I couldn’t find the time to write in December, so here is a summary of the month in eighty words: Chanticleer at the Met: angels on earth. J’s holiday party. Baking friendship bread. Kai’s first “viewing”: Charlie Brown Christmas, Grinch, Rudolph. A friend’s mother’s wake. Icy roads: I miss singing at the tavern. Christmas with my sister: We celebrate early. Kai loves playing with his cousins. Reconnecting with an old friend. Birthday dinner out. Waiting at the DMV two hours. Christmas with the family: brunch, nap, presents, visiting, dinner. Working late each day. New Year’s Eve: friends, dinner, champagne, laughter.

This is it, I keep telling myself. This is the second day of the year, and I can change. I can do something about the things I want to do differently. I can write to those friends I rarely speak to anymore and I can clean for thirty minutes and I can pack up those things I need to mail out. I can do it. And then I look at the clock and I think about the work I need to finish and I figure out the time I have and I’m not so sure what I can get done.

In my mind my concerns and problems masquerade as real concerns and problems. They put on costumes of legitimacy and hold up badges with their ID numbers. They stand on soap boxes and spout serious situations and describe difficulties with furrowed brows to those standing in the town square. But when they are written down, changed into words and sent to a friend in a letter or emailed to a relative, and then when I read them back to myself later, when these whining ideas try to stand on their own as true concerns, well, their frivolousness is thus revealed.

She has a hard time deciding what cereal to eat in the morning: puffed rice or shredded wheat. Both make her think of her grandmother. She has a bowl of fresh fruit in the kitchen but recently doesn’t feel the urge to eat any of it. She filters her tap water but does she really need to? And what still gets through? She feeds her child chicken nuggets and then feels guilty the rest of the day. She misses cold roast beef on white bread and beef stew with soft potatoes and carrots. One day she’d like to try pomegranate.

I have been thinking quite a bit about what having one child will mean for him, for us. The arguments are, of course, that having a sibling means that a family member is there for you when your parents are older, need care. There is someone to share with, have fun with. Then I edit an article about a middle-aged, single man who developed schizophrenia in his twenties and is in a clinic. His mother has Alzheimer’s. His brother moved far away and is not in his life. So then I think, having a sibling doesn’t ensure anything at all.

Yesterday K was up screaming throughout the early hours with what turned out to be an ear infection. It was my first (thankfully) real experience with him where I was able only to comfort him, not make things better, not make him laugh or smile. That comforting is a large part of what I have considered to be the quintessential characteristic of a mom. R took the morning off work (what dads do). After the doctor’s office and antibiotics today, K passed out on my lap for two hours. Another true mom moment: just holding him as he finally slept.

I had a very good conversation with a friend today, and he told me something he had heard which I really like: “You need to become comfortable with what is excluded.” I want to feel okay with what I cannot do, what I cannot support, what cannot get done. I told him I have been trying to appreciate what I can get done, be happy for the things I do accomplish during the day, and stop beating myself up with a mental list of what I still need to do. It’s exhausting being so hard on myself all the time.

First rehearsal after Christmas break. The room was actually cold this time. Most of the group came. One was in Key West on a poetry retreat (yes, I'm jealous), one was in another part of Florida, one out because of a sick relative, one out indefinitely because of work. But two new people joined. The school would not put cookies out, stating in a note that concerns over H1N1 and germs have halted that offering for now. We agreed to bring in our own sweets next rehearsal. I felt like I should have brought a large vanilla latte for myself.

We bought our washer and dryer today, from one of those cheesy chain stores where older salesmen on commission troll the open aisles looking for their next sale. The only reason we bought them there was because we already knew exactly what we wanted and we were ready. We probably could have saved more money in another store by getting lower sales tax, but this price was good, and we got five-year warranties. I was doubtful that the machines would fit down our basement stairs easily, but it all worked out, and now we can finally have clean laundry.

Tonight we met family at a restaurant where we used to dine frequently. We were seated at a long table near the wood-burning pizza fireplace, K at one end and his little cousin L at the other. She is a few months younger and has not walked yet but she babbles a lot, says Dad. Everyone waved at K throughout the meal and K waved back, and then everyone at the table clapped, and K clapped! We were so surprised! He’d never before done it, although we have been trying with him. Maybe he only works for certain Italian food!?

