better, and we are taking this invitation as an indication that they feel similarly, so it adds a little to the fun of this mission: it would be neat to find something that made them like us more or think we’re cool. *wrings hands friendingly*

Flowers, maybe? I have a bunch of inexpensively-acquired vases, so I could bring flowers in a vase they could keep; or I could bring a potted plant. I’m not saying either of those are cool ideas, but they’re classics, and maybe I should save cool for when they know us better and I can say “Here, I brought you these scented candles someone else gave me, plus a box of the fancier kind of crackers I thought we’d need over the holidays but we didn’t.”

Would coffee be a nice hostess gift? There’s a nearby place that does their own roasting/grinding and sells the coffee in cute overpriced locally-labeled jars. I could choose a couple of jars. What if they don’t drink coffee? What if they don’t drink wine? What if they’re allergic to plants? Now I am getting a little unnecessarily fretful. There is no need to get all fretty here: they will give away what they don’t/can’t use, and they will not think we are dumb for not knowing.

What do you like to bring as a hostess gift? Has anyone brought you a hostess gift that was unusual or interesting or made you think they were cool people to be friends with?

Let’s have an end-of-year fundraiser check-in. Ever since I posted the fundraiser back in July, one of my primary “lie awake fretting about it” concerns has been that I will FORGET TO SEND A TOKEN, or that I will send a token and IT WILL GET LOST IN THE MAIL. So let’s check in at this point: if you were supposed to have received something by now, but have not, you should LET ME KNOW. It will make us BOTH feel better.

Calendar Twins should have received their calendars last week. I chose Birds, which has since been marked down if you want to be calendar twins with us. If you signed up to be a Calendar Twin and you didn’t get your calendar and I have just ruined the surprise, you should email me: swistle at gmail dot com.

All cloth napkins have been sent out. All favorite Christmas books have been sent out. All favorite baby-naming books have been sent out. If you signed up for cloth napkins, a favorite Christmas book, or a baby-naming book, and you haven’t received them, you should email me and tell me so: swistle at gmail dot com.

Postcard subscriptions have been going out as scheduled. If you are on the monthly plan, you should have received one every month starting in July (six postcards so far); if you are on the every-other-monthly plan, you should have received one every other month starting in August (three postcards so far). (December postcards might not have all arrived: I was a little later than I expected to be, and second-class mail takes longer.) If you are a postcard subscriber and you’ve missed a postcard, email me and let me know. (If you happen to know which month you missed, I’ve kept track of which one I sent each month, so I may be able to re-send the very one you were supposed to have received. If not, I’ll extend your subscription by a month.)

If you signed up for a greeting card with a delivery date of Christmas or earlier, you should have received it by now. If you didn’t, you should email me. (If you signed up for an “anytime” delivery, you may or may not have received it; I realize this is not helpful. I will do another check-in post later when EVERYTHING should have been delivered, so you’ll have another chance.)

If you signed up for a care package or treats box with a delivery date of Christmas or earlier, you should have received it by now. If you didn’t, you should email me. (If you signed up for an “anytime” delivery, you may or may not have received it; I realize this is not helpful. I will do another check-in post later when EVERYTHING should have been delivered, so you’ll have another chance.)

If you signed up for a piece of my SUBPAR POTTERY or a SWISTLE SKIRT, it should have long-since arrived. If it has not, you should email me.

If you signed up for BEE STICKERS, BEE EARRINGS, and/or a BEE ORNAMENT, it should have long-since arrived. If it has not, you should email me.

Just to address another of my lying-awake fears: If you email me about this and you don’t hear back from me, THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE and means I am for whatever crazy reason not getting your emails. Try me on Twitter, or from a different email address, or leave a blog comment, and I WILL get back to you.

In fact: I responded to allllll the contributions at the time to confirm that I got the email, so if you sent a contribution (even if you didn’t want a token) and didn’t hear back from me at the time, THAT ALSO IS IMPOSSIBLE and means for whatever crazy reason I didn’t get your email. Try me on Twitter, or from a different email address, or leave a blog comment, and I WILL get back to you.

