January 2, 2006
Monday

When my house was built in 1976 it stood on a strip of land that was bordered on the north, the south, and the west by open farmland. In fact, the cluster of houses that comprises my neighborhood is on land that the Reichert family farmed until the day they sold it to the developer. They retain only a small portion now. The rest is occupied by more houses, and three churches.

The stand of trees behind my house that separates the Church of God property from that of Word of Grace seems thinner this winter than it was last. This morning I could see traffic moving on Progress Avenue that I wasn’t aware of before. And most of what I saw were school buses.

When I was a teacher I didn’t like it when Christmas fell on a Sunday. Going back to school on January 2, when the chip and dip from the New Year’s Day football games was still on the table and the tinsel was still on the tree seemed disheartening.  Today is the holiday for most government offices and businesses, and I’m told there are daytime football games yet to be played.

I think if I were still in the classroom I wouldn’t be ready to go back to work, but in the life I have now I certainly am. I’ve done nothing since the end of November but get ready for and accomplish “the holidays” — parties given and attended, special foods prepared and eaten, old friends met for lunch or dinner. Everything else has been on hold. The last entry in my fiction notebook is dated October 10.

I want my ordinary life back. I’ve opened a new blog at my Silken Tent site. It’s “powered by WordPress.” When Dreamhost announced that they were offering WordPress to their customers I completely misunderstood what I’d be getting. I thought it would be “blogging for dummies,” but it’s not. All Dreamhost does is install it for you. (This is not insignificant. They make sure they have all the technical properties to run it successfully and will automatically update it when new versions are released.) It’s harder to use (for me, anyway) than Typepad, and the instructions for use and the documentation are (for me, anyway) nearly incomprehensible. But I have one post up for 2006. I’ll finish Holidailies here, but visit the new Markngs at your pleasure.

And happy Back to Normal, whether that means school, work, or just silence in the house now that everyone else is back.