Holiday interlude *edited to add pictures*

Merry Christmas, dear readers!

So much, of so little note, has happened since we last spoke. There have been birthdays! holidays! museum trips! family visiting! present purchasing! purchase regretting! present opening! There have been tantrums large and small, mostly from strung-out children, but also a few adults (okay, ME). Remarkably, the worst of the Christmas season has passed without any major family snarking. We are all still on speaking terms. The season has been good to us and ours. Dearly beloved people have come and gone, leaving the Melospiza household lonelier but less chaotic.

M and I, like the kids, had to make do with partially fulfilled wishes this season--we still have no kitchen, but on December 23 we got lights and power in the front half of our house and we quickly moved into Christmas Mode, hauling out the boxes of ornaments and nostalgia, stringing up lights, taking photos. We cleaned the trash out of the fireplace, drove nails into the 2x4 fireplace frame, and hung our stockings with care between the ShopVac and the table saw. We regifted some of our Christmas cookies to Santa and brought out rugs and pillows and camp chairs. We had a right jolly old Christmas morning. Then yesterday we took it all down again, in the hopes that the builders would come today as promised (as of a quarter to noon, no dice--our builders are like the bad boyfriend, the one who never calls and never quite gives you his full attention).

However, I am always telling the kids that unfulfilled desires build character. (THAT'S what you call this pain and resentment swelling within my head!) Really, I guess, it's how we respond to unfulfilled desires that build character, or perhaps that response is how our character reveals itself. Anyhow, my character, or that of my household, is less gracious and unflappable than I could wish.

Hmm. I sense a resolution brewing.