3:00 am

Once again, it happened this morning. At 3:00 am, my eyes popped open and my brain refused to be settled.

Does this happen to you? Do you wake up with the continuous loop play in your brain of a tune from Just Dance 2? Or if you've been playing Freecell or working Sudoku puzzles, is your brain solving them over and over all night? Or do you find yourself working through, over and over, the puzzles of your day--whether it's a calculus problem or an economics paper or the language of a deposition you've recently read or some other work-related issue?

I've been patting myself on the back lately, congratulating myself for getting off of the sleep aides I'd been taking for years. And most of the time, I fall asleep at a reasonable time and awake refreshed at the time I need to rise in order to prepare for another day at work. But more times than I want to remember of late, my eyes pop open at 3:00 am and after tossing and turning for an hour, I rise, make a cup of tea, lay down by the fireplace, and listen to the chaos churning away in my mind.

And hope to drop off to sleep before it is too close to the time to get up, because I'll be useless if I fall back asleep 30 minutes before the alarm goes off.

What is this? What do you do if you live with this irritation?

If you have a solution for me, is it too late to add it to my list of resolutions?

more or less

2011 resolutions: more or less

More:

Just Dance
Education
Sharing feelings


Less:

Pounds on my delicate frame
Calculus (none, actually)
Accumulation of stuff


These seem like reasonable, doable, broad generalizations that may not put too much pressure on me to accomplish. Perfect for resolutions.

Right then. Onward.

the photos

courtesy Shi's facebook page

you will never guess what we did tonight

Hockey. With Stu, Audrey, and Jack. Tonight. Braved the blizzard outside. Ate pizza and breadsticks and soda and cotton candy. Cheered and oohed and aahed and clapped. And laughed.

We're going back again soon. I will be posting any pictures I find online from Stu.

It was a great outing.

And some of us are going to the ballet on Friday.

a whole lotta dog

We's had a whole lotta dog around these parts the past week.






Gus


Jo


Georgia


Georgia likes to play soccer. She's the star goalie.




Team discussion.




She's going home today. We'll miss her.
But we will be able to get back to regular ball catching.

one thing i forgot to mention

Jr made breakfast on Christmas morn. For all of us. French toast and sausage and bacon and tea and juice.

And cleaned up after himself.

Sweet boy.

there's more

The older I get, the more I value being together with family on holidays.

Perhaps I took that for granted a bit, because as a child, I always saw both sets of grandparents and numerous cousins and aunts and uncles every Christmas. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't see my brothers and their families for Christmas. And after joining Jack's family, I expected I would spend every Christmas eve with his parents and siblings and generation upon generation of family.

But sometimes, plans don't go the way you expect them to go. Families expand and change and those new family groups want part of the time I expected would be spent with me. I understand that change--mostly because I know how much I value time with family, so how could I expect others to not feel the same way about their family who is also my family?

But then there are other reasons why families don't spend time together. Hurt feelings, perceived slights, even significant wrongs--all expand and swell until somebody says too much or goes too far and then traditions end.

I don't have the answers for mending damaged relationships. I only know that the older I get, the more I value time with family.

Somehow, I didn't get any photos of Stu's and Shi's family on Christmas, so I snagged the shots on this post from Shi's facebook page. I could write pages and pages about how adorable Audrey and Ellie looked in their new Christmas jammies and robes--how delightful they were, as always, during their visit. I should have taken pictures of Ellie immediately snuggling up on her princess couch and Audrey oohing delightedly over her princess snow globe.

But mostly, the thing I will remember about this Christmas is that Stu and Shi and Audrey and Ellie were all together this year, whether at this house or mine or elsewhere--they were together. Nobody was in the hospital.

This will be a most wonderful memory.