Whoosh, the time flies. The holidays are finally past us and what a crazy packed busy time they were, with all the usual Thanksgiving-Black Turkey-Hanukkah-Christmas stuff combined with end-of-year kid school stuff, Josh writing final papers for his classes, and Dickens Fair taking up all the weekends. We did things a lot more last-minute and off-the-cuff this year, which is not my preferred management style (I am much more a “plan all the things and do them before deadline” kinda gal), but I will note that everything worked out pretty well and all the things that had to get done got done, though we did abandon several “optional” holiday activities and projects. However, I was so overwhelmed and exhausted by Doing All The Things that the day after Dickens Fair ended (a couple of days before Christmas), I was sick. That sick carried through until the first day or two of our family vacation at Stinson, so mostly all I did at Stinson was rest and read and hang out (and spend hours flogging Eli through his essay writing for high school applications). Didn’t write, didn’t do the usual end-of-year/new year’s intention blog, didn’t journal, didn’t make any progress on my backlog of photo albums. But considering how hectic life had been, resting and rejuvenating seemed like a good idea and I’m better for it now.
So here I am, seven days into the new year, four days after getting back from Stinson and one day after the kids’ school started up again, finally ready to do the now-traditional Parentheticals blog entries for the end-of-year-wrapup and beginning of year intention setting. I figure I might as well do them now (“Late But Great” is, after all, our family motto) before the year gets too much farther away from me and we go hurtling off on January’s rollercoaster of all the new things that need doing. We are still somewhat in a quiet time now, at least compared to the previous couple of months, so it seems a good time for reflection.
So how’d 2014 go? Thanks for asking. Overall it was a full and generally happy year, and since last year’s intention was “find satisfaction”, let me now declare that I think that it was also a very satisfying one, and I am generally happy with the way I went after satisfying experiences and enjoyed them while I was in them. I think I will always struggle with my impulses to make others happy at the expense of my own time, energy and projects, but this past year I was at least aware of the need to prioritize my own satisfaction, and sometimes even successfully did so.
And now, the month-by-month review for posterity, at least those things that I can remember from this far away. I really wasn’t journaling in 2014, so I’m mostly just looking back at my raucously multi-colored, ever-crammed calendar and trying to reconstruct activities, if not feelings.
January 2014 was fairly quiet, as most Januarys are, though with a looming pressure of getting everything prepared for the upcoming big event in February: Eli’s Bar Mitzvah. We worked on his drash and our parent blessing, shopped for a suit, met with the Rabbi and Cantor, sent out invitations, made a slideshow, made afterparty arrangements, and all sorts of other things. There was some low-key birthday celebration in there too, and the usual reflection on my cancerversary.
February 2014 was full of Bar Mitzvah, and what a wonderful day it was. We had lots of family and friends come witness Eli (and his co-Bar Mitzvah Ben Robinow) lead the services, give a drash, and chant from the Torah and Haftorah. Despite some typical teen angst and last-minute prep, Eli did an incredible job and we were really, really proud. Afterwards we had an intimate dinner party at Left Bank with family and a few friends, at which we showed the slideshow, had toasts from and to Eli, and generally celebrated the newly minted man who was now responsible for his own moral choices.
Unfortunately, February also included a health crisis for my independent elderly friend Marian, who broke her hip and had to have a hip replacement surgery and then weeks of recuperation at a care facility. I wound up being the point person during her hospital stay and visited her almost every day both at the hospital and at the care facility, and then helped her transition back home. The silver lining in all of that was that we became much closer friends, and she recovered well and is mostly back to living her independent life.
In March, I went to FOGcon and had a writer’s retreat afterwards at Stinson Beach, celebrated Purim with silly dressup (Isaac played along this year, with a hilarious costume he called “Intergender Power Pufferfish Girl”), and celebrated a variety of birthdays. There was also a lot of prep time spent getting the kids ready for their big competitions for Odyssey of the Mind (both kids were on teams this year), and I once again ran a big art fundraiser for our elementary school.
In April we went to the Odyssey competitions and happily celebrated with Marian at her 90th birthday party (made extra sweet by her recovery from the hip surgery). Anji and I got all dressed up and went to the Opulent Temple White Party in the city, we celebrated Passover, and Josh and the kids and I went to Chico to visit my brother and family. I helped put together and hang an art exhibit at a local gallery for our third grade class, and there was also a pretty cool lunar eclipse in there somewhere.
May was chock full of Freak Flag Flying: Anji and I went to the How Weird Street Fair (outer space themed because it was held on Star Wars Day—May the Fourth), I once again had a big booth at the Maker Faire where I had a blast making freak flags with hundreds of people, and I went back to WisCon (the feminist speculative fiction convention in Wisconsin), where I had fun flying my authorial freak flag. I also started co-planning an Indiegogo campaign with my friend Kim to help my publisher, Hadley Rille Books, stay alive and solvent.
