There are very few words that can relay just how painful this past year has been. Self-inflicted strife and heartache would touch the very tip of that iceberg but nothing to account for the number of times I felt my heart churning around in my gut and the times I sat laid in bed for hours longer than it should be legal, only to use a sick day because everything physically hurt based on a mental condition. I won’t miss the dull ache of the past twelve months and knowing that if one second, minute or phrase had been changed, if I had missed a train because of snow or if I had replied differently…my God…this year would have been far better than one of Soul Sucking Hell Fire and Doom.

2008 I will not miss you. You, wily bastard* shit head of perpetual disdain and sadness, go the fuck away.

And that’s the ‘family friendly’ version of what I’d like to say about this year. But it’s the end that counts…those last few days and weeks that prep you for the twelve months to come. The emails and notes of a different tune. The pep talks and ‘you can do it’ from 3,000 miles away. The difference between this year and the last is that while yes, I am in control of my actions but I’m not starting 2009 with dread, fear and this overwhelming guilt that bogs me down and forces me to live like I’m perpetually treading water. In the end, my legs aren’t tired, my arms aren’t sore and my head is above. This year, I won’t be gasping for air.

Here are my favorite posts of the past year. Posts that have made me smile and laugh, recoil and remember:

January: The 50MM Story

February: Filler, redux

March: Water into Wine

April: Pain and Understanding

May: La Madre

June: Fight and Flight

July: Just in time for vacation

August: What the good ones are made of

September: The rules of engagement

October: A lesson before 25

November: One day in November

December: There’s the tiniest sliver of hope at the end of this tunnel

*I borrowed that phrase from Metalia.

I think I might have more Johnnie Walker Red than I had originally thought as evidenced by my returning home and crying and emailing and drinking the Chenin Blanc that had exploded all over my freezer. Please note that crying, emailing and drinking are not three activities that should ever be done at the same time. It’s like mixing napalm and well, oxygen. Police are so upset about people drinking and driving well psychotherapists and close friends should send out warrants for the arrest for overdramatic 20 somethings with a proclivity to confess The Feelings at 11:39 PM while weeping over a large glass of wine.

Woe!

The Spirit has been in and out. Next week when I’m sitting at home for 12 glorious, God sent, Jesus kissed days with nothing to do but write, write and maybe write some more, I will tell you about Friday night and how Susan had to keep me from jumping off my balcony while had a house full of people.

Merry Christmas! Try the eggnog! Excuse me while I leap all of three stories to my death but what would actually be a broken hip!

There is no proper segue here except that I need a very long break. Not a week off of work where I go somewhere else and pretend to be thrilled about TSA giving me an anal probe but a week off where I sit and read and play with my new Hayden Harnett. Speaking of which – and an utter digression of where this post is headed – I bought two Hayden Harnett bags for myself for Christmas. I even had them gift wrapped with a gift note. The gift note: “Dear Heather: You rock. Don’t ever change. Love, Heather”. So you know there’s that: Even if I’m feeling unloved by the world at large at least I love me and that’s what really matters.

Anyway, while I’m home I’ll probably bake and practice making gluten free goodies (post on why I find myself blatantly lying about why I don’t eat gluten coming soon to a crapass blog near you!). In the meantime I will leave you with these:

Gluten free pumpkin cupcakes. I’ve been holding onto these bad boys for a month now waiting for the right time to release them on you because people are terrified by the no gluten thing. As if anything sans gluten will taste like chalk paste ground up with salt. These are quite delicious. And I’m not saying that because I put my blood, sweat and tears into them but because I was apprehensive and had resigned myself to defeat that I would just have to suffer in silence. I test out everything I bake on my coworkers before I give them to actual people. The feedback from these was a resounding, “Quit your job and bake”. So if things in politics don’t work out and President Obama doesn’t want me in his administration because of my facebook/twitter/blog/MySpace sex shots (I AM KIDDING) then I can always bake for a living.