In a week full of hectic obligations, I had something to look forward to: one of the obligations came with a side dish of a night all by myself in a motel and then a planned repeat of my cherished breakfast at IHOP. But then it was ruined by weather. Well, I still had a nice time: the driving part BEFORE the weather was unusually terrific, and nobody tailgated me, and I got good postcards at a rest stop, and I was in a great mood, and the ice cream machine at McDonald’s was working (?????) and so I got a hot fudge sundae, and I had a lovely time playing and winning the “Pop song or CHRISTIAN pop song?” game.

The last time I mentioned that game, someone signed me up for alllllll the Christian newsletters, which I think is the wrong answer if you want to be competitive in the “What Would Jesus Do?” game. DO we picture Jesus huffing off to his computer and simmering in the delicious spite of signing someone up for a bunch of junk mail? Or do we picture him saying “Ooo, ooo, my turn, my turn, I want to guess this one!” Twice I heard that new Harry Styles song and thought Jesus would be fooled by that one FOR SURE.

Harry Styles: “Walk in your rainbow paradise…”
Jesus: “Oh, yes, that is DEFINITELY one of mine!”
Harry Styles, continuing: “…Strawberry lipstick state of mind…”
Jesus: “Oh My Father God, WHY AM I SO BAD AT THIS”
Swistle: *smugly adds another tally mark to her column*

I have not yet done my Christmas cards, and I do not like to be last-minute about cards, and also I LIKE doing cards so this is perplexing. I addressed the envelopes a number of weeks ago, but I seem to be having trouble writing the cards and putting them into those envelopes. Part of it was that I ordered photos from Shutterfly because they’ll print text on the backs, which saves me from writing our names dozens of times; but they arrived and the text was truncated, so that they said “Thistle family, Christmas 2019: Elizabeth,”. Just like that, with the comma and then no one else’s names. So I contacted Shutterfly, and somehow this took an HOUR to deal with, and finally I had to ask for a refund because they said there was nothing they could do to make sure a re-order wouldn’t arrive printed exactly the same way, and they wouldn’t rush the redo or anything, so the replacement photos wouldn’t have arrived until tomorrow and still might have been wrong. And I think that experience sapped the life out of the cards project. I’d been so ahead of the game! Addressing the cards! Ordering the prints in plenty of time! And then: prints ruined, start all over. It was too much, apparently. Well. I need to rally. I will do it right now.

IT IS TIME.

This year there is more at stake, because several of you signed up to be CALENDAR TWINS as your fundraiser incentive. CALENDAR TWINS means that I will send you a copy of the same calendar I choose for myself, which is very bold and risk-taking of you and I admire you for it. I won’t tell anyone which calendar I chose until AFTER your calendars have arrived, so it will be a FULL SURPRISE.

This gives the whole post a fun little smack of suspense. I always list SOME calendars I’m seriously considering plus a bunch that DO very much appeal to me but I’m posting them more in case someone else wants them / has a good gift recipient for them. But this time when you see all those extra calendars some of you will be thinking “She always says she doesn’t want twelve months of the same thing, so she wouldn’t REALLY choose Goats in Trees or Men in Kilts. …right?” I GUESS YOU’LL FIND OUT, WON’T YOU! (But while I have you here: if you are one of my Calendar Twins and one of the possibilities listed below contains a phobia or Severe Dislike for you, you should let me know.)

There are two calendars I’ve had the 2019 versions of in my cart since last year, because they were almost-buys last time and I wanted to see if they had new versions this year. One of them (the Angie Lewin) does not have a new version, but the other one does:

Este MacLeode calendar. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. So bright and colorful and cheery.

After that, it is just madly into the calendar fray.

(image from Amazon.com)

Feathered Friends calendar. Charming, colorful, whimsical, full of birds.

(image from Amazon.com)

Pusheen calendar. The children don’t usually notice my kitchen calendar, but the year I chose Pusheen EVERYONE was into it.