June is when things revved up, as they often do. There were birthday parties, end-of-school-year parties (goodbye, 3rd and 7th grade!), and a Giants game. There was more work on and the launching of the Hadley Rille Indiegogo campaign. My nephew-in-all-but-name Jonah graduated from High School, and we went to the Pirate Festival in Vallejo. But most memorable of all, in honor of the aforementioned Bar Mitzvah, we went on a family trip with my parents to Israel, where we spent two weeks touring and experiencing all we could. It was truly a life-changing, incredible trip that we will always remember.
In July, we came back from Israel (literally days before all the rockets started flying and the newest conflict in Gaza broke out) and celebrated the 4th of July with the usual Marin County Fair and fireworks. The kids went to all kinds of fun summer camps while Josh taught summer school classes. We had a fun day at the Rivertown Revival in honor of Angelique’s bachelorette party, and I took Jonah to go get his Driver’s License. We also, sadly, had some car shenanigans (including a minor fender-bender), but they got cleared up satisfactorily. My grandma came to visit from Florida (so there was a lot of family dinner and get together time), and we started prepping for Burning Man. (Luckily there was no huge construction project on our plates this year!)
August was busy and full too. The kids went off to sleepaway camp and Josh and I made a quick trip to Ashland to see some Shakespeare and have belated anniversary time together. I helped Mom set up and show her baskets at the San Francisco ACC show at Fort Mason. Josh and Bert ran a week of gaming camp at our house, the kids started school again (4th and 8th grade) and then, of course, there was Burning Man, which was pink and awesome and full of love. One downer note that started in August and would continue through the next few months is that we discovered that both Josh and I had been the victims of identity theft, and we had to wind up dealing with hours of bureaucratic hassle because of it.
In September we planned and then celebrated my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary at Ondine’s Restaurant in Sausalito, which was a beautiful evening. We celebrated the Jewish High Holidays and created a new neighborhood tradition: the “pop-up café” (where we serve coffee and pastries to fellow parents and neighbors in front of our house while waiting for the bus on Fridays). We also celebrated and helped make the day happen for our dear friends Ian and Angelique’s wedding.
In October Isaac ran for School Treasurer (and won!) and we finished out the High Holidays. I volunteered to help with our synagogue’s bone marrow testing drive, because as a Hodgkin’s survivor I couldn’t donate but I certainly could encourage others to. We went as a family (including my mom!) to the SF Burning Man Decompression event, and went without the kids to two different lovely weddings: one at Stern Grove for our friends Alessandro and Abby, and one “Take 2” wedding for our friends Daphne and Keith. I finally got back to hosting my “Swap ‘n Shuffle” women’s clothing swap (and got a killer leather jacket for freeeeeee!) And then of course there was Halloween with all its accompanying hoo-ha (including a fun time at Ghost Ship again this year with Anji and a couple other girlfriends). We also started visiting Open Houses and doing shadow tours of various high school options for Eli.
November was the start of an increasingly hectic couple of months, starting with workshops and build for and eventually performances at the Great Dickens Christmas Fair (Eli and I were part of the Paddy West School of Seamanship again this year, and I got to model corsets at Dark Garden for the first time, which was lots of fun). I also took a chunk of time off to go out to Washington D.C. for the World Fantasy Convention (and a tiny bit of touristing). We got to see yet another fabulous Cirque du Soleil show (Kurious: Cabinet of Curiosities), which was so full of steampunky French goodness that we decided to take the kids as a Hanukkah present. Towards the end of the month we did the whole two-days-of-Thanksgiving-with-family hoo ha (which, especially when combined with a three day weekend of Dickens Fair, was a lot of hoo ha). There was also more visiting of high schools and much discussion about where to apply, which finally narrowed down to two choices.
December was really full. There was Dickens Fair, there was Hanukkah, there was our Black Turkey holiday party, there was Christmas. There was also a huge winter storm that we at first pooh-poohed until our giant backyard elm tree fell over....but luckily (oh so luckily) it fell away from the house and “only” crushed our back fence and planter boxes. We worked on high school applications, frantically shopped for and wrapped presents, and ate a whole lot of fabulous food with some of our favorite people. Unfortunately, after a triumphant final weekend of Dickens Fair and a looooong night of breaking down our stage areas at the Cow Palace, I got sick...which lasted all the way through Christmas, and then Josh got sick too. We muddled through Christmas (and actually had a very nice time hanging out with Josh’s parents and grandparents, despite not feeling awesome). But the day after Christmas we caved and went to Urgent Care and got antibiotics, just in time to feel better to go out to Stinson with my parents and brother and family for a week of much needed rest and relaxation. We exchanged presents and ate outrageous meals mostly prepared by Josh (5 Ducks 5 Ways became an instant classic), we shopped in Pt. Reyes and walked on the beach and hung out with friends for New Year’s. It was over all too soon, though, as all good vacations are, and now we are already a week into the New Year and (mostly) back to the usual routines of school and work.
It was a full year, and a satisfying one. I am looking forward to 2015 and all that it will bring us. Here’s hoping it is even better and more satisfying than 2014!