Gluten-free Pumpkin Cupcakes (from Simply Recipes)

Method

Cupcakes

1 Preheat oven to 350°F, and place rack in the center of the oven.

2 Using an electric mixer, cream the butter, brown sugar, molasses and honey, until as light and fluffy as it will be, about 2-3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the pumpkin purée and vanilla and beat until incorporated.

3 In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and spices. Add the flour mixture and buttermilk alternately to the pumpkin batter, in three additions, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.

4 Add the pecans and raisins. Mix in by hand.

5 Set paper cupcake holders in a muffin tin. Spoon the batter into the cupcake paper cups, close to the top of the cups. Bake approximately 18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cool completely before frosting.

Frosting

6 Using an electric mixer, mix together cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add maple syrup and confectioners’ sugar and mix to combine. Once cupcakes have cooled, apply frosting.

Makes 16 cupcakes.

Below we have your basic sugar cookies but with a lemon glaze frosting because I had no patience to whip up vanilla frosting and think vanilla frosting is a product of the Devil. I did have powdered sugar and some lemons lying around so I made lemon glaze which made an ordinary sugar cookie taste like magic. If you’re ever looking to impress your coworkers or mother or parole officer; tell them that you made sugar cookies from scratch without the help of Pillsbury and they’ll all bow at your feet and tell you how fucking fantastic you really are.

Easy Sugar Cookies

1 Cup of sugar
1 cup of butter
3 tablespoons of milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 egg
3 cups of flour
1 1/2 teaspoons of Baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt

1. In large bowl, combine sugar, butter, milk, vanilla, and egg. Blend well. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup; level off. Add flour, baking powder and salt; mix well. Cover with plastic wrap; refrigerate for atleast 1 hour.
2. Heat oven to 400 f. On lightly floured surface, roll out 1/3 od dough at a time to 1/8-inch thickness. Keep remaining dough refrigerated. Cut with floured 2-inch cookie cutter. Place 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet,
3. Bake at 400 f for 5-9 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. Immediately remove from cookie sheet decorate as desired.

Serving size is one cookie with frosting…
Enjoy!

Number of Servings: 72

Frosting:

Whisk 1 ½ cups powdered sugar, two tablespoons lemon juice, and 1 ½ teaspoons lemon peel in small bowl. Frost.

And with that, have a very wonderful Holiday, listen to Carol of the Bells, drink eggnog spiked with four kinds of hard alcohol and I will see you all next week.

The Roommate (showing me new ornaments): What do you think of these? Aren’t they cool? How about these?

Me: Oh…those are fine. (goes back to clacking away on the keyboard)
You really get into Christmas don’t you?

The Roommate: Yes. I love Christmas. Don’t you?

Me: It’s fine.

The Roommate (mocking me with attitude and all): ‘It’s fine’. ‘Whatever’. ‘I mean I guess I’ll celebrate it if I HAVE TO’

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I knew there was something wrong when while rearranging my Netflix queue I opted for the second season of Big Love and Sleepers over Home Alone and The Santa Clause. Or maybe it was the way I became fake ill at the thought of another damn cookie. Or maybe it was when I started to call sugar cookies “Motherfucking cookies”. For who in right sound of mind and body looks at chocolate like it’s been infested with bird poop? Me! That’s who. While The Spirit of the season has made it’s way into the hearts and minds of all who surround me, it seems to have taken a hop, skip and jump right over me but landed squarely in my neighbor’s lap. It’s awkward and somewhat painful to watch everyone else embrace the joy of the season – even my Jewish brethren who listens to O, Holy Night as sung by Christina Augilera at top volume – and don their gay apparel while I channel my inner goth and wear studded jewelry. It isn’t that bad, but my god, never before have I found this season to be such a pain in the ass. A nuisance and feeling forced into cheer and red outfits and to eat cookies MADE PURELY OF SUGAR.

Tomorrow evening – that is if the weather cooperates – we are scheduled to have holiday festivities. I will make eggnog with more rum than egg. People will come in and bring a little cold air with them with hats and hair wet with snow. They’ll rub their hands together and stand near our fire and if they’re friends with me, they’ll be more than willing to double fist their eggnog with a goblet of wine. It is my hope that tomorrow puts a spark under my ass and gets me singing along to Carol of the Bells all high pitched and out of tune and shit. If not, well then, at least there will be presents next Thursday no matter what kind of piss poor mood I am in.

