The On Display topic this month is "I am not thankful for..." I started out with the idea of telling you all how I can really be an ungrateful wench - how even though I had a really good weekend, I spent a good portion of it complaining (mostly silently, in the back of my mind, but still.) The point was supposed to be that I shouldn't complain - even only mentally - so much. I even had it all written out, and then I'd moved on past a divider bar and was going to explain how really, I had a good weekend, but I'd been writing about the complaints because of the On Display topic.
And then I realized: What I'm really not thankful for is this On Display topic. I don't want to turn this into a rant. I've been working for almost two years now to be less whiny in my writing. I know, the topic has some leeway. I could have picked just one big thing that I'm irritated about and ranted. Well-written rants make for good reading. But there's nothing big going on in my life that I want to rant about, anyway. Not that I'm willing to discuss publicly. (Well, except maybe the whole election thing, but everyone I know is totally sick of the whole thing, so why bother?) So I'm left with the small, petty, whiny things.
I'm not too thrilled with next month's topic, either, which is going to be all of us writing about the same photograph. Nope. Nopenopenope. The only reason I'm writing about this month's topic is because I'm already planning to skip the photograph topic. (If we could all write about a photo we took ourselves, I'd enjoy it. What do I want to say about someone else's photos?)
The whole thing has me wondering if I should withdraw from On Display. It's an interesting concept, and I thought it would help me to grow as a writer. But I'm beginning to find that the petty details are dragging me down. I got slapped on the wrist for not having a title for last month's entry. For petesake. This is a journal, not a short story. I don't have titles. Use the date. Or the topic I'm writing about. I'm doing this to write, not because I'm trying to increase my readership or because I feel like I have to belong to some sort of community. There are plenty of other sources for finding interesting and unusual topics to write about for those days when I don't know what to say.
Did I just talk myself into quitting On Display? I don't know. I still like the concept... And the topic we're kicking around for January has lots of potential. Maybe this is the end-of-year blahs. Or maybe just a bad series of topics for me. I don't know. We'll see.
So anyway, I had a good weekend. Fiddler on the Roof was fantastic. Matt recognized the actor playing the lead role of Tevye, Theodore Bikel, as having been Ivanova's rabbi from Earth in the Babylon 5 episode "TKO." (If it makes you feel better, we didn't remember the episode name at the time; I had to look it up Saturday morning.) The actor playing Fyodka was sweet eye-candy. (It helped that most of the cast was obviously selected for being small and dark and "Jewish-looking" so that the tall blondes playing the Christian Russians would stand out, and the actor playing Fyodka was the tallest of those. I can't help it. I have a thing for tall guys.) And the dancing was marvelous - I love anything that obviously requires a lot of effort and coordination, especially acrobatics and dancing.
Saturday, aside from doing the laundry, was mostly a lazy day for Matt and I. We did go to Target in search of a roasting rack for me to use for the turkey (I hate it when the bottom of the turkey has been boiled more than roasted). They didn't have a roasting rack, so instead we bought a Christmas tree.
Well, okay, it wasn't quite like that. We wandered back by the Christmas stuff so I could pick up some ball ornaments for a crocheting project, and I pointed at the pre-lit seven-foot tree in the tree display: "That's the kind of tree I want us to get when we're ready to buy the tree." (Those of you who have been with me since last Christmas, or read the archives back that far, will remember that up through last year, we'd been borrowing a tree from my parents that's older than me, and that last year the base of it broke so that we wound up having to tie it to the ceiling vent to keep it from tipping over. This year, I swore, I would have a new tree.)
"That's the tree you want?" Matt asked.
I walked closer to the tree, seeing how deep the pre-wired lights went. "Yep."
"Let's get it now!" he said.
I looked at him dubiously. He had been scorning our two neighbors who are already putting up lights and decorations. "It's not Thanksgiving yet," I said cautiously.
He shrugged. "We're not going to put it up," he explained patiently, "just buy it and stick the box in the corner somewhere."
So we have a tree. Yay! I won't have to string lights anymore! Yay! I may or may not be going to work the day after Thanksgiving (I'd been assuming I'd take it off, but I may have to use it to make up the time I'll be taking to go to my father-in-law's wedding) but if I'm home, the tree goes up November 24th!
Kris is an enabler. As a somewhat belated birthday present (actually, she says she had this in time for my birthday, and then lost it) she got me a gift certificate to Michael's, which if you don't know this already, is a major arts and crafts store.
Astonishingly enough, I've never been, mostly because the one in our area is down in Newport News, and I only go near it to think about it when I'm with Matt on our way to Sam's Club. And Matt isn't the world's biggest fan of craft stores. But that's all right; Kris says she'll go with me some time. I think she's hoping for a sort of symbiosis, actually, wherein I make things like afghans and then give them to her. Heh.
Word of the Day: symbiosis - the living together in close association of two dissimilar organisms especially when mutually beneficial; a cooperative relationship
- between books
Current Projects:
- Dad's Christmas stocking
- Christmas placemat set
- billions of crocheted snowflakes
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