Broke

I'm all done with my Christmas break, which I guess I would classify as being successful. My flight to DC was only delayed 45 minutes, a miracle when people were spending days on the floors of airports as snow and ice whipped through most of the country, and I spent a lot of time reading, including finishing the damn D.H. Lawrence book I started and then had to finish because I'd gotten too far to just walk away. Everything was peaceful until Dec. 23, when my sister came home and generally caused a lot of angst, and then I got back to DFW without any flight delays and without getting charged for extra weight on my suitcase. So glad that ticket clerk was too busy with another passenger to pay attention to the scale!

I like breaks. They're gratifying. Sure, vacation is nice, but sometimes I just want time off where I don't really do a lot and most of my time is spent on a couch. That's a good break. Traveling to new places or cities often requires stress, the stress of being someplace new, of anxiety, the stress of being excited and overextending yourself, doing more in three or four days than most people do in an entire month. A break just requires showing up, that's all.

I did so some things--I went in to school with my mother, who's an elementary school music teacher, the day after I arrived and made photocopies for her and helped tidy up her classroom in preparation for winter break. I briefly went into work with my father, who will be retiring from the Air Force soon, and met all of the people he works with and had to really, really keep ahold of my curiosity since he works in an office where they put classified documents in paper sacks to be destroyed and then write "SECRET" on them. Seriously, so tempting. I saw Liz and Pat, who I saw briefly in San Francisco during their wedding weekend but was able to spend more time with in DC, where they actually live, and get cupcakes at the same time. I went to the Newseum, which I'll get into on a later post, and indulged myself in some journalistic dorkiness. I got to sift through a bunch of boxes of my childhood stuff in my parents' basement, setting aside stuffed animals and books to be donated and throwing away all my CD cases, now that they're all loaded on my computer and the discs are in a giant book. Remember buying a new CD and how difficult they were to open, with all the little stickers, and then flipping through the booklet to see lyrics or photos or credits and shout-outs to mothers and others who helped the band in some way?

I've also gotten over my shame for this one, but I read the first book in the Twilight series. My mother had read the first two, and she said they were entertaining enough, so I found a copy at the secondhand book store and read it. It was entertaining. It was like candy. It's good for a short while, and then you feel the need to have something with more substance. I have the second one in my suitcase to read soon . . . that's why my luggage is always so close to the weight limit (or over) when I fly home. I fill half of my big suitcase with books, take them home and switch them out with other books, since most of mine are still with my parents. Then I fly home with switched-out books plus all the books I've bought. If real paper-and-stiching books weren't so gratifying, I'd totally get onto the whole e-book thing just for portability.

I flew back on Saturday night and then had to go to a surprise party thing for one of Dan's brothers, who's getting deployed to Iraq in February. It was fairly awkward, and then last night I saw his family again because they were having a late birthday celebration for Dan, whose real birthday was on the day of the surprise party (and therefore generally ignored). That was also fairly awkward. I find myself thinking that even one day when I'm married, I may still want to spend breaks on my parents' couch, reading books and watching reruns.