I have to say it's nice to be back. I took a couple months. For the month of November, I tried my hand at my first NaNoWriMo, and while I regret to inform you that I was not able to make the 50,000 word quota by November 30th, I am pleased to inform you that I nonetheless was able to come up with what I feel is a kickass story, (but then I am kind of biased). My inner monologue makes a return in my parenthetical quotes, you'll notice.
Sadly, I only made about 22,000 words, but even through all that I consider it a success, as prior to November 2016, I was unable to come up with more than 5 pages of writing that wasn't a school paper (which, incidentally enough I found out that this blog led one of my fellow students to actually plagiarize my paper on indifference that I had posted here and have to now make private).
Also during my two-month (and a half) hiatus, I busied myself with a couple new hobbies. I began working with yeast (as is alluded to in my previous entry); I got myself a bread machine that my mother was not using and which, in my household, has been used more than it has been in the decade or so it was under her ownership. I've made breads in there as well as some homemade ciabatta bread, (the crumbs of one loaf are still in a bowl awaiting to be made into either bread pudding or a stuffing dish)
I also took up knitting. (Yes...knitting. Men can knit too. Knitting, I'm told, used to be particularly male-dominated, but suffice it to say, men can knit too. More on that in a future post). I started simple - I made my wife a scarf, and one for my sister-in-law and one for my friend who has defeated cancer. That ballooned to a straight month of knitting scarves, 24 in total. It's just so quick and easy. Then I tried to make a dish rag and let me just state, from a dude's point of view, and a left hander's point of view, the purl stitch can suck it. Ain't nobody got time to dig under the top stitch and grab the bottom and pull through.
I also finished my plastic canvas ornaments, a self-professed tradition my great grandmother had going on when I was a kid, and which she ended the Christmas of 1989 due to her death in August of 1990. Pictures to follow in another post so as not to bog this one down. A brief rundown though, in 2004, after 15 years having passed since her last ornament, I took it upon myself to make a commemorative replica (or a new word I've recently learned, a pastiche) of the ornaments she used to make. I don't know if it was a tradition of hers or not, I just know that the older 3 cousins of the family (which includes myself) received a handmade ornament from her for Christmas.
This seems the perfect segue to my topic for this post : Tradition. I myself quite like the idea of tradition. I admire close-knit families that have traditions that keep them closely knit and together (wow paralleling my newly-discovered knitting hobby much?) Perhaps it's because my family, sadly, doesn't seem to have very many traditions. Even my grandmother admitted, before she died, that there weren't many (if any) traditions when I'd asked her in an attempt to revive forgotten traditions.
Now there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes having no traditions can probably be in itself a tradition. And regardless of that, all traditions begin somewhere, or somewhen. Also true is the fact that it is never too late to start traditions. And it doesn't even have to be some Old World tradition that one's ancestors used to do generations ago "back in the old country" either. Admittedly, that had been my fascination in past years, especially since the death of my grandma who was predominantly Polish.
A death of a central family figure creates a devoid, a vacuum of sorts. Sometimes that death creates what I'm calling a "Diaspora Effect" on a family. Sometimes it's not a death at all; sometimes people just move away. Experience and firsthand witness has taught me that it's much easier to maintain a close knit when the family is located in one general vicinity, if not the same city. And sometimes, we find ourselves just naturally closer to one portion of the family than the other. Sometimes we also go through an exorbitant "teenage drama phase" and distance ourselves from our families. Sometimes, it's a combination of all of that which creates a perfect storm of family unraveling. But I digress...
Sometimes one central figure becomes the glue that holds a family together, and when that person departs in one way or another, it can become very difficult to stop the inevitable unraveling. It's sad to witness, it's sad to describe. It becomes necessary to then stop at that crossroads and evaluate whether or not it's time to detach and start knitting your own "close-knit-ness", for lack of better words. If it becomes especially hard to knit back together that unraveled or unraveling heap, then the answer is pretty clear.
It takes more than one person to want to keep an unraveling family from falling apart and completely dispersing. But then, families can surprise you, too.
So posting on a Friday the 13th, right!!! Admittedly, my absence from blogging and coming back to it opens up fresh ideas in what WheezyWaiter calls my "mindbrain". Blogging isn't the first thing I've come back to after a period of hiatus-ing...I've also started working on school stuff as well, as my 4th Term for my AA has begun as of January 1st. I am determined, and I know I've said this before, that this will be my last term. By June 30, I resolve to have completed and earned my AA, maybe even venture to New Hampshire to march across the stage and receive my degree in person. That might be a bit lofty, but the finishing of the degree not so much. It's only 44 credits...
(I just scrolled up to realize I've had a lot to say in this post) (Parenthetical side note: I just went down to refill my coffee and found myself uttering to myself, "That's one full ass cup of coffee.")
So we celebrated our first New Year's at Little Townhouse on the Prairie...and while me typing that brings about a certain sense of deja vu...(and yes I will be looking back at my posts of January 2016 to see if I've typed something similar, and maybe for that sense of nostalgia), I have to say it combined with my Christmas was actually refreshingly low-key. Even with no traditions, except for one that I started, since we had more time on Christmas Eve (as we had one less Christmas to go to this year), I read my oldest The Polar Express when we got back, took the kids to the light show at the park, and set out cookies and milk (or, Mocha Coffee Drink) for Santa.
So here's to the first post of 2017, 26 more to go! (in order to beat last year's post total of 26 because yeah that's a thing.) Next post I'll low key talk about some heavier things...unless I'm inspired to write something else. It's just good to be back :)
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