I’d end this with a hearty ‘Bah humbug’ but that’s too much of a cliché.

Have you ever noticed that going days and days on end of doing absolutely nothing that requires brain power tends to become physically draining? The only thing I’ve actually had to do for myself in roughly 10 days is remember to check in for my return flight from Oklahoma City, which was completed with aplomb. My next most difficult task was during my Holiday party when I had to convert from wine glass to ceramic mug just so I wouldn’t confuse my drink with others. Seriously, the sum of my life and decision making has been What type of iPod should I get and how many times is too many times to go to Sonic? That is all.

Christmas came and went sans fanfare and without a complete sensory blowout from way too much going on at once. I like to keep things very simple so that I can focus on just one thing whereas too much leaves me confused and panicked. I requested one thing; Snow tires. And unless snow tires fit into a Banana Republic box, I did not get them. Which is fine because I did get a tea stirring stick that holds loose tea but on the box it looks like some new fangled apparatus for toking on the reefer. In fact when I opened it, the first words out of my mouth to my mother were “My! How progressive you’ve become”.

I like it like this, when things are simple enough to be described as ‘good’ and no one asks 75 questions while trying to find the hidden meaning behind a one syllable answer. I like when things are just as they are.

I shall leave you with my favorite moment: My younger brother, G, first meeting my niece Melissa. He was holding her and she was doing that 5 month old I want to get down and stand thing by kicking him repeatedly in the stomach. So I sat there and watched G say “Oh you want to get down? Here you go”. So he set her down and decided that since she, at 5 months old, wanted to stand she could obviously do so without assistance because she apparently has the physically prowess of the average 16 month old. She immediately toppled over and spent the rest of the afternoon doing this baby sob thing that simultaneously broke my heart and made me laugh. When retelling this story to my mother she informed me that when I was three months old my father liked to stand me on the bed and then let me fall over. He would do this repeatedly as a fun little game. When my mother found out she flipped her shit and that was one of their first major fights over parenting. Apparently my mother was a little sensitive that her three month old was being tossed on a bed. When she told me it was like a little ‘Aha’ moment in my head. For suddenly the past act of my father tossing my three-month old tiny self on the bed explains a lot of things. Like I don’t know, half the content of this here blog.

I hate to be a downer but every time someone asks me how I am or how things are going I shrug my shoulders, sigh heavily, and say “It’s OK”. I sound like Eeyore and anyone who crosses my path half expects my tail to fall off or for me to keel over due to an extreme bout of ennui. I can’t even get into the spirit of the season without it all feeling extremely forced and obvious. I’ve baked cookies while listening to Ella Fitzgerald with a fire crackling in the background and yet I would look outside at the snow, the thing that signifies the loveliness that should come this time of year, and the only thing I wanted to do was beat myself in the head with a crowbar. Nothing says “Joy” like blunt force trauma.

I’ve actually kept most everything to myself – especially as of late – because I don’t want to be a bother and I’m boring and most people find whining to be abhorrent. So I stay silent. In general though I tend to be shy and quiet. Some call it aloof but I like to refer to it as observing my surroundings intently so that later I can write about all the drunk dumbshits within five miles. So my rather subdued behavior ends up being advantageous.What really ends up happening is that I keep it all inside, bottled up and under pressure. And much like a bottle of Brut, once the cork is popped, everything comes pouring out. Sometimes it’s messy and I end up with verbal diarrhea and tell my life story to some unsuspecting friend and other times I try to let a little out at a time so as not to frighten everyone away. And if you were wondering, several glasses of wine might cause things to spill out as well and suddenly I’m telling people about shit that happened in 1995 and apparently I am not over an incident involving my brother, a bike and a pool cue.