(image from Amazon.com)

Space Cats calendar. It’s VERY TEMPTING to consider this one, MOSTLY because of how very surprised the calendar twins would be.

(image from Amazon.com)

Farmer’s Market calendar. This one meets my preference for a calendar that is beautiful and comforting without being too cheerful or optimistic to deal with when I’m looking ahead to a busy day/week.

(image from Amazon.com)

Wanderlust calendar. I do not have wanderlust myself, but I do not object to other people wandering and taking beautiful pictures of where they went, so that I can see the places without having to go there.

(image from Amazon.com)

A F*cking 2020 calendar. “Includes profane stickers”! My kids are old enough now that I feel pretty free to have a calendar like this one, and I’d say this might be perfect for right next to my desk. And look at October! It’s terrific. But this is not what I’d choose for the kitchen.

(image from Amazon.com)

Garden of Delights calendar. I need squares to write things in, so this one is ruled out for me, but I think it is so pretty. Maybe for next to my desk, where I don’t need so much square-writing.

(image from Amazon.com)

Fairy Houses calendar. Imagine being so very wee, and having a charming wee little house.

(image from Amazon.com)

Charley Harper calendar. I have a puzzle of one of the months (Tree of Life) and it’s a great puzzle, and that’s almost a reason to choose this calendar.

(image from Amazon.com)

Gustave Baumann, Small Untroubled World calendar. This upcoming year is an election year, and we are going to need soft calming scenes in soft comforting colors.

(image from Amazon.com)

William S. Rice calendar. Another in the soft/calming/comforting category.

(image from Amazon.com)

Kawase Hasui calendar. A third soft/calming/comforting option.

(image from Amazon.com)

Klimt Landscapes calendar. Yet another. This one is a strong contender.

(image from Amazon.com)

Flower Crown Animals calendar. Problem: this would absolutely be a final finalist, but there is less room than usual for the squares, and I need the squares.

(image from Amazon.com)

I Adulted calendar. Has a certain frantic, lowering-the-baseline, let’s-just-get-through-this appeal.

(image from Amazon.com)

Les Fleurs calendar. I love this immediately. I was looking specifically at flower calendars, and they all appealed to me in general but some of them all seemed to be the same palette (every page in pinks/purples) and others seemed like pictures I’d already seen a million times (tulips in sunshine! one entire sunflower filling the page! etc.). This one feels fresh and interesting and different. But the one review has legitimate complaints: there is a little uninteresting comment on each page (I can live with that), and there are no lines between the squares (I don’t know if I can live with that).

(image from Amazon.com)

Fleurs calendar. This one is also very pretty, and has lines between the squares.

(image from Amazon.com)

Redouté calendar. Another nice floral assortment, better than I’d expected from the cover.

(image from Amazon.com)

William Morris calendar. I would buy more of this sort of thing if the selections were more SEASONAL. Like, in December I want spruce/red/green, and in spring I want flowers/pastels.

(image from Amazon.com)

Guinea pig calendar. I had a guinea pig calendar one year next to my desk, and it remained cute all year, and the children were interested in it and enjoyed it.

(image from Amazon.com)

Bee calendar. BEES.

(image from Amazon.com)

Garden of Dreams calendar. This is so close to what I’m looking for. I love most of the pages, but a couple of them cross into Slightly Creepy for me. Plus: no squares.

(image from Amazon.com)

Masha D’yans calendar. I’ve had this one twice, and have been happy with it, and I recommend it.

(image from Amazon.com)

Feline calendar. Do you remember earlier, when I was talking about how I like flower calendars but sometimes they seem trite or boring? Same with cat calendars: looking at a cat calendar, I sometimes feel as if I’ve seen all the images before. But not this one.

(image from Amazon.com)

Pooch calendar. I like this dogs one too, and the whole dog concept is a soothing one for me.

(image from Amazon.com)

Rebecca Campbell calendar. These are interesting to look at and may cross the line into slightly too surreal.

