I'm going to ignore the fact that I haven't written on this thing in months. I skipped an entire season, that's how long it's been. And it was wonderful, this fall. We actually had an autumn, despite what everyone else says. I say we had a nice, decently long autumn. When it comes to writing here, I'm just going to completely ignore what everyone else says.

So yes. Fall was wonderful but I'm not going to attempt to paraphrase the last 4 months more than that.

And now, onto why my life currently rocks.

My little sister, Lisa, comes home in 3 days. And she has been through a semester of French and needs to get ready for another one. Will I be forcing French films and expressions on her? You bet I will. My poor puppies need a break. Cat will always be spoken to in French though. He is weird, obsessed with food, and temperamental. For all intents and purposes, he might as well be French. So yes, I am excited to have non-cat entity in my home with whom I can pester with my endearing French accent. Also, I'm in a mean crunch for a dancing buddy. I have a lot of energy lately and therefore need more dancing. And since I'm too old for those old habits I will borrow from Lisa's youth.

I am about to embark-2 hours and counting-on a mission of festive cheer for my fourth graders. I'm in charge of the unit for Christmas around the World for my 4 year olds. Nestled in the back of one of my books I got for them was a recipe for Speculoos. Apparently these things are huge in Dutch countries but also in Belgium and especially around Christmas. Like I've ever heard of them. I'm honestly the least cultured cultured person I know. And sometimes, I'm not gonna lie, I get really bored with France. I mean, I'm a French teacher. I love the language and I love teaching the language. But you know, sometimes I feel the need to embrace the often passed over French speaking countries of the world. So this year, or at least this Christmas, I'm focusing on Belgium. I have to sample the recipe tonight as well as a Swedish recipe for my preschoolers and see how they turn out. If all goes well, we'll be making delicious gluten free Swedish chocolate and coconut balls on Wednesday and the Belgian equivalent to gingersnaps on Thursday. I should probably note that I don't even like gingersnaps. Or gingerbread. I hardly like snickerdoodles. The reason is obvious: where's the chocolate? That's a rhetorical question, in case you were wondering. My biased taste obviously goes for Wednesday's Christmas treat but really, I just feel warm and fuzzy thinking how much fun my kids are going have. Especially my fourth graders. Poor things. They've spent the last month having to listen to me telling them how awesome, fun and magical verb conjugations are. I told you, didn't I? Monstrous liar.

On another note, our house is almost done. Only those who have had to live through 13 years of renovation can truthfully appreciate this. Not that I'm complaining. Okay, so maybe I am. These past three weeks without a kitchen or my big screen tv and cuddly couch have been rough. Not to mention I don't have rockband to healthily work out my aggression. But that excessively warm basement, t.v. room and and its haphazard furnishings have come to represent what I love most about Christmas. And I haven't quite felt like it (Christmas) could be coming knowing that the room is empty and often echoing with the sound of Cat's meowing. He is such a vain whine bucket. And don't even get me started on the kitchen. Two weeks off of school with most everyone working means I will have time to kill, and by jolly I will kill that time and my tidy wasteline in the kitchen in the remainder of this, the winter of 2009.

I was working on my house helping my dad (barely) Thanksgiving day and I got all emotional and started writing about my house. It's a weird thing to get sentimental over, I know, and while I was trying to write about it I realized how pointless it is to really try to explain. The fact of the matter is, I feel like I've grown up with that house. And I have to see it through to the end. When it is done, I will be done growing there. That seems like a cop out for still living at home at the age of 25. Maybe it is. But it feels true. I'm stubborn like that, about seeing thing through to the end. And I'm bad at closing doors. But this one is on it's way shut, which means that this is the last of the kind of Christmases I've always known.

Last but not least, my life rocks because I'm running again. Despite the annoying and mostly gluten free regime which has been my life since September, I have more energy than I've had in a long time. Yes, school is wonderful this year and yes I am working (tutoring in the evenings) a lot less. But there are a lot of days when I am so full of energy that I just start laughing. Like when I get in my car and plug in my ipod. Or when I fall on the ice on my previously bruised tailbone. I never know what's going to set me off. I know that part of this energy comes from running and that being able to run again is in part due to me being more healthy. If all goes according to schedule, I should hit the 5 mile mark during Christmas break. If you had told me that 6 months ago I would have told you to shut up. I really do need to work on that whole polite business. It manifests a complete lack of elegance. And I am nothing, if not elegant.
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Wow. Shut up.

I should note since I probably won't actually get around to it even though I have the best intentions to, that apart from the particulars, life rocks because I have no idea where my life is going and I am okay with that. That doesn't mean I don't obsess over it occasionally once a week. But there are a lot of unknown variables and a lot of knowns that are thorns in my side. And yet (this is my third syntactically incorrect sentence in a ROW and that makes me even more happy) I feel like I'm okay with those knowns and unknowns because somewhere along the way I ceded control to a degree. This means that I've become horrifically inefficient in a lot of ways; there's always a give, right. In the larger sense, it means I'm ready for whatever comes at me.

Last night someone asked me if I would consider myself an indecisive person. I don't think I even responded verbally. I just laughed. And laughed. And then laughed. Yeah. Awkward. Then I said that I'm the kind of person that things have to just happen to. I didn't really think about it, I just kinda said it. And then when I went to explain it I realized how true that was. I love those ah-ha moments when you understand in a half of a second something that takes paragraphs, pages, hours sometimes, to explain.

You see, I am the kind of person that good things have to just happen to because I usually try to talk myself out of things. And I'm also the sort of person that, when bad things happen, I am a lot more capable of dealing with than I would have foreseen. My problem is that I'm somewhat of a control freak and I like to plan for the good and plan for the bad. Sometimes being a goal orientated person is less than peachy. For such a logical person, I can be ridiculously illogical at times. Maybe that's what it was, maybe the illogicalness of it all finally clicked. Or maybe I was finally able to let go of the details. Either way, it's about time I stopped fighting myself on that account.

I have a couple of quotes that have been on my bulletin board for years. One by Emily Dickinson, "The soul should always stand ajar ready to welcome the ecstatic experience" and by Cormac McCarthy: "Between the wish and the thing, the world lies waiting". Sure, I have some things, some wishes. But I don't want to miss out on what's going on around me because my I'm only focused on them.

In a nutshell, what I mean to say is this:

2009 is almost over. And it rocked my socks off; totally exceeded my expectations. I'll be sad to see it go, to tell you the truth.

2010: I'm ready and waiting.