Tonight was the first evening of the year when I am going to take over the duties of dinner and make something for us all. I chose black bean soup from the Food Network Favorites cookbook. Although it is not something that K can eat, I wanted to try it. The taste was excellent ... just two things were a bit off. First, the bacon was too fatty. Next time I'll cook it off first, as some others who commented online suggested. Second, we had bought flat-leaf parsley instead of some cilantro. Next time the taste will be much stronger.

In honor of my first cousin's birthday, some memories and thoughts: his bedroom in Connecticut, electronic equipment and transistors everywhere; Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix; large hands with a cigarette between the fingers; his reading me a Spy vs. Spy book one night; his mane of gold brown hair; his thick hippie pullovers; strawberry Fribbles; when I visited him in Oregon in the 90s, the excellent meatloaf dinner at that Irish pub; walking around the falls; the flat sand of the beach; the Japanese gardens; the shopping trip at Powell's bookstore; stopping at a farmstand while driving around the mountains.

When I think back to some of the things that I said and did to my sister as we were growing up I feel nauseated, embarrassed, upset with myself. Perhaps all siblings can think back to something that they wish they had never done. When our upstairs addition was built I promised my sister that I would build her stuffed animal a special bed if I could pick the room I wanted, and I picked the room and never made the bed. I also caused her to lose a party game we played at a church event, and she cried.

When we were shopping at a baby store a woman who worked there came up to us and asked us K's age, and she said her son is about the same age, born exactly 2 weeks after K, and she asked if K is walking, and we said, OH yeah, since about 10 months, and she looked a bit worried, so I told her he doesn't talk yet, and she said her son says a number of words but does not walk, and I found myself wishing that she and I would exchange email addresses so we could compare notes.

It is really amazing that, in the afternoon of a day, when I see that I will be able to finish my work by the early evening and can do anything I want in the evening and night, and I decide to take a little time to clean my office or the bathroom, that is the very evening when my son will not be able to sleep, or there will be a problem with the house, or something will come up so that I will not be able to take the time to clean or organize, and I'm screwed again.

If I had the time I'd regularly talk to somebody about the things that run in an annoying and eroding loop in my head, but part of my anger comes from having so little free time to live the way I want to live here, to decorate and clean and organize and go out with my son, so taking precious time in my day to discuss that I'm angry about having so little time seems completely asinine to me. Yes, so it would help me feel better and form a plan to work on things ... wonderful. It still sounds stupid.

My mom gave me a copy of the recipe from a copy of a Cooking Light magazine issue: chicken stroganoff. Tonight I cooked it up. My second meal to help with the food around here. I made it less "light" by using real sour cream and pork bacon and regular chicken stock. I will definitely make it again. The chicken was tender, the sauce was rich, and the egg noodles were very good ... haven't had any of those since I was young. Next week I will cook another soup, I think. I'll have to find recipes that aren't so fattening.

I have been dreaming very often of late. I do dream regularly, but recently I have many dreams a night. I remember them vaguely, like the one about living in a place surrounded by trees or the one about my giving birth to a small, dark-haired baby girl, who we named léon. So odd! Not the topics, but the intensity and frequency of them. At night before I fall asleep I have also been assaulted (or, rather, obsessed with) a third idea for a romance novel. I have too many of these ideas, too manu plots floating around.

I was doing well, had fifteen pages of editing left, was going to curl up in bed and write, but then R bursts into my office, get your sneakers, emergency!!, runs away. Damn washer, I thought, But no, this was preventable. The sink was clogged up with junk and paper. An inch of water on the floor everywhere, two old sponge mops that just push liquid, towels. I find that it has gotten to my record collection (and WHY is my vinyl in cardboard boxes in the basement??). Years of collecting and moving the albums and now they are soaked.

Old friends have been appearing in many of my dreams. I was in college with a former friend in a recent dream. It was nice being friends again. Then last night I dreamed that R and I were deciding between two houses. I felt relieved that we were not committed to purchasing the more expensive one. I saw the neighbor clearing old trucks off his expansive property. The cheaper house had many interesting rooms with nooks, but the white brick walls crumbled when I touched them. That has to mean something, doesn’t it? Crumbling white brick beneath my fingers?

