one small corner of the universe

I’ve spent the last hour reading end-of-2008 reflections on a few of my favorite blogs, and I would love to tell you that these brilliant minds inspired a reflection of my own, but they did not. I’m not sure if it’s the fact that I am at work on New Year’s Eve for the first time ever, or something else, something I can’t quite put my finger on, but this day is passing in a meaningless manner, and with it is passing my nostalgia about the end of one year and the start of another. Even now I keep pausing between words, turning to look out my office window at the trees bending in the wind, trying to call up some feeling about the whole passage of time thing, but I can’t. This scares me a little. I mean, it’s not as though 2008 went by completely without incident. I started a new job, and Obama was elected, and my daughter was a continuous source of joy and wonder and challenge, and I could go on, but the bottom line is that I don’t feel inspired to reflect on any of those things. I just don’t feel inspired, period.

There is always the chance that what I believe to be my old pal SAD (seasonal affective disorder) is advancing, creeping outside my door looking for a chance to slip in uninvited and take up temporary residence in my mind. But I’m choosing to push that possibility out of the way for now. I’m choosing to blame something else for my lack of inspiration. I’m choosing to blame The Wedding.

I’m not sure I’ve even mentioned The Wedding here, so I should probably explain. In January (or, if you want to feel my freakout in a more realistic way, 13 DAYS), my mother, my daughter, and I will catch a plane at the crack of dawn and fly to Cabo san Lucas, Mexico for my cousin’s wedding. Mia is the flower girl (and really, if you’ve ever tried to get my daughter to do something she’s not interested in doing, you understand how that alone is the source of enough anxiety to encourage heavy drinking). I am supposedly doing a “reading” during the ceremony, the text of which I am supposed to be writing. I also agreed to make the jewelry for the bridesmaids (all 7 of them), as well as create a DVD of the bride’s life set to music for the rehearsal dinner. I am behind on all of these projects (and by behind you should understand me to mean “have not even started”). You’ll recall my recent post about being a single draft writer, and how I “single draft” everything in my life? Right, then.

 The truth is, those three unfinished tasks are the least of my worries. I have a whole simmering vat of anxiety about a number of other issues related in some way to The Wedding:

• After talking with my aunt, the Mother of the Bride, I don’t think the dress I bought over the summer  is dressy enough. Apparently this is not a “beach wedding” after all, but a fancy wedding that happens to be taking place ON THE BEACH. Well, damn.
• Also after talking with The Mother of the Bride, I get the feeling Mia’s dress is likewise not dressy enough. Perhaps the possible alternate dress she sent me in the mail was a clue? Well, SHIT.
• AND we have to wear shoes during the wedding. On the beach. And flip-flops are not shoes in this scenario. Well, F…you know.
• I am afraid my daughter is going to be awake and on the edge the entire time we are in Mexico, and since I’m not taking her crib on this trip, there will be nowhere for me to put her when she is tantruming, and I will be tempted to take her to a Mexican jail for Time Out.
• I am afraid of navigating the airport (and the airplanes!) with my sleep-refused, crabby offspring. I wonder if anyone has ever locked a screaming toddler in an airplane bathroom….
• There are a few other things I’m nervous about that I don’t want to discuss here in detail, but I will say they involve being completely out of my comfort zone, and I am in need of comfort these days.

If you are reading this and thinking, “Wah, wah, poor you, you have to go to Mexico, quit your bitching,” I want you to go Google Image “The Finger,” and then I want you to imagine that it’s MY hand you see in the picture on your screen. If, on the other hand, you’re reading this and you have some words of experiential advice  about any of the above (or not experiential, I’m not picky), please leave it in a comment or email it to me, because, and I don’t know if I’m making myself clear, so I’ll spell it out for you, I AM LOSING MY GRIP OVER HERE.

I’m certainly not shallow enough to believe that this funk I’m in can be blamed completely on The Wedding. Part of me is even mildly excited about the trip as a whole, and I’m sure I’ll be a little more chill after I finish the pre-wedding tasks (and buy a new damn dress), but the truth is, The Wedding is a sort of metaphoric road block–a giant orange cone in a veil planted squarely between me and 2009. When I think of the advent of a new year, I imagine The Wedding behind me, completed, sized down and made manageable in pictures and anecdotes. And that’s why I’m ignoring 2009 for the time being. Chinese New Year starts on January 26th, so I think I’ll take a page out of that calendar this year. And even though I’ll creep into my daughter’s room and kiss her tiny cheek at midnight, and even though I’ll probably toast the turning of the clock, and even though I’ll self-correct every time I write “2008” for the next few weeks, I’m going to give myself a break and a few extra weeks, because I have a lot of expectations for 2009, and I don’t want it to think I’m not taking it seriously.