I'm writing this while taking Antivert, so if things seem a bit funky or sdrawkcab or something, blame it on that. For the first time since I was probably seven or so, I have an ear infection. I woke up in the night with the symptoms that were always so obvious in the kids when they were small--feeling like screeching from the pain shooting from my ear down through my jaw and into my neck and feeling better when I was sitting up or better yet, walking around, which unfortunately isn't what I want to be doing at 3:30 a.m. I still managed to have a good day on the tennis court, and then I got my antibiotic and hoped to reduce my dependence on Motrin before the New Year's Eve party that night.

Then I did something kind of dumb. I was through with day 2 of the antibiotic (cursing myself for being so principled with my children and making them try all sorts of homeopathic sugar balls and dropping garlic oil all down their faces--all I wanted was a quick fix NOW!), so I thought, hey, I'll just get out my handy syringe and hose out my ear in hopes of releasing that not-popped, can't-hear feeling. By the time I was done, I was so dizzy that I staggered into the bedroom and fell right onto the floor next to the bed! When I tried to get up, the room was spinning. I thought it would get better if I just let it wear off, like a bad game of ring around the rosy, but it didn't. It just got worse. Hours later, I was finally stabilized and could settle down enough to watch a movie, He's Just Not That Into You, which wasn't at all what I expected, but was timely and really enjoyable nonetheless. When I woke up this morning, I was afraid--afraid to take a shower because I thought the relaxation of it would send me back into paroxysms of faintness and vertigo, afraid to walk too quickly, afraid to bend down. There have been some very dicey moments today. I managed to shower, run some errands, go to the fish store and add yet more drama to our Tank Saga. But then I could not focus, felt like I was ineluctably moving to the left (there must be symbolism in this), and like if I took my full attention off staying upright and keeping my eyes in just one place for even a second that I would find myself lying flat on my back on the ground somewhere. I managed to pop into Walgreen's to buy some Dimetapp, hoping a decongestant of some kind would release some of my ear pressure, and the peripheral sight of so much cold medicine and the excess visual sensory input about put me over the edge.

And so the new year begins with a trip to the urgent care doctor to get something to help me stop the world from spinning (there must be some symbolism in this). And now I sit here writing and watching Charlotte's Web and being thankful for the things we take for granted, things like a stable viewpoint, everything in its rightful place, a sense of one's true self.

And it wouldn't be a year in our house without some drama at the fish tank. As a recap, we have three fish now--a striped tang, a tomato clown, and a hot pink pseudochromis. The kings of the tank, however, are Nem, our giant anemone, Mr. Halloween, our completely regenerated, better-than-ever-before sea urchin, our yellow polyps, who have spawned two frags of babies, and our xenia, which waves madly and reproduces with reckless abandon. Oh, and Shrimpy and the Purple Mushrooms (they're kind of a band...). The inverts love us. The fish, well, not so much. So today we went out to replenish our supply of hermit crabs and snails, since our cleaning crew is more of a skeleton crew these days. We also have a rather positive coralline algae bloom and a less positive cyanobacteria issue. Like idiots, we came home today with an exceptionally beautiful little fish, a blue and yellow banded angel. In under four hours, this poor thing had been bullied until he was upside down in a corner, clinging to life. Actually, to tell the truth, I don't think he was clinging to life. I think he was praying for his death to come swiftly and deliver him from the evil that is the Clendenon Reef. The striped tang hounded him and rounded him up like a snapping border collie if he so much as poked a fin from his rocky corner. he tried to snuggle sideways against a turbo snail and that odd little mini-tank filter thingy hanging near the top of our aquarium. I convinced Kerry that the kind thing to do was not to see whether they managed to work out these turf issues, but to get him out while he had perhaps a 5% or a 2% chance of survival, rather than let him meet his inevitable fate in the next hour here while we watched (what a poignant juxtaposition it would have been, however, to the Battle of Agincourt going on on the screen right next to the tank as Henry the Fifth urged his men on to St. Crispin's Day glory). I think that as I write a brain coral is on its way home in exchange for the shell-shocked angel.

