Oh, boy, was it hard to get out of bed this morning, not that I did so particularly early, or that we’d been sleeping in particularly late. This morning just felt… different.  Serious.  Weighted with responsibility.

I spent the past four days in the almost constant company of my husband.  I’d been worried that our relationship wouldn’t withstand so much togetherness, especially when burdened with the expectations surrounding “a holiday.”

In fact, we had a great time.  We spent Christmas Eve as each others’ only guests, lounging on the couch drinking coffee, having a beer while waiting for our Christmas gift order (of beer!) to be filled, driving across town on a lobster run, and eating until we were food drunk.  It was very fun and special, yet free of the stress that comes from having people over. If the bathroom floor stayed covered in a thin layer of dog prints, so be it.  If the kitchen was less than sparkling, no problem.

We opened gifts throughout the day and agreed to continue the tradition.  One gift at a time with time to enjoy until the next one: perfect.  My fears that he’d be disappointed in his mostly-practical gifts were unfounded; he loved being restocked with t-shirts, socks and underwear (as would I).  I was blown away by his generosity and accuracy in gift-choosing.  {And woo, hoo, I finally got the entire catalog of “The West Wing,” one of my favorite TV shows, ever.}

We fought once, mostly my doing, but made up the next morning and moved on with our lives.  Other than wishing we had fewer animals – wishing fervently and actively – we had a great time!

And now it’s Monday.  Ugh.

My office is visual evidence of my reluctance to go back to work.  Or maybe it’s evidence of the enormity of the transition: every inch is covered in holiday project crap.  For the past two weeks, my cozy little corner office was Craft Central as I quilted my little heart out (and wrapped and taped and ribboned and stashed).  This morning I stuck my laptop on the piece of desk that seemed least cluttered – and I just realized I’m balancing on a piece of fabric.

So in a second I’ll get off my bum and try to create some order.  With the new year comes a new gig, one requiring more focus, strategy, and hours, and until I figure out how to actually do the job, I’m going to have to trick myself into believing I’m capable… and that means working in an office more suited for negotiating than stitching.

Does anyone else get the urge to move furniture when you need (or can’t avoid) a change?  Is that what nesting is?  {And if you’re particularly great at room arrangement, wanna help a girl out?}

Remember this post, about being in control of money and having a budget and paying shit off?  November and December threw that all to hell, and I can’t wait to be back in the peace of not spending money.   Crazy, but true.

The holiday season is tough for me, my stressed spendthrift self warring with the indulgent generous one.  I LOVE to give people gifts, HATE to spend money, LOVE to wrap things, HATE to pay for them…. I just know I’m going to regret spending that dollar later, but then I throw it all aside to fork over the ten bucks for the latest cool razor my husband will use until he has to buy new cartridges (we never get around to that, so then he’ll buy a different razor when he can’t stand the itchy beard). 

Ten bucks, people.  I called a freaking razor a stocking stuffer.  (Lucky for me he won’t mind.  But wrapping the shaving cream might have been a little over the line.)

To top it off, my husband’s birthday is in early January, so I have to come up with a gift idea less than two weeks after Christmas.  The idea isn’t the difficult part; limiting myself to an acceptable cost is.  Actually, deciding what an acceptable cost would be is the toughest.  This year I’ve wanted to buy him a Wii (and extra controllers and games and such), take him snowboarding, spring for a trip to DC… and I think we could surely afford any of those if I stopped accidentally dropping a hundred bucks on a quick trip to Walmart for cat litter.

So here I am, on Christmas Eve, putting a plan together so I can get back to breathing normally.  Here’s hoping it helps!

To avoid the accidental purchases of somewhat-necessary but mostly-optional goods that make my quick trips ridiculously expensive: Alice.com.  Yep, I’m going to give it a shot.  When I lived in NYC, I had groceries delivered once a week, significantly cutting down on my grocery budget.  Let’s hope this service works similar magic on toiletries, because coupons just didn’t cut it.  (I bought a bunch of name brand crap I wouldn’t normally buy.  Everything either sits in a closet for some day in the future when I might need a shot of energy drink – not – or made me fall for high-priced brands I’m loath to buy again.)  Also, a trip to Walmart should not count as shopping; let’s stop pretending.

