A Girl With a Sword

put the lights on the tree!

We have a tree in our house! Took long enough to get it here, though. First, the Christmas tree farm we were looking for wasn't there. Then we stopped at a roadside place and they were nice and friendly people who lived in trailers like gypsies. They tied the tree to our car and we went to Target and World Market to get stuff to put on it. Sandra had lots of ornaments already, but I didn't have any. I got a Indian man and woman:

(the man)

a dragon:

(the dragon)

and a little bird. It's like a fairy tale! So then we brought the tree home and went to put the stand on it and it didn't fit! This tree is about 7.5 feet tall, and the trunk is about 6in in diameter at the bottom. So Sandra went to look for another stand while I stayed with the tree in the parking garage downstairs. We wanted to put the stand on down there so we didn't get pine needles everywhere. But after Sandra called to tell me her car had broken down in the Target parking lot and she was waiting for the tow truck I got the tree off the car and took it upstairs. Big tree, little girl. It was crazy. Then I went to pick up Sandra from Target and we finally got to set up the poor tied up Christmas tree. It was like a picture of bondage in our living room and then we impaled it with those screws in the Christmas tree stand "This reminds us of Jesus," I told Sandra, "which is what Christmas is about."

But now it is beautiful:

(glorified Christmas tree)

And we are listening to this French Christmas CD that Sandra has that reminds me of the old 1950's Italian music. Sappy, but in a foreign language and Christmassy, so it's all okay. It's called Petit Papa Noel.

keeping the cold wind away

Yay! Christmas! This year is so much better than last year, when I was listening to Belle and Sebastian at this time and wanting to give it all up. Now I am happy, but tired. I took a nap today and it was one of those naps in the late cloudy afternoon where bed is the coziest thing ever and Sufjan is singing Christmas songs in the next room and all the people are outside making noise so I don't feel all alone (I hate napping in quiet, it's too scary, it's like everyone else might have died while I was napping and I didn't know). But then I dragged myself back up and I've been reading about metaphor and trying to construct a handout for a presentation I am giving on Friday at the bar, at noon! Oh what crazy lives we of linguistics lead. The handout is about sound emission verbs, so I won't bore you with the details (William).

So Thanksgiving break was warm in front of the fireplace again, and educational in ASL (we learned to say useful things like "airplane" "tractor" "Mexico" and "India"). On Saturday night, right before I drove back to Carolina my prof wrote me and suggested I put off the applications I was doing and plan on working on my thesis for longer, staying for another year, and going away after that (We had just been watching Star Wars and Will was like "Harvest is when I need you the most. Only one more season. You can go to the Academy next year."). That way I'll have more stuff to put on my CV and everyone can write me more informative recommendation letters and life will be great. This was exactly what I've been wanting to do, but I wasn't sure how important it was for me to finish up here and be off to another program, and I didn't want to seem like I couldn't take the thesis stress, so I hadn't said anything. Thank goodness my prof said it for me. So I'll be in Columbia another year and I'm so happy, it's like life has all gotten calm and wide open and I'm not down to my last few months here. Which felt like my last few months of life as I know it. I really hate moving. It's like breaking up, even if you're not in love anymore it's what you're used to, dammit, and if you leave it's never going to be the same. Ugh, sorry, being depressing. So life is good and I don't have to think about buying winter clothes for at least another year.

I give up

how am I supposed to communicate with other people when I can't even communicate with myself? I've been going back through notes I've written to myself on thesis research and data description and this is just a mess of random thoughts and ideas, also words, where do these words come from? At one point I use the word "soundy" how am I supposed to know what that means?? And why are some things in bold and some aren't? I just need to stop using my computer, I type everything up in five different files (different things in each file) and then forget where they are. I spent a half an hour today looking for an excel document that I only half remembered creating. Also, lately I am finding the date too much to pay attention to. I debated on Sunday trying to figure out whether or not it was veteran's day and then decided that it was too much effort and I would just trust that it was veteran's day based on NPR and the sermon, I figured it was either the 10th, 11th, or 12th of November, and within two days was close enough for me. Half the time I don't even know what day of the week it is (which is what happens when you have a four-day week and Thursday is the new Friday). Okay, now I will go back to my timeless world of soundy-ness.