God willing, barring any ill winter and something I’ve been trying to keep from discussing due to jinxing it all but I just cannot hold it inside: I will be going to Oklahoma City for a brief vacation. Susan thinks that it is just to drink wine and bask in her presence when in reality so that I can unload all of the shit that has been plaguing me for months and months and months. Thankfully I’m being quite nice to her and writing everything out in list form; that way I know what I want to say and it will keep my thoughts in place. It will be a lovely way to spend the pre-Holiday: Me talking endlessly about myself, because I don’t get to do enough of that already and Susan sitting there possibly bored to death but oh so very happy that someone came to visit her in one of the reddest states in the country. For nothing says “Merry Christmas” like slowly killing the ones you love with loquaciousness.

For nothing says “we’re now going to string seven strands of lights and pretend to be happy, damn it” like a tall glass of cabernet sauvignon.

In biology we were taught a lesson on fermentation. While my classmates were all fascinated by the possibilities of leaving a cup of juice out to make their very own Tropicana orange juice flavored alcohol, I was wholly unimpressed. For me biology meant cell reproduction and the formation of humans which put me on track towards a successful career in obstetrics and gynecology or perhaps midwifery if my mother got her way. Sadly, that line of work involved something like 17 years of schooling and homework and I am not really a sit down in a classroom type of person.. Nor am I person who enjoys thinking in absolutes, which is what following my deep-rooted passion of delivering babies would entail. This is how I ended up majoring in four social sciences, because I hated the fact that three plus three must equal six. Why can’t we think about it for a bit and maybe have several different answers that could all be correct? Why can’t everything be answered via loads of bullshit?

I didn’t like alcohol and that was ok because I had ten Judy Blume books to see me through the hard times like my lacking breast tissue and poor wardrobe. In time I made up for the former while the latter is still a little on the pathetic side. Before I go on another tangent about my cleavage vs. wardrobe issue, I’ll continue with my story about how I disliked alcohol and imagine my surprise when I learned that eggnog, the most delectable thing in the history of Holiday treats, had alcohol in it. No one identified what the alcohol in egg nog was so I spent years assuming that someone would dump a vat of Coors Light into my creamy bowl of love thereby ruining it forever with the disgusting taste of crappy beer.

Blah blah blah, I got some sense and literacy and now extol the virtues of grapes in their fermented form and I could write a book on the million and one things that alcohol could and should be added to just to make it taste a little better. I could also write a book composed of the world’s longest run-on sentences. But once again, I digress.

Alcohol, yes? I drink it but after several years of being so ill I thought I was hanging precariously to the threads of my short lived life due to hangover, I stopped drinking hard alcohol unless it’s Ketel One or Grey Goose vodka. I stick to wine for the most part and as of late, I pour a glass, take a sip and 10 minutes later I’m drooling into my flannel sheets. During college I learned the hard way about mixing several types of alcohol. All I’m saying is tread lightly. Sipping is the way to go once you combine brandy, rum and peach brandy. Hell, smell it and you’ll run to the nearest church basement for an AA meeting. But never fear because it’s chock full of deliciousness and you won’t even notice that you’ve consumed three types of alcohol and 800 calories in roughly 45 seconds.

The recipe is courtesy of Sheryl at Papernapkin and was actually intended for a tree-trimming event that I ended up missing because I was too busy trying not to physically harm drivers on the New Jersey turnpike. This vat of eggnog will be the first in several Holiday themed recipes. Feel free to thank me later and I’ll link to whomever posted the recipes first so that you know who to bill after your stint at rehab. Yields…um…several mug fulls of nutmegy goodness.

Eggnog:

12 eggs, separated

2 cups sugar

1 pint brandy

1/2 pint light rum

1/2 pint peach brandy

3 pints whole milk

1 pint heavy cream

Nutmeg (optional)

Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until thick. Slowly stir in the brandy, rum, peach brandy, milk and cream. Refrigerate until thoroughly chilled and pour into a punch bowl. Beat egg whites until stiff, and fold ever so gently into the eggnog. If you want to, grate a little nutmeg on top. If you take this to a Christmas party people will fawn over you, and you will be the hit of the party. And if not, you won’t care because you will be having a lovely lovely time all by your own self.