To prevent the feeling that a hundred bucks will change my life: automatic savings withdrawals.  Does that make sense?  We make way too much money for me to feel as strongly as I do about a hundred dollars, never mind a thousand.  People call into Dave Ramsey’s radio show and he says, “$1500 would change your life, wouldn’t it?” And it would.  But it shouldn’t change my life, not with the number of dollars coming into and out of this household.  So I have a savings goal of $10,000 for 2010 – straight savings, not vacation money or fun money or vet bills money.  My theory is that if I have money just sitting there, hanging out, patting me on the shoulder and telling me it’ll all be all right, my stress about the ten dollar razors will lessen.

To deal with kitchen-avoidance and restaurant-regret and fake-food-weight-gain: a limit on the number of meals we eat out.  I like to cook.  I like to eat the food I make.  We have a chest freezer full of frozen stuff, magazines chock full of yummy looking recipes, and this.  And yet, my default reaction to being hungry is to go somewhere, for two reasons: 1) the kitchen is trashed and I have to clean it before I’ll cook in it (is that a woman thing, because my husband will prop a cutting board atop a stack of dirty dishes?), or 2) the experience of eating out with my husband gives us time to talk and catch up (usually, unless the restaurant has a TV, in which case my hopes of getting through a conversation is nil).  But when we eat most meals at home, I feel better.  The kitchen gets used (and cleaned), we spend less money, and we’re more satisfied with our meals (and waistlines).  And I need to stop eating my way through my income.  So we’ll go back to eating out for one lunch and one dinner a week.  The bonus: we can spend more on a single meal that way.  Yay, sushi!

To manage the fear of future vet bills: fewer animals, pet insurance, and a pet care fund.  We have eight animals right now.  Yikes!  Five of them are permanent family members; three are “bonus.”  It’s time to kick Operation Finding Bonus Dog a Home into high gear, decide whether the two black cats would be better off in another home, and suck it up and pay for pet insurance.  Every animal will get their own Health Month in which they’ll be vetted, shot, and manicured.  We can handle one every other month.  On the off months we’ll stock up on pet food, dog chews, and critter preventative – so each month will have the same amount budgeted, see?  {Side note: anyone want a sweet dog or a pair of nice but feisty black male cats?}

And… to feel like we’re just a bit more in control of everything: a family budget.  First, I need to be more stringent with my own budgeting, but then… then I need to convince my husband that we should have a plan for his money, too.  Wish me luck.  We’re at a better place in our relationship than we were right after we got married (and I tried and failed), so maybe we’ll succeed this time.  Let’s call this a bonus goal, though, just in case.

I’d love to give this post a better title, like, “Ten tips for surviving the holidays with in-laws,” but I can’t.  This whole honesty thing makes for much less titillating headlines, because a) I haven’t tried them yet so I can’t call them tips, and b) “surviving” makes for such negative connotations.

It’s not my in-laws’ fault they’re not my family.  They are their own family, and I wouldn’t expect my people to be any different than they are, so it’s unfair to wish the same on my husband’s people (even though mine might be louder and rowdier and therefore slightly more fun).

See, even there, I’m comparing them to my peeps, and of course that sets us all up for frustration and drama and a little bit of foot-stomping.  My husband is much better at this holidays thing: he’s joined me more than once for Christmas and enjoyed the things that were different from his experience.

