Hi, y’all, and Happy New Year! Thanks for checking in on me. It’s nice to be missed.
Since I’ve been back I’ve been lurking around on the boards, keeping up with people here and there, but suffice it to say that I have a LOT of catching up to do.
I have so much to report, and not much at all. We drove (13 hours) to Ga. on Wednesday before Christmas, arriving at my parents’ house around 11 p.m. The next two days were spend furiously shopping, and hanging out with my family, which was fun and relaxing. I am one of those extra-lucky people who have a family that doesn’t cause holiday stress, but takes it away. I absolutely adore them, they adore me, and we spend most of the time laughing and talking together. At 3 on Christmas morning, I finally collapsed into bed, having wrapped my last excess and stuffed S’s stocking.
Christmas day was special and more fun than ever. In my family, everyone has a stocking, and the stockings are full of useful but fun things like eye-soothing masks and bubble bath, as well as gags (S. got a bag of spare body parts [ears and the like] in his stocking, for example, and I got an office voodoo kit, reversible for male and female offenders). We do the stockings first, taking up to an hour and a half to unpack them and laugh and share and play with all the goodies while trying on any disguises (my BIL got a pack of mustaches, which were hilarious) and posing for photos. There’s a quick coffee/breakfast break, then on to the wrapped presents. By 2 p.m. we had almost finished opening presents. Then it was time for my sis and her H to go pick up H’s kids from their mother’s and so we had another 2 hours of opening presents with the kids. It was exhausting, but we were all so absolutely happy!
After two days of recovery and more hanging out with my parents and my sister’s family, S. and I dove up to the mountains (with my mom but in a separate car) to stay in my parents’ new house in the mountains, where we’d planned to stay a few days then drive back up to NYC to celebrate the New Year. Mom stayed two days and left us on Wednesday. S. and I went for a strenuous 8-mile (and climbing more than 2,000 ft of elevation) hike that day, and the weather was perfect. We were having such a good time, the house was so wonderful, and we were so comfortable that we decided to stay on together through NYE and drive back to NY on NYD.
Well, all this time, everything is wonderful, S. and I are close, he is having a great time with my family, we are loving and affectionate, and on Christmas night, after long pauses and waiting on my part (yes, I was fishing), he said ILY. In the mountains, we had a great time, antiques shopping, walking in the national forest behind the house, playing Scrabble up in the sunroom while looking at the sunset over the entire mountain range (the house has 360 degree views of the mountains), and cooking fabulous food and drinking from the case of wine we brought with us.
NYE day we spent driving around looking at houses and views, getting out to hike some, and then went to the closest supermarket (15 miles away) to shop for our NYE meal. We got home, took an hour to pack up our things (because we were leaving the next morning and didn’t want to spoil after-dinner by packing), then started cooking dinner. On the menu: Fresh linguini with porcini mushroom and fresh asparagus parmesan cream sauce, green salad with black olives, tomatoes, mushrooms, julienned carrots, shaved parmesan, and my famous lemon/French mustard/secret ingredient dressing, and Italian bread with rosemary. A close friend we stopped to visit on the way to the mtns had given us a limited-run bottle of Chianti (he is an expert Italian cook and aficionado of Italian wines), which we opened with our dinner, and we finished with a not-so-related dessert of rainbow sherbet, key lime cookies, and chilled Muscat. It was lovely.
So, we are having a romantic dinner, a lovely time, etc.,etc., and FIVE MINUTES BEFORE MIDNIGHT, S. decided he wants to turn on the TV and watch the ball drop in Times Square. I was mortified, and did not have the wherewithal to relax and go with it. I just cringed at the idea, and withdrew within myself, the whole time wondering what to do, because I was thinking “HOW UNROMANTIC” and yet didn’t want to say anything because I was afraid of ruining the evening. I gave a few lame hints that I didn’t really want to watch TV, but basically shut up, not knowing what else to do and not able to gather my game face. What happened next was worse than anything I could have said.
The house sits on a mountain between two valleys, and I was hoping that they’d have fireworks in either of the two, so I got up to go see, not wanting to watch TV. He just kept watching, commenting here and there, and because I had gone upstairs to get a better view, he called up “Two minutes!” I came down, and sat on the couch next to him, and when the countdown came and he looked at me I must have been wearing the most awful face, because his expression changed to disbelief and we sat there staring at each other as midnight came. About 10 seconds went by with both of us not knowing what to do, and I finally managed to choke out, “Aren’t you going to kiss me?” We kissed, hugged very tightly, and then all hell broke loose. There was no fighting, just disbelief and utter disappointment on both of our parts.
The worst part was, there was no undoing it once it happened. We couldn’t even speak to each other – it was this deafening silence and complete paralysis for both of us. It was as though someone had come in right at midnight as we were celebrating and said that something truly awful had happened. We finally managed to talk, and I explained what was going on for me, and he explained what was going on for him, and said how awful he felt, that he didn’t see it coming, and all the preparation, all the cooking, all the beauty and loveliness of the day had evaporated as he turned to me, expecting to see a happy face, and as he put it, “I watched you withdrawing, drawing away from me, and I was dumbfounded.”
There were many more conversations in the car on the way back up, and we’ve been back a week now, but I’ll save those till later. We’re OK, just strained and still somewhat awkward. We’ll get through it, and for now we’re just busy and that’s OK because we need some time apart.
I know, I deserve some big whacks. But if I could erase those five minutes and have them to do all over again, I’d be praying for some kind of divine intervention. The weird thing is, neither of us has a TV, and we’re pretty anti-TV, and so the idea of a TV ringing in our new year didn’t seem congruous with either or our philosophies… whatever. I’m not going to try to analyze it right now.
I’ll get around to other threads in due time – for now I’m just trying to keep my head above water, and to get my goals into writing for the new year.
