More parenthetical aside than not (with general punctuation abuse)

It seems that I spend every December running to catch up, not only with house cleaning, gift shopping and holiday decorating (my family traditionally puts up the Christmas tree at 10 pm on the 24th of December. Procrastinate much? This drives Paul crazy.) but in the past four years, to catch up in Holidailies.

Every year in November, amidst the chaos of NaNoWriMo, I solemnly swear via the click of a button that I will update my blog every day from December 1 to January 1, without fail. Almost anyone who has ever done NaNoWriMo, and definitely anyone who has done it as an ML (the folks in charge of each region) will know that it’s extremely difficult to write anything coherent on the first day of December. Especially if they operate like I do (see chronic procrastinator, above) and finish their 50,000th word at 11 pm on the 30th of November. This is the first year that I finished earlier (6 pm on the 29th, thanks to my running dare with Wolfe) but since our TGIO party was scheduled for Dec 1st, there was no hope of any time to myself on the 30th or the 1st. (More on both the dare and the TGIO later, with photos! Actually, photos are to blame for some of the delay too.)

On Thursday night, the 13th, I finally caught up in Holidailies with my 13th entry. On Friday night, the 14th, my chronic sleep deficit caught up with me and I fell asleep at 5pm and slept for 14 hours. Now, for the first time in several months, I don’t feel like my eyeballs have been rolled in a sand trap and the rest of my head packed with cotton balls. In summary, I feel better. But now I have guilt. I will have to break the new “don’t post twice in one day” rule yet again (guilt!) to catch myself up to the standard. If I don’t catch up I will break my vow by not having 31 posts by January 1 (guilt!). I may even disappoint my readers (more guilt!) if I have any left after my year of near silence (which is an entry in and of itself: the year in which I ‘logic-ed’ myself into a depression. I have issues.)

Really, I have enough guilt for any ten Catholics (thanks, mom). I’d say I should be Catholic, but having married a Catholic man in a Catholic church believe me when I say that I explored the option thoroughly and determined that it is not, and will never be, a good fit for me. There are too many beliefs that I either fundamentally oppose, that make no sense to me, or that are just too gross for me to say I believe, and there’s no way I’m going to lie about any of it. (Don’t worry; I’m not wandering around denigrating his beliefs. There are points we agree on, points we disagree on, and an agreement to respect those areas of disagreement. Religion is all about interpretation and marriage is all about compromise.)

There you go: an entry for the 14th. I solemnly vow to return with an entry of greater substance, likely tomorrow morning as tonight will be spent drinking Butterscotch Sundae Martinis with Paul’s extended family. Hmmm, maybe it won’t have greater substance after all.