So in that spirit, here’s my plan for getting through the holidays with someone else’s family:

1. I’m going to stop thinking of them as not-my-family.  This is my children’s family.  They’ll someday have fond memories of the quiet, relaxed side of the family (like I do of Christmas Day with my dad’s family) just as much as they’ll enjoy the raucous, crazy side of the family (like my memories of my mom’s side of the family).  See the symmetry? 
2. I’m going to experience the holidays like an observer would.  Did you ever join a friend on holidays with their family?  It was a much different experience than this in-law thing, because you didn’t have any expectations.  If you made comparisons, they were factual, not emotional. So just like my mom tells me stories about my dad’s side of the family and their celebrations, I’m going to watch with an observer’s eye so I can tell my kids about their dad’s side of the family.
3. I’m going to remind myself that this isn’t a zero-sum game. Sure, we all make compromises in the name of marriage, but this isn’t an all-or-nothing deal.  We’ll spend holidays with my family again, next year, in fact, so I need to stop thinking about this Christmas as “the Christmas I wasn’t home” and start thinking about it as “the Christmas we got to spend at home.”
4. I’m going to enjoy the quiet moments rather than wish them away.  Every year since I moved away in 2004, I’ve had to deal with holiday travel – the expense, the frustration, the hours and hours on the road.  Every year.  I buy gifts based on weight and suitcase availability, wave goodbye to my animals and prepare to come home to a trashed house and mounds of laundry when we return.  But this year, we get to sleep late in our own bed, enjoy our many animals and their shenanigans, bake treats for the neighbors, watch Christmas movies on repeat, wear our pajamas all day, eat lobster for lunch on Christmas Eve… the list goes on and on.  A good friend remarked that she wished she and her husband had the chance to create their own traditions – while I was wishing that I was packing to go to snowy Boston for the holidays.  The Christmas is always cheerier on the other side.
5. I’m going to do the little things that remind me of my peeps… even if they take effort and shopping and money.  So, tomorrow we’re going to make tamales, darn it, and maybe try to bake biscochos.  We are going to wear Christmas pajamas and eat a big ol’ ribeye roast and snack on yummy appetizers and drink wine and open presents and enjoy the fire tomorrow night. And maybe play Scrabble. On Christmas Day, we are taking our Christmas freaking spirit (and tamales and biscochos) to my sister-in-law’s house, plus handmade gifts I hope they don’t hate, and we are going to have a good time.
6. I’m going to grow up, be a wife and enjoy this new life.  I’m still going to whine and maybe even shed a tear because I won’t be with my peeps, but that’s part of growing up and getting married and being someone’s wife (and someday, mother).  Seven months ago (tomorrow!) we gave up our “before” and walked into our “after,” and this is part of our after.  His people became my people.

How are you doing with the whole holidays thing?  Do you have any other hints?

I should be finishing my next-to-last Christmas gift (so that I can get to the LAST – hallelujah — Christmas gift) but instead I found myself writing a blog post in my head.  Again.  The same blog post as the last three times I noticed myself writing blog posts in my head, so I figured it was time.

Why do so many of us have discomfort in celebrating holidays with our in-laws?

I’ve been thinking about this because I like my in-laws, but I’ve been kind of poopy about Christmas with them.  (Hi, sister-in-law!)  I’ve been a brat, wanting to scream “No!” every time I hear about plans, any plans, but without a good reason.  I just don’t wanna.

{Consider my silence on the whole matter evidence of my maturity.}

This is the first time since 2004 I haven’t been back in New Mexico for Christmas.  That year, I stayed in New York City with my husband, our first year away from family in a new city with fabulous Christmas traditions of its own.  It was fun, but I barely remember it.

What I do remember is being home for Christmas in the year I was most alone.  Then a year later, bringing my new boyfriend home (for the first time ever at the age of 28) to meet my overwhelmingly fabulous family, all 19876 of them at once.  He handled it like a champ.  We went back the next year and had a great and relaxing time.

This year we’re here, a compromise offered that seemed fair at the time, except now I want stomp my feet and wave my fists and declare my unwillingness to believe in fair, thankyouverymuch.  I just want to be back home.

