November has felt like the strangest month. The weather hasn’t really started to feel like fall until this month and then this week we headed to winter fast. Because Thanksgiving was so late, it feels like Christmas/Advent will be kind of short. I was looking at my calendar and realizing that there are only three Fridays between now and Christmas and we already have something on every one of those Fridays. Yikes!
Loved
We hosted Thanksgiving for the first time and it went quite well. Previously we hosted Easter because the only space we had that would hold more than six or seven people (we host at least 13 local family members), was our unheated sunporch. But thanks to our home addition that finished up this past spring, we now have a dining room! We got creative with a few folding tables and it was great to have everyone together.
Even the clean up was more social because our former kitchen window was turned into a passthrough to let whoever was doing dishes (in this case my husband) feel like they are still with us in the dining room, rather than being stuck in the kitchen.
Accomplished
I don’t know how much credit I can take for this, aside from ordering materials and reminding my husband, but we now have a kitchen island and three new light fixtures!
I’ve been wanting to replace those fixtures for years. (The ceiling fan light has been broken for more than year and it’s always felt dark in our kitchen anyway).
I knew we were going to do something with the remaining kitchen space but we hadn’t decided until recently what that would be. (There was a design in the original construction plans for the addition but when the estimate went way over budget we had to cut everything from the kitchen and we’ve been slowly putting together our own simpler DIY version).
We finally settled on two Havsta cabinets and a Tornviken island from IKEA. The cabinets are still in boxes (currently in our bedroom since we were clearing up the dining room to host Thanksgiving), but the island is done.
As is typical, nothing went as smoothly as hoped and the main fixture over the island required some help from my dad to wire it, but everything looks great now and I was beyond grateful for the extra prep and serving space now that the island is assembled.
Needs Improvement
I’ve talked before on Share Four Something Saturday about how for the last year (possibly almost two years) I haven’t been able to find my groove. I feel like I’m just surviving each week without really being present most of the time. So often I’m just trying to get through whatever I’m doing now and on to the next thing. It hasn’t been easy living like this and I know something needs to change, I still can’t quite figure out what.
I know that the last three months have been especially stressful because of the addition to our schedule of my daughter’s play rehearsals. (She was in a play last year but it wasn’t quite this stressful). It also meant other things had to shift which meant I was running around almost every day.
I know that I do better when I have at least one day a week when I don’t have anywhere to go (preferably more than one, at least one weekday is pretty essential though). I also know that I used to have hobbies. But I’ve struggled to find time for these since I starting working more in the last three years and I’m realizing how much I feel the lack.
The holidays seem to be a terrible time to try to make any changes, but if I could I’d love to schedule my downtime and carve out time for hobbies (like knitting or some other handicraft) in the coming month or so.
Noticed
I’ve noticed that I’m not all that excited for Christmas this year. Whenever one of my kids mentioned it for the last month I felt like Ma Otter in my husband’s favorite Christmas move, Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas. (If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a watch for the music alone.)
When her son brings up Christmas her response is:
“Don’t talk about Christmas so much, we don’t have enough for regular days.”
That’s how I feel. Except I also feel like it isn’t true. For the first time in many years, we actually have more than enough at Christmas, at least financially. Energy, maybe not so much, and it makes me sad.
Sad that my favorite time of the year doesn’t hold the same joy that it used to. That all I see ahead of me is busy fridge hours in addition to all the effort it takes to make the day to day work just so that everyone (including me) can be disappointed.
I don’t know what the solution is yet. (Though I’m rereading Loving My Actual Christmas by Alexandra Kuykendall and hoping I can come up with some ideas.) Mostly I’m letting myself breathe about how I feel, having gentle conversations with my immediate family and seeing what bubbles up.
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