much review about nothing

Yesterday I became a first cousin, once removed, to a newborn baby boy. To those who don’t know me, that might sound absurdly distant, but I grew up in an absurdly tight-knit extended family. Jamie, the new father, is practically a second brother to me, so in my heart, I feel practically like an aunt. It’s very exciting.

But if I am to be perfectly honest (and where better than on a public blog?), it’s been difficult for me too. Maybe it’s because I no longer live on the family compound (well, five houses within a quarter-mile radius—whatever), and maybe it’s because I’m an immature twit, but since learning that Jamie and Kristen were going to become parents, I never really got past the abstraction of the idea. In my head, it felt like another marker of the scary reality that we’re all getting older at a much faster pace than I can handle—apiece with Kenny, the baby of the family (no, the former baby of the family), heading off to college and with the fact that my parents will soon be the parents of a thirty-year-old (which somehow upsets me more than the fact that I will be that thirty-year-old) and even, in a sick way, with my dad’s heart attack a couple years ago. It all ran together in my head, and deep down, underneath my sincere happiness for people whom I love so much, I was freaked out and kind of upset. I knew it wasn’t about me, but even so, I didn’t feel ready.

It took seeing pictures of Jamie and Kristen, exhausted but so happy, holding their beautiful son, for me to get it through my thick skull that this is not, in fact, about all of us moving ever closer to death. (Yes, I’m a freak show.) It’s about life, a blossoming branch on my beloved family tree. I know what great parents Jamie and Kristen are going to be, what great parents they already are, and I’m so happy for them—and for the rest of us, too, who have a new family member to love and support and cherish and drive crazy, each in our own special way.

So congratulations, Jamie and Kristen, and welcome, little baby Jay bird. I look forward to meeting you.

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OK, so December has been a bit of a bust. My roller-coaster 2009 has left me frayed and exhausted. Even the trip down to Florida to spend Christmas with my family was needlessly stressful: a nightmare of blizzard delays with a nasty bout of food poisoning for good measure. I’ve recovered from that bad turkey sandwich, at least, but I’m taking another week or so to recover from all the rest of it. Look for new posts from a revitalized blogger in 2010. In the meantime, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I was going to write another summertime-sucks-and-I-have-nothing-to-write-about post, but I had to admit that doing so would be disingenuous at best. In fact, there are a number of movies I’m interested in seeing, plus an upcoming Baroque music festival that looks cool. I have options. But this past weekend, Sean and I left the city to crash at an older cousin’s guest house on the north shore of Long Island. We went boating, we went swimming, we played with the dogs, we drank wine, we gorged ourselves on all kinds of wonderful food—in short, we allowed ourselves to be pampered and indulged like minor royalty by loving, extravagantly generous relatives. It was awesome. And that is why I have nothing to write about: I’ve been spoiled rotten. (Thank you, Maureen and Rob and Richie and Brian!) But now I’m back home and back to my normal life, and I swear I’ll have something to write about soon. Look for a more substantial post in the next few days.

I sincerely hope I haven’t alienated my handful of regular readers (I love you!) with my ridiculously spotty posting of late. I hadn’t wanted to write about why I haven’t been writing because, well, I’m sort of superstitious and I hate to tell people about good news before it’s actually official.

But now it is! After stressful finance-reviewing, stressful apartment-hunting, and an even more stressful approval process, Sean and I (and our cats, Tess and Luna) are moving to Manhattan, where we hope to de-stress, perhaps in Central Park, virtually the backyard of our new home. (Eeeee!) In addition to being absurdly close to the park, we’ll also be closer to friends and closer to many of the venues we love (notably Lincoln Center), so we’re very, very excited.

The official move date is this Wednesday, and two days later, a few old friends are coming to visit (not ideal timing, perhaps, but I can’t wait to see them—we’ll make the best of it), so to be honest, posts probably aren’t going to pick up again for another week or so. So to my dear regular readers, thanks for your patience. I look forward to having the time and energy to write more very soon.

I’m not sick. I’m not working outrageously long hours. The weather is bad, but it’s not that bad. But I’ve got post-holiday blues, or some latent part of my DNA wants me to go into hibernation for the rest of the winter, or something. I just can’t seem to summon the energy to venture out into the 20-degree weather (I am from Florida), which leaves me with little to write about, which makes me sad. I’m a pitiful case.

Anyway, I’m trying to snap out of it. I hope to have a few more posts up in the next week or so.

Thanksgiving and Christmas were entirely too close together this year, turning December into a frenzy of extra hours at work, frantic shopping, hectic holiday parties, and miserable weather. I never manage to post very frequently at this time of year, and 2008 was particularly bad.

But! Sean and I are now happily recovering from pre-holiday stress within the loving madness of my boisterous extended family back home in Florida. (Bonus: Tomorrow’s forecast calls for sunny skies and a high of 81—maybe not too Christmassy but a welcome change from the slush we left behind in New York.) I’ll probably hit a movie or two with my brother and other assorted relatives, but I’m not likely to post anything before 2009.

So in the meantime, Merry Christmas! Thanks for sticking around, even when I’m a bit delinquent. I promise fresh new content once we’ve all celebrated a happy new year!

After years of stressful holiday air travel, Sean and I have had enough. We’re still traveling—that’s pretty much nonnegotiable—but this year, we’re taking the train. It might be slower, but that’s part of the charm. It gives us the chance to enjoy vacation time alone together, just the two of us, before and after the chaos of Extended Family Fun. Plus, we don’t have to deal with airport security, and we can pack toiletries and water bottles and sewing scissors and whatever else we want.

The train ride down was wonderful. We had a small private cabin. I got some writing done (behold: finally completed and published blog entries below!), Sean played with his new iPhone, and we enjoyed a leisurely dinner before retiring to our room to enjoy the bottle of wine we brought with us (another perk of train travel!).

True, we got into South Carolina bright and early (very early), but it was worth it. So this year, I have something new to be thankful for: Amtrak. I know that sounds ridiculous, and I’m not saying it’s perfect, but still: Consider train travel. Sean and I had a lovely time, and for once, we’re less stressed out now than when we departed.

Please excuse my lack of new posts. I’ve been a bit under the weather, but that aside, the coming election has completely consumed me. I can’t seem to get excited about going out to see anything, much less writing about it—not when I can spend more time poring over the latest political news and polls and analysis and stressing out over it all. (Good news, bad news, ambiguous news—everything about this election stresses me out.)

I’m hoping to pry myself away from my laptop sometime this weekend and then to return to it with a fun, benign topic to write about, but I make no promises. Fortunately, this will all be over in the next few days (knock wood—I can’t take another 2000) so I can calm down and return to thinking and writing about blissfully insignificant topics that won’t provoke me to contemplate the destruction of democracy and the end of the world. (Sorry. Deep breath. The whole Hope thing doesn’t come easily to me.)

Getting knocked on my ass by the common cold is kind of humiliating, but there it is. For days now, I’ve been in the middle of a post about the new Broadway production of A Man for All Seasons, but everytime I sit down to finish it, my sinuses start throbbing and I get dizzy and forming cohesive sentences is just too much to handle. So eventually you’ll be seeing a post about the play and maybe also a post about Daniel Mendelsohn’s new essay collection, How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken. But in the meantime, I’m going back to bed.

Sean and I are fine, but we’ve been coping with assorted family issues that have made it difficult for me to get into a writing frame of mind, hence the lapse in posts. I hope to have my head screwed on a bit straighter in the next few days so I can get back to blogging. And sleeping soundly. And devoting my attention to the silly and the inconsequential and the pointlessly beautiful, where it belongs.