And then I remember: home is here.  I’m married.  We’re a family.  And I wonder why it’s been so hard to disengage from my family-of-origin this time when I don’t recall any angst the first time around.  Maybe the second time is harder because you know more clearly what you’re giving up.  In the years I lived hundreds of miles away from them as I attempted to grow up and own up, they welcomed me home and for a few days, I knew exactly what to expect, how to act, what to say. 

I got to be the filter-less ME.

Newlywed life is tough.  Fun and fantastic, but tough.  I keep my mouth shut much more often than before; try harder; wish more.  Wishing is bad.  Nobody should have to try this hard.  And I’m tired of keeping my mouth shut.  It sucks my soul.

So this year more than ever, I want to go home.  I want to remember what it feels like to just be me around people who have known me forever and can’t leave me.  We’re all stuck with each other and I love that.

Instead, my husband and I are struggling to be what each other needs.  We’re exhausted, frankly, and wishing we’d opted to go to the place where traditions absolve you of the need to do anything but go with the flow.  My family’s traditions are big enough that they carry on despite, well, almost anything.  My mom has nine sisters, so even if some people can’t make it, other people will.  We don’t have to think or decide or make anything happen.

We’re feeling the burden of being the grown-ups who have to make things happen.  We’re tired.  We’re prone to grinchiness and sitting around in front of the TV.  But we’ve sucked it up and found some Christmas spirit.  We put up a tree, planned a Christmas Eve dinner, bought each other presents.

And when I want to scream “No!” because I wish I was with my family, I’ll remind myself that this is my family now.  My in-laws, my husband and I are my children’s family, just as much as my parents are.  We’ll build traditions in preparation for our kids, which is a much more fun way to think about it, even if all we do is spend an hour or two together on Christmas Day.

{But I can’t wait to go back next year, prettypleasethankyou.}

“Hey!  I have an idea!  I’ll make everyone’s gifts this year!”

“It’ll save us money, be really neat-o and sentimental, and it’ll give me something to do!” {Hours and hours of things to do.}

“The dogs will help.” {Um, yea, almost killed them.}

“And then I’ll learn how to be creative with fabric!” {I patched the holes.}

{Both of them.}

“I’ll make a warm one for my dad because he’s always cold like me.” {Fleece backing}

“And a pretty pink one for my stepsister…”

“… and a similar one – but tweened out with hot pink polka dots – for my niece.”

“One for my sister, and hey, maybe I’ll accidentally go crazy and do the quilting in a PITA starburst pattern.”

“And I’ll make one for my mom, but I’ll do that last because she sews and maybe by then I’ll be able to sew a straight line!” {Nope.}

“What the heck, I’ll even make a scarf and Christmas throw for the $10 limit gift exchange!  I have plenty of time!” {Shoot me.}

{I haven’t even started on the gifts for my husband, best friend, sister-in-law, mother-in-law, or brother yet.}

{Maybe I should have spent the time learning about aperture and exposure so every picture in this series wouldn’t be wonky.}

“You can find faith anywhere,” she said, and I was comforted, but not anymore. 

I don’t want to find faith anywhere; I want to find faith everywhere.

The list of things I lack is long – self-confidence, balls, patience, objectivity (and many others) – but the one I want the most is faith.

Faith in people gets you through the frustrations.  More than “I’m sure he didn’t mean it” (because, rest assured, he did), faith lets you separate the behavior from the person.

Faith in love gets you peace and ease and the ability to just live your life without worrying about being worthy or useful or lovable.

Faith in the flux of time gets you through the rough patches.  If things can go bad, after all, they can go well again, too.

And seriously, how can you not have faith in something as immutable as time?  And yet I don’t.  It’s like the girl I knew in college who didn’t believe in averages.

Averages, people.  She didn’t believe in averages.  “I’ve never seen a family with two and a half kids, so how do I know they exist?  I just don’t believe in averages.”  Direct quote, I swear it.

That’s me, except with time.  When things are bad, I can’t imagine them ever being good again.  I have to tell myself over and over, “Things will be good again.  Believe.”