I mean, really. How did I get this addicted to sugary things? Ever since Halloween, when I realized that I had lost all the baby weight, I have been stuffing junky, sweet, crappy things down my throat night and day. I even made my own friendship bread, and then I made a chocolate milkshake last week. There's Oreos, Reese's cups, chocolate chip cookies, Snapples, Coke, Dr Pepper, orange soda, chocolate and vanilla pudding swirl cups, butterscotch sauce on ice cream, hot chocolate, chocolate Cheerios, Lu schoolboy cookies. Then all the pretzels, chips .... Reading through all this here makes me nauseated!

It was fun sitting by the tenors tonight, and they seemed to like having a new neighbor. The whole group seems more rowdy as the semesters go on, laughing and talking, which our director tamps down when she can. I feel more reserved, on the other hand, more unsure of how I am seen. I think it is my own paranoia crushing me, as it sometimes does, so I'm ignoring it and trying to laugh and joke as well. I look forward to these Friday nights ... the singing, obviously, but now too the friendships, laughter, talk of poetry, detailed discussions.

We went to R's bank this morning to close out his account, to bring the money to our main bank, to try to make things more organized so we can start planning on how to best move forward with saving, earning. After the banker walked away to get our cashier's check, R told me how this was a bit sad, that he was closing out this account that had been his since he was young, how this account had gone through four or five bank mergers and had always been his. In my OCD attachment way, then, I felt bad.

My turn to make dinner again, and I was looking forward to having a very thick potato soup. I even treated myself to an immersion blender. (I have spent 20 years thinking how nice it would be to have things that would make life easier, and from now on I'm getting them. Why do I not allow myself these little things?) The soup was good, and R really liked it, but it was smooth and thin, a nice green from the leeks. I wanted some heft to it. That blender worked too well, it seems! At least it was tasty.

I was flipping channels and I came across a woman talking about addiction, and she said that an addiction is made up of broken promises, so if you say to yourself, "I am not going to have that drink tongiht," and you break that promise, and then you keep promising and always find yourself breaking it, that is addiction, and so I wonder if I am "addicted" to certain things, or are they more like compulsions, needing to keep doing the same thing over and over, letting it interrupt my work so that so much less gets done these days.

He first wrote to me in 1997, I think. Somewhere around there. And he asked me about Wallace Stevens, the poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," because he said a friend had been looking into it. We started sending email back and forth, and we have been friends ever since. Good friends, I think. Today is his birthday, and we are close in age. He lives about as far away as a friend could live. I'm sure one day we will meet. I hold that idea close. It means I'll go on a great adventure. Or he will.

Smells that I can conjure by just thinking about the image, the memory, the item: damp earth on the fingers of my gardening gloves; coffee grounds still in the filter from the night before; gasoline that I pump hesitantly (being from jersey) down the street from my sister's house; fresh-cut grass and lawnmower exhaust together on a Saturday afternoon; minced garlic for the pasta; cedar chips to put down in the cage; yellow onion from the wood of the wet cutting board; chlorine in my nose from the bottom of the pool; Drakkar Noir from a long time ago

Language is fascinating, the way it grows, a living organism. I keep forcing style rules on it, but it doesn’t behave. In the manuscripts I edit, e-mail is always email. Web is always web. Data set is always dataset. No one uses commas. Compounds are never hyphenated. I am a cop who goes home at the end of the day and grabs a beer from the fridge and thinks, Why bother? The perp will be out on the street again in a few days. I think words will just run all together and most terms will be lowercase.

My in-laws told us about the cruise they just took, to islands, Puerto Rico and such. (It is true that a natural disaster happens right before they go on vacations. I thought it was a family myth.) They toured the kitchens, said that there is one room in which a prep cook goes for a 10-hour shift. He is locked in there, and all he does is cut chicken. Then he strips and showers before he is allowed out of the room. Next time I complain about sitting here editing in my pajamas, I will think of that.

No matter what I do with my son, I think I should be doing more, or something else ... playing with him instead of letting him play by himself, taking him out instead of staying in. Then when we are out it is not as I imagined it, or he gets cranky, or I don't go where I meant to, and it's only more frustrating. I try to do certain things with him, certain learning activities, but he seems too young and gets distracted. I don't have anyone around here who has a young child for some playtime. So I worry.

In a magazine about local happenings, I saw a listing for the observatory at a college that is close by. If only to help me write this novel that I am trying to write (and eventually will finish, so help me), I want to go to the open nights next month and see what it is all about. They list the celestial bodies that will be viewed. Orion Nebula is the next two weeks, so I would like to see that. I think my sister-in-law told me about those public showings two years ago, but I can't recall.