My 2013 Christmas Letter

I’m not sending Christmas cards or holiday letters. Glorifying my life on Facebook all year long is exhausting, so I won’t go out of my way to pay for stamps to emphasize more of the same. How about we discuss what really happened instead?

The year started out with a bang, as my book came back from the editor with my first round of edits on New Year’s Eve. I spent the next three months oscillating between glee and panic, trying to decide why I’d bothered to write a book in the first place. Instead of jumping for joy when it was released in March, I cried.

Our youngest daughter, 5, qualified for kindergarten according to the testing, but was held in preschool by the school system to continue her speech therapy, which really pissed her off. She cried through T-ball and swimming lessons, so we enlisted her in the latchkey program again because it’s the only way we can get her out of the house. She spent a good part of the fall getting into trouble in preschool and the rest of the time talking incessantly at home. Yesterday, she told us, “This candy cane tastes like wrapper,” so at least we won’t have to worry about a college education for that one.

Our middle child, a 9 yr old son, had a pretty good year except for his recurrent fungal eye infection. He is in 4^th grade, and his grades are weighted according to some method that even I don’t understand, so it’s a minor miracle that he maintains a stellar GPA. He’s learned to sandbag the AR reading points system so he can attend all the parties without adjusting his goals to be more challenging for the following quarter, so I think I’ve already succeeded in raising him for corporate middle management. Oh, and last week, he mastered the splits – I don’t know if I should be proud or mortified.

Our oldest child, 11, has become a premature teenager thanks to the Disney channel. Luckily, she appreciates capitalism as much as the next kid and is happy to act responsibly if we offer enough reimbursement. She broke her finger over the summer, which kept her from competing in gymnastics this fall and gave her lots of extra time to sleep in on the weekends. She’s matured to the point that she does her homework and studying on her own without complaint and has a perfect GPA, which indicates to me that she’s old enough to watch her brother and sister when I need a few minutes of peace and quiet (and possibly inherited perfectionist tendencies, although I'm not sure from where).

My husband is still gainfully employed, probably due to his ability to keep his mouth shut. I’ll take credit for teaching him that skill. He traded the Jeep and got a new car, his choice, as a reward for tolerating me another year.

So here I sit. What do I do? Laundry. A shit load of laundry. And I write silly things like this while listening to a Barbie cat’s rendition of EMF’s Unbelievable that my 5 yr old has cranked up on the computer next to mine because it keeps me sane.

Wishing all of you a better 2014, because just when you think it can’t get worse, it always does.