Maybe I don’t just need faith, maybe I need something more.  Faith is belief in things you can’t see or verify.  I don’t even believe in those I can.  What do you call that?

Crazy.  Or The Crazy as the lovely Clink used to call it.  How can you have abandonment issues when you’ve never been abandoned?  Evidently I do, and that’s just pathetic.

During the lowest point to-date in our fledgling marriage, I wrote: “How does it ever get better when, in spite of your brain understanding that things will always get better – they always do – your heart loses it’s shit at the prospect of being alone?”  I reread this post when I want to throw something at my husband (in a classic example of your future self talking to your past self, except in reverse) and I’m stunned by the rawness, by the honesty, by the accuracy.  Why don’t I feel like I know this yet, even though I couldn’t have written it more clearly?  To myself!

“Most of my relationship stories start like this: once upon a time, I was married to a different husband.  But they really should start like this: my parents divorced when I was nine and I fear abandonment over all else, though wasn’t abandoned then and haven’t been since.”

I want faith.  I need faith.  I’ve got to have faith. (Sing it. You know you are.)  I think that’ll be my focus for 2010.  On the bright side, this week of angsty posts is brought to you by a three-minute conversation, five minutes of tears, and not a single cuss word.  That’s progress, peeps.

“I think I made a mistake.”

That’s what I think when things go wrong. Every time. Fighting with my husband, bad surprise at work, terrible news about, well, anything, and…

“Oh, God, I think I made a mistake.”

The first thing you think when things go bad says a lot about you.

“Oh, no, this is going to be really bad,” might be factual once or twice, but if you think that every time, it’s probably not. “I just knew this was going to happen to me,” suggests a bit of paranoia and maybe some poor-me, don’t you think?

“Oh, this is definitely a mistake” says that I take too much responsibility and blame for everything. It says I believe bad things are my fault. It says I think I knew enough to know better, even when I didn’t.

My first thought when things go wrong says I live in regret. It says I need faith.

I want to live in faith. I want to stop worrying that every imperfection in my marriage will come back to haunt me because in my fcuked up universe there is perfect karma. I’ve been there, I know how liars learn. I want to believe we’ll get through things and that just like things get worse, they get better, too. I want to remember to breathe until the urge to throw something passes without having to recite, “Breathe. Don’t throw things,” over and over and over again.

I want to stop saying these things and start feeling them.

So the next time I am screaming within the depths of my head that “I think I made a mistake!!” I’m going to try like hell to think this next:

The future is never wrong – even when it’s not what you expected. (hat tip)

I’m not a fan of hype. For years I didn’t watch major motion pictures or TV shows because I was turned off by the hype.

Lost, for instance. Not even one time, sorry.

So when I read about Seth Godin’s latest (free) eBook on no fewer than three of the blogs I regularly read (in one day!), I was a bit turned off.

I read about it here and here and here. Nope.

But then Penelope Trunk mentioned it. And Dave Ramsey did, too. And when two writers who speak to me say it’s good – say something good in it – how can I not read it?

So I did. And I’m here to tell you that it’s good. Not just good, in fact, but GOOD. So good I find myself repeating a certain sentence in my head over and over because it’s so damned good.

“Art can’t happen without someone who seeks to make a difference. This is your art, it’s what you do. You touch people or projects and change them for the better. This year, you’ll certainly find that the more you give the more you get.” –Seth Godin

“Until Fear is gone (and realize he may never completely leave), make the decision to be courageous. The world needs your story in order to be complete.” –Anne Jackson

“Dignity is more important than wealth.” –Jacqueline Novogratz

“Dear ones, EASE UP. Pump the brakes. Take a step back. Seriously. Take two steps back…. My radical suggestion? Cease participation, if only for one day this year – if only to make sure that we don’t lose forever the rare and vanishing human talent of appreciating ease.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

“Leadership is more than influence. It is about reminding people of what it is we are trying to build – and why it matters. It is about painting a picture of a better future.” -Michael Hyatt

