Wednesday
December 16, 1998

Gawd. I am genuinely sorry for yesterday's terse and whiny attempt at a journal entry.

Birthdays just ... push a button with me, emotionally. Fortunately that particular ordeal is over now, for another year, and I can go right back to anxiously obsessing over %$#&% CHRISTMAS ...

Working on today's entry. You know the drill ... click here to read yesterday's entry, such as it is ... and then check back here later. I can't guarantee that I'm gonna be any more *festive* than I was yesterday. The holidays are a whole 'nother emotional "button": basically I won't unclench now until we're safely into 1999. Fortunately, my pal Sharlie sent me a big bunch of Christmas hyperlinks today (including one intriguingly called "Virtual Fruitcake"), and maybe that's what I need to put me in a holiday mood. (Either that or Donny & Marie singing "Happy Christmas [War Is Over] ... gaaaacccckkkkk ...)

Thursday
December 17, 1998

Obviously I never made my way back to the website. I spent most of the morning online yesterday, researching flight info on the Internet and exchanging frantic back & forth e-mail with assorted family members in TicTac. (The logistics of getting me there for the holidays next week are proving to be majorly migraine-inducing. Gosh I love Christmas.)   By the middle of the afternoon I was more than ready to take a great big break from computers and indecipherable airline websites and muddy coffee ... ... so I went into the other room to make the bed and maybe curl up with a library book for a little while. On a whim, I snapped on the TV, thinking I would check and see how the impeachment stuff was going.

And there it was. Boom. All of a sudden ... we've started a war.

I spent the next four and half hours glued to the TV, flipping from one station to another, trying to fit all the pieces of the story together. (I was genuinely SHOCKED when I heard David's key in the front door at 4:30 or so ... the entire afternoon had passed in a blur of grim news commentators and file footage of Baghdad and live video feeds.)

I'm still reeling from the news today ... and under the circumstances, it seems somehow ... I dunno ... inappropriate to slap a bunch of my usual stoopid stream-of-unconsciousness stuff onto the website today.

Besides. I have to admit that the past few days I've been feeling completely uninspired here. My writing is getting flabby and stale ... at least, to *my* eye ... and I think I need to take a break from the website altogether, at least for today. I just want to listen to the news some more, and finish putting together the damn travel arrangements, once and for all, and write some long-overdue e-mail ...

... and, most importantly, I want to get out of the Castle for a little while this afternoon and get some fresh air, even if it just means walking over to the laundry room and back.

Regroup. Recharge. Re-energize. Relax.

The holidays will be over soon, Terri  ... and you WILL get through them in one piece.  Just keep telling yourselves that.

(And -- as David would point out -- think how much more "indescribably horrible" all of this would be if I were still drinking. I mean, I'm still tied up in knots over the travel stuff and the money stuff and the Iraq stuff. But I'm sober. And I feel wonderful, physically. And I'm thinking more clearly than at any other point in the past five or ten or twenty-five years. And I'm dealing with problems as they come up, rather than trying to outrun them or -- even worse -- expecting someone else to *fix* them for me. And this is precisely what is going to get us through the next few days ... that, and plenty of Alleve ...)

BTW. Got your e-mail, Chriss ... and I'll be answering it today or tomorrow. And special *thanks* to Sharlie and Shell Pie for acting as go-betweens ... God love our little grapevine ... :0)