So you know that beautiful plan I had a few days ago?

2016 isn't done with me yet.  It decided to give me a stupid (and particularly nasty) rhinovirus.  I was gonna go anyway.  It was miserable enough that I had to leave my new nurse orientee by herself at work Friday for the last two hours of the day, cos I just couldn't make it.  (There was at least a fabulous nurse in ID who I trust completely to be there, but still...)

I had to get up at 11pm last night from bed to go to the couch because I was too restless.  And then I laid there for another 20 solid minutes trying to get up the energy to walk the last 10 feet to the medicine cabinet to get ibuprofen and Vicks Vap-o-rub.  That was when I said to myself, there's no way I'm going to make it 364 miles to Moab. 

I'm only up this early because the pain in my head was so great, I forced myself back upstairs to a hot shower.  And then sat down and cried in frustration, because I really will be even more miserable if I go.

I hate you, 2016. 

I got the best email ever from Jane (my mom in law) this morning, though.  And I'm the luckiest daughter-in-law to have her in my world.

And I was still sitting on the toilet, crying in frustration.  Well.  My sinuses benefit from the extra humidity.

Mark is sick, too.  Not as bad off, but he has this crap, too.  I'm annoyed as hell I can't give him a little alone day at home.  He hasn't had one since APRIL.  Because I have gone NO.  WHERE. by myself.  We took TWO WEEKENDS away...one to Oregon, and one to Estes.  That's IT.  (All right all right all right....first world problems, checking my privilege...)

Yeah.  Still feeling whiny and like wallowing in my pity party. 

I'm back on the couch, armed with water, ibuprofen, vitamins, sudafed, coffee (I don't give up coffee no matter how sick I am), and at some point I will search for soup.  And a large trash can and two boxes of kleenex. I can hear the Mark got up briefly to hack and cough, but I think he just crawled back under the covers. 

I am going to watch Curse of the Golden Flower for the 100th time.  Because a) Gong Li is the best actor on the planet.  She can do more in five seconds of dead silence with a stony face and perfectly laquered fingernail than most actors do in entire movies (And she can do it dressed as the Han Empress or dressed as a dumpy massively-pregnant pissed off peasant, with dirt on her face.  You could cover her face in mud, and she still looks flawless.)  ....and b) like so many Chinese movies that manage to make it to an American audience...at the end, almost everybody dies or goes mad, and the bad guy (i.e. the Emporer) wins.

Yeah.  I think that's about right.

We'd planned the usual Christmas this year.  Although the day-long argument Mark had with Chase's mom over when we could get him for the holiday was actually not typical, the 2pm cookies-and-wine hosted by my stepmother and father in law is the usual thing.  As the alpha female in my family, I'm still beholden to the needs of other women's holidays.  I have never really cared much about this, being pagan.  Whatever.  I just want to give presents.  Yule is not, has never been, about presents.

Yule is usually a workday and most people don't know it's Solstice.  Unlike Samhain or Beltane, Yule has always been quiet for me, and for this little family unit.  Quiet as stars in the sky. 

Four things happened today.

A coyote crossed the road in front of me today.  He was in no danger of being hit by my car; being far enough away to see his winter coat well, but not having to do much than brake gently.  I told him hello, wished him good hunting.  It made me happy to see a full coat and that he looked well-fed and healthy. 

I had coffee with a friend and coworker who is fighting the real fight with breast cancer.  I was lucky.  But I understand her, and she understands me.  That little time I had with her was a gift.  I hate cancer with her.  I'm not a pink ribbon person, and neither is she.  But I will help her in whatever way I can.

I went to Racine's after work, and Pandora (the free radio station) told me to go to Utah this weekend.  As if it had speech.  Specifically, it kept flipping to Joshua Tree songs.  If you laugh at me, I'll smack you.  Hard.  Desert sky, dream beneath the desert sky...the rivers run but soon run dry...we need new dreams tonight...  What that song woke up in me was a hunger for the big sky and the big quiet.  Before I was a nurse, I would go hike Delicate Arch on Christmas Day.  Me, and usually five to seven other people.  Jews, Muslims, atheists.  Those people that think they're celebrating Christ by arguing with their loved ones on the holiday?  I was happy, those years, deeply happy, to celebrate a belated Yule, sitting on the rim of the canyon, looking out over the dun-colored mounds and hoodoos. 

When I came home, I asked Mark if he'd be okay with me ducking out of Christmas obligations this year.  He is.  And I called Chase, too, because I want him to be okay delaying opening presents.  (And I suspect he will be.)  (Not only did he already put his present together, and is using the new gaming computer, but being a kid with four parents for the majority of his life, he's used to being less fixated on The Day Of The Holiday,)  I got Chase's voicemail.  I told him I want to go to Utah this weekend, and hoped he'd be fine waiting a day or two for present-unwrapping... reminded him in the voicemail that after all, we're pagan, and the holiday we're celebrating belongs to the people we love, after all.  And I told him I'd take his father and him with me if I could. Cos I would.  Cos my family, my little family, understands.

They know that Yule is quiet, too.

And then the fourth thing is opening a box from one of my oldest and dearest friends.  It was southern cooking that she did not bake (which adds to the charm for me), but also old photos.  Of me and her when we were 19, 20, and 21.  One night when we dressed up before Rocky Horror Picture Show.  That was from the Halloween apartment on Sheridan.  A day we spent apple picking in south Chicago.  Some black and white portraits of me that for some reason I did for a class, but SHE took the photos of me.  I remember developing the sheet of negatives.  And ornaments from our tree at the apartment on Loyola Avenue.  It made me remember things I didn't know I'd forgotten, and it made me cry, and it made me remember how much I love and miss her.

I have very, very few friends left who still call me Meisha.  I remember that day apple-picking.  It was a spectacularly happy day.

It is the longest night tonight.  And I am once again, overwhelmed with gratitude.  For the coyote.  For coffee with a friend who's going through a hard time.  For miles of sandstone that will be mostly empty of humans this week.  For my husband and stepson.  For old friends who remember who you are and also don't cook.

So I'm going to Utah.  I will probably call my in-laws to bid them Merry Christmas in advance.  Two of the three will understand.I will miss my niece and nephew, too, which is a bummer, but I think it'll be okay.  I'll call my parents on Christmas Day, and they will likely be baffled that I'm spending Christmas day without my family, but I will remind them that I've spent 45 years of doing not what they want me to do very often...so they should really stop having expectations.  They'll be fine.  Part of them might understand. It's weird to them that I'd be apart from Mark for Christmas.  But Mark will be doing the family obligation, and I would bring him with me (and Chase too) if I could.

I think I'm just going to duck out of what other people need from me this Christmas.  I'll go back to being the responsible wife and stepmom next Christmas.  (Or, maybe all three of us will say the hell with it and go to Hawaii.)  (It could happen.)

For the first time in ten years, I am going to spend Christmas Day alone, hiking delicate arch. 

A very bright and peaceful Solstice to everyone.