(image from Amazon.com)

The Bird calendar. WHAT IS THIS WONDERFULNESS I AM LOOKING AT

(image from Amazon.com)

Birds of the World calendar. There are too many good calendars to choose from this year. This one is pretty to look at AND educational.

(image from Amazon.com)

Birds calendar. I MEAN! I would choose this one for December’s bird expression alone. No lines between columns of squares, but it occurs to me I could fix that with a ruler and a fine-tip marker.

(image from Amazon.com)

Bodleian Library calendar. I looked just to see if there were any library calendars and HECC YES THERE IS A LIBRARY CALENDAR

I am taking so many ideas from the comments on the I Hate Winter post. Just for starters, I am ALL IN on the idea of buying a lot of interesting Alternative Lights on post-Christmas clearance, calling them fairy/twinkle lights rather than Christmas lights, and having LIGHTS FOR THE REST OF WINTER. I think I saw some snowflake-shaped ones that would be perfect for January, and then YES to red/white for February, YES to green/white for March, YES, I am IN, YES, LET’S DO THIS.

Someone asked if I had a mood light and I do, because a few weeks ago Paul bought one and put it on my desk in front of me and plugged it in and switched it on. I sit in front of it every morning while I am having breakfast. I don’t know if it’s helping, but it has the benefit of feeling like there is something I am doing about this. The exact one he bought is no longer on the site at all for some reason, but it’s a Verilux HappyLight Lumi VT31 and looks roughly like the VT22 shown here; the main difference seems to be that mine has three different levels of light working up to 10,000 whatevers of light, and the VT22 is only the 10,000 whatevers.

YES to taking/upping vitamin D. My doctor told me awhile back to take 1-2 of whatever the dose is I’m taking (that is, of whatever dose she told me to take, which I’ve forgotten and the vitamin cupboard is so far away), so I take 1/day in summer and I take 2/day in winter. Again: I don’t know if it’s helping, but it feels like I am Doing Something, which is helpful no matter what.

YES to Julia’s reminder that before the end of this month, we will hit the solstice and then every day will be longer. It makes a huge difference to me to KNOW the days are on the upswing, even if I can’t tell yet.

YES to Blythe appreciating that at least this weather is a good match for one’s mood, as opposed to the RUDE SLAP of beautiful sunny weather when everything is terrible.

YES to KC’s idea of planting some seeds indoors and watching their hopeful little sproutings. Basil is a GREAT idea.

YES to Lynn’s hot drinks. So comfortingly WARM on the tum and the hands.

YES to Phancymama’s winter cocktails. My favorite winter drink is Drambuie, which is not a cocktail but it is fancy. Also, I sometimes drink brandy: I hate the taste, but literature has taught me that it’s good for health, warmth, nerves, and shock, all of which seem PERFECT for winter.

YES to Liz’s reminder that winter might be lousy, but that’s what makes it so cozy to be indoors with a book and a hot drink / winter cocktail / box of chocolate / stack of books. Summer evenings have their own charms, but “coziness” is not one of them.

YES to my sister-in-law reminding me of no mosquitoes/ticks and no leg-shaving and not being all sweaty/sticky all the time!

YES to StephLove’s wish that Christmas came a little later in winter when we needed it more. Paul and I accidentally re-invented the timing: I was telling him about Julia saying it was cheering that soon the days would be getting longer, and then I said it was nice it happened right around Christmas, just as he said we ought to have some sort of big celebration right around that time of year to mark that cheering shift.

Also. I have had a thought. I love having a countdown-to-Christmas calendar, but that just adds one more sad thing AFTER Christmas: no more happy little treat each day. What if we were to buy Advent / Countdown to Christmas calendars on clearance and then use them AFTER CHRISTMAS?? Like, start them on the day AFTER Christmas. Or actually: I am usually still pretty good through New Year’s Eve. So I will buy some and start using them on January 1st. I bought a Target’s 12 Days of Beauty one already on a Black Friday deal, and I’m going to save it until January. (I see it is now on a buy-one-get-one-50%-off deal, which is very close to as good as the deal I got, which was 30% all beauty sets. This might be nice for buying one for yourself and one for a winter-hating friend. Or one for yourself, one for your 14-year-old daughter who gets into your make-up/moisturizers now. Or one for yourself, a DIFFERENT set for your 14-year-old daughter who wants to try false eyelashes, heaven help us.)