“I worked on my weaknesses for forty years to little avail. Still ‘needs improvement,’ as they say. Why? Easy. We hate the things we’re not good at, so we avoid them. No practice makes perfect hard to attain.” –Marti Barletta

“Management isn’t natural. I don’t mean that it’s weird or toxic – just that it doesn’t emanate from nature. ‘Management’ isn’t a tree or a river. It’s a telegraph or transistor radio. Someone invented it.” –Daniel Pink

“The great challenge of the 21st century is to wage peace on a globe full of humans while repairing the unintended damage we’ve inflicted on ourselves, other beings, and the earth.” –Martha Beck

“What’s important is to be kind, and be gracious and do it in ways that make people want to do that for someone else.” –Penelope Trunk

“Mistakes happen. How you apologize matters. Don’t bullshit people – just say ‘I’m sorry.” And mean it.” –Jason Fried

“It requires effort – but this effortless life isn’t as satisfying as it seems, is it? Declare war on passivity. Hush the inner voice… Disbelief is now the enemy, as is the notion of settling. Get hungry – hyena hungry. Get fired up. Find your backbone, and your wings. Flap ‘em. It’s the only way you’ll be able to fly.” –J.C. Hutchins

People, go read this. For heaven’s sakes, these are just the excerpts. I quite literally choked up while reading some of them, couldn’t wrap my mind around others. I want to print it, paper my walls with it, recite it as my mantra.

Go. I am not exaggerating. Then share your favorite excerpts in the comments. Let’s have a conversation.

I live on a really great street, one with block parties and contact lists and traditions, one of which I just learned is that when someone on the street dies, the neighbors send a flower arrangement with a banner that reads, “Royal Heights Neighbors.”

That tradition says something about my neighborhood, doesn’t it?  It says that we know each other well enough to care that someone died, to send flowers, and to note ourselves on the banner.  It also says that people live on this street a really, really long time.

Mr. Edgar Wilson was 95 when he died on Sunday morning, in his bed, in his sleep, in his home.  He was a decorated World War II veteran, receiving both silver and bronze stars for his service as a forward observer infantryman.  His family opted not to have a military burial, something I found disappointing on many levels, but it was touching and mind-boggling to hear about all this gentle man did and never mentioned.  Like creating an endowment for PhD candidates studying war.  Or getting his fellow veterans to tell their stories to the University of Tennessee’s Center for the Study of War and Society.  Or naming the auditorium he funded at Milligan College after his wife, who’d passed away years prior.

This man who could have written books about his life was my neighbor, but my conversations with him were limited to the weather and how he was feeling.  Important topics, certainly, but I never asked him deeper questions because I feared he wouldn’t want to talk about it.

So instead we all exclaimed about what a long and interesting life he lived while standing at his grave.  And I recalled that he sent us a thank you note the day after our wedding.  He sent us a thank you note.

I accompanied our street’s maven to Mr. Wilson’s funeral.  She is 84 herself and has lived in her house since she and her husband bought it (new) in 1948.  She organizes the twice-yearly block parties and we all know to duck if she’s headed our way.  But without her, I wouldn’t know the people on this street, people like Mr. Wilson.  Every time I see her, I want to hug her.

My husband says I’m just like her, that I’ll be the 84 year old woman harassing people into hosting parties.  I hope so.

On our drive home from the cemetery I asked her a thousand questions and I learned a thousand interesting things.  She and her husband were married in 1947 in the hangar of the airport owned by her father.  The first day she met her future husband, in fact, she asked him if he’d like to go for a ride.  She took him out on her plane!  They strung garland between the two planes (his and hers) for their wedding, had chairs brought over by their friend the funeral director, operated the airport until a few years after her father passed away.  We have plans for me to go over and pore through her wedding album, and I can’t wait.

Penelope talks about how to ask the right questions in your career – and she’s right – but I’m finding that asking questions in all parts of my life is just as important.  And much more interesting.