One reason I can’t abide the holidays is that my already shaky schedule gets tossed out the window as we navigate through social obligations and many people book off work. It was worse when I lived in the States as they start holidaying with the advent of Thanksgiving in November which makes it nearly impossible to take care of business for over a month, Nov. 22-Jan 2. I need to organize, so I can produce some writing. Sure enough, I have not accomplished much of it since I returned from my retreat on Salt Spring Island. I convinced myself I would carry back some of the momentum with me but it has all dissipated as I become bogged down on the domestic front. This in spite of a minimal Christmas celebration; in fact, it’s been more like an anti-Christmas. We all agreed to ignore putting up lights on the house, trimming a tree (which was a big relief). There were a few times when I missed the tanennbaum but for the most part, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass.  I was torn from the time Junior was a baby whether to celebrate Christmas or not. We are culturally Catholic, certainly not observant. It seemed hypocritical to celebrate Christmas though I soon stopped resisting the holiday’s powerful pull. As much as I detest organized religion I find religious-especially Catholic-iconography beautiful, captivating. I understand as well, the human need, and reliance upon, symbolism and ritual. The holidays do provide an opportunity to commune with family and friends so when Junior was little making him happy was our main motivation. He certainly had Santa figured out but we always tried to remind him of the significance of the holiday, who Christ was and how his teachings changed the world but now at fourteen, Junior is his own man and couldn’t give a rat’s ass either.

Josef and I have never been big on arbitrarily exchanging gifts on birthdays, etc. We prefer to spend time together as a way to show love for one other; go out for dinner or cook a lovely breakfast and when we’re really ahead of the game, as we will do in a week, fly off somewhere. We went to Haida Gwaii in September and will go to LA for a week in January. Christmas carols fill me with nostalgia though. As a girl, I loved singing them in choir. I do have mixed feelings. I could never understand the boozing and bingeing that went on at our house every Christmas. No matter how broke we had been in November, come Dec. 24, my parents would fill the house with rum and rye whiskey, candy, oranges and nuts, the biggest and loudest being my Uncle Reggie. Invariably the house would fill with yelling and strife as well.

On the other hand, perhaps we are afforded a little time to reflect before tackling another (new) year. 2008 has been interesting to say the least. Roderick and I—AURAL Heather—released our new cd, Princess Nut in June. Josef and I celebrated 10 years together. AURAL Heather toured eastern Canada/U.S. in July. Josef, Junior and I had our first family vacation in three years, traveling to Quebec to visit relatives and the Gaspe Peninsula. Josef and I kicked off our performance series, my poem Whore In The Eddy was published in the Rocksalt anthology and selected for another. I resurrected my novel, The Town Slut’s Daughter, began a collaboration on an art book with visual artist Tina Schliessler. My sister Diana died in August, my ex-husband and dear friend Peter Haskell was murdered in September and the U.S. elected their first black president!

Been seriously shack wacky for the past week or more, in a real funk, partly due to the impediments imposed by crappy weather, a real snow job. Vancouver has been hit by record snowfalls this year, and it is lingering, causing all kinds of mayhem. The other reason, though I don’t discuss it much—it’s embarrassing—but I’ve been struggling with health and wellness for years now, since the onset of peri-menopause. I have all the symptoms it seems—fatigue, depression,  (I am prone to depression), anxiety, sugar cravings, insomnia, slowed metabolism, body aches and pains, lethargy, low libido. I am most decidedly not sailing through it like so many women appear to be. It’s lonely, people are reluctant to talk about it, myself included. I’ve sought help from one naturopath after another, gone on and off anti-depressants and HRT more than once. Lately I’ve been consulting a medical herbalist, trying to alleviate symptoms with supplements, been seeing her for nearly a year now and starting to feel like I’m spinning my wheels. I will seek another opinion in the New Year if things don’t improve soon. It’s like detective work.

Dreamed a big fat guy with wild red hair was on a motorcycle, driving around firing his pistol into the air, ranting. I was with my friend Rhonda; we ducked around a corner and called the police. The same guy, though I’m not certain, dropped his little daughter, off the side of a boat to teach her to swim. Her scream was blood curdling. I also dreamed I was in a crowd when a man came up and asked me to be in his movie. I protested, I’m no actress then asked him to describe it. I said, “Oh, it sounds like a snake in the grass role,” which he protested. The entire time we were engaged in this fascinating discussion, I was holding a little baggie of tiny fish, trying to keep them alive by pushing the water above their heads. The water level kept dropping and I swear, they were talking, yelling at me.

Junior has been on the defensive lately about gaming. We were discussing the other night how people from his school like to watch old, silent films, which are very slapstick, much of the physical humour very violent. That’s okay with them though, he said and I agreed because they are viewed as quaint. They are politically correct but people get hit, shot, and run over, all for a laugh. I told him how disturbed I was once watching a Laurel and Hardy movie on television around the age of six. They were being pursued throughout the film, a running gag if you will, by a big guy in a butcher’s apron brandishing a cleaver who kept repeating, “Why, when I get my hands on you, I’m going to skin you alive!” The last shot is Laurel and Hardy’s heads eerily attached to walking skeletons, the point being the butcher had caught up with them! I was horrified!