It wouldn’t have to be an advent/12-days/countdown calendar per se: any of those gift sets they put on clearance after the holidays would work. Like, say you found a Burt’s Bees gift set of lip balms and lotions on clearance: then you could let yourself take out one item from the gift set each day, either your pick or else choosing one without peeking. Or let’s say you found a Burt’s Bees gift set, a hostess-gift box of assorted teas, a gift set of the face mists Miss Grace has us all using these days, a gift set of nail polishes, and a package of Reese’s Peanut Butter trees, all on post-holiday clearance: you could let yourself choose one little treat each day, whatever was most appealing. Today a face mist! The next day a peanut-butter tree! The next day a lip balm! The next day a packet of tea! Maybe then another lip balm before moving on to a nail polish! Or if you prefer surprises, you could open all the boxes and jumble all the items together into a bag and reach in each day without looking. Or you could simplify the whole thing and instead buy a big bag of candy and then reach in all day every day whenever.

I feel like with the “fairy lights until daffodils” concept and the “little treat every day” concept, we might be able to ride this out.

I don’t know why adding a part-time job has SO DEPLETED my available time, well beyond what I would have expected based on the number of hours, but also it’s The Holidays and that is certainly contributing. I credit Elizabeth with getting me over the hurdle of decorating this year: she was like “Girl. We need to get out the Christmas dishes,” and I find her very persuasive, and also she will HELP with the tasks she suggests, and also she is the kind of persistent where you might as well just give in because you won’t stop hearing her calm, gentle, repeated suggestions until you do, and so we DID get out the Christmas dishes, and then we got out the Christmas bird and the Christmas llama and the Christmas mugs and the Christmas everything else, and all of those things are very happy to see.

And the Christmas lights are up. Christmas Light Time is my favorite time of year. I am trying not to pre-dread the dark winter days ahead when the Christmas lights come down and their absence is deeply felt. (I extremely relate to this comic about the two stages of winter.) Maybe this year I will leave the lights up until there are daffodils.

I am trying to Think! More! Positively! even though I hate that whole concept so I am not sure why I am attempting it, except that I am hoping not to plummet as far this winter as I did last winter. The new job helps: doing something active and productive each day feels good, and also I am nice and warm for those few hours at least. When I get home from work I do Preventative Warmth: I put on my wool socks and my warm slippers and several layers of warm tops, and I bring another warm top or a throw blanket to wherever I am going to be, since when I get to a certain level of Chilly and Sad I find it difficult to make myself do anything about it, and instead sit in despair noticing how the tip of the nose really does get distinctly cold.

Anyway, one of my exercises in Thinking! Positive! was to find something good to say about winter, particularly the post-Christmas part of winter, and what I came up with is that all winter long I can think happily about how spring is coming next. (The downfall of spring is that all spring I am dreading summer. But the nice thing about summer is that I can look forward to fall! Unfortunately all fall I am dreading winter.)

Let’s see, more positive things about winter. I love a lot of my cold-weather clothes. (I hate a lot of my hot-weather clothes.) I like flannel sheets and heavy warm bedding. The snow looks pretty when it is falling. I can’t think of anything else. I hate winter.

I hate dealing with snow. I hate driving on icy/snowy roads. I hate worrying that snow/ice will ruin plans. I hate slushy parking lots. I hate how snow/ice build up so that parking lots and driveways get smaller and smaller. I hate how early it gets dark, and I hate the combination of cold/dark, which is SO MUCH COLDER than cold/light. I hate trying to bring in multiple loads of groceries without tracking snow/slush into the house. I hate all the boot/shoe/slipper changes.