Poignant is probably the best word for this holiday season, which is so rapidly coming to a close. I am in a place in my life where I am longing for a sense of belonging, of being part of something bigger, of a family that is full of love and comfort. The truth is, I belong to a family that is no longer in its prime, and it's a bittersweet place to be. Maybe I'll have some wisdom or beneficial experience to share when my peers find themselves at this place in a few decades, but it's not an experience that seems appropriate for right now. We should be in the good times, the family years. Should is such a useless word.

For Christmas this year, Kerry's parents came for two days. I can't say how much this meant to all of us. There's a primal part of all of us that wants to be close to our family, especially during holidays. We are a difficult and often unloveable lot, this nuclear family of mine. We're loud, we might have germs, we have a lot of people who don't always have a lot of self-control. We're also, I am ashamed to admit, terrible guests and terrible hosts. We can lose sight of the details and the big stuff, and I'm embarrassed by it even as I watch myself commit the inhospitable deeds. So to have his parents take that chance on us and be here, well, it was really special. The kids loved having grandparents around when they were opening gifts.

Kerry's grandmother, who is now 98 and a half years old, has pneumonia. I'm worried about her. We should be going to see her, but between Kerry's cold that is acting more like bronchitis and my vertigo, it probably is best that we not challenge her immune system even more. I wish that she could have been with us on Christmas. Often she has come up and has sometimes stayed in our house, even when Kerry's parents have stayed in a hotel, so something is a bit absent when she isn't here with her Christmas bell on and her red and green knit hat with the big puffball on top. Kerry's father has, unfortunately, aged a great deal this year, and he's no longer able to do many of the things he used to. I feel a bit helpless when I think that they could use some extra help, maybe some bright spots on their life, but we're just that wee bit too far to be that. We're at the distance where, unfortunately, we're more burden if we come than we are respite--more guests than angels. They have recently moved into a senior apartment, and I think that the environment there probably provides more care and service than we could ever hope to.

Then in the middle of the week I took the kids to see my Dad and his friend Patsy. They live in a gorgeous area of Southwest Virginia. I used to think of Pulaski as the middle of nowhere, as a backwoods. My first year at Virginia Tech someone living in a friend's dorm insisted that we had to go on this little roadtrip to see a hick town where you could look from the street right into the three-celled jail. But now I love the remoteness of it, the incredible natural beauty. The houses in my Dad's neighborhood are small and rather unimpressive. In fact, some of them are even falling down--literally have a roof that has caved in and fallen onto the front porch--and still have people in them. But there's a simplicity there, a removal from the rat race that is undeniably alluring. It's not a small town feel outside of a metro area with amenities. It's just out there.

I have a terrible time every time I visit Roanoke. Almost six years later, I should probably be content where I am, but there's a very big part of me that feels that people are just plain lucky who get to live their lives in such a lovely place. Mountain views arise no matter where you're going, even to the humble CVS or Wal-Mart. There is tradition and charm and quaintness. And most of all, it's masterable. You can know what's going on in the area, where everything is, have a sense of ownership, of knowing, and of being a part of a cohesive community, not just many sub-communities. So yes, salaries are not very competitive there, and there are fewer places to work, but for a day or two there, having the middle class American dream of the ample house with the most current amenities and just the right activities for the kids seemed kind of hollow. Perhaps the authenticity of being crammed into a too-small house on a too-busy road would get old quickly and we'd long for our flamenco classes and competitive diving, but it sure was calling out my name this week.

We had a very nice visit with my Dad. Again, I feel like we're pretty horrible guests, even as I was thinking that I'd like to come up again soon and stay for a week, perhaps when the weather is nicer, and get to share some of the places that were most special to me when I was in college and graduate school. It was bitterly cold--under 20 degrees. But snow was still on the ground, and my Dad has a good hill in his backyard that stops before you are plummeted into an icy stream. Ollie was able to use his BB gun for the first time, and they spent a lot of time putting BBs in a mayonnaise bottle and some Coke cans at point blank range. We were not sure whether it was okay to be shooting within the town limits, but guess what? The neighbors came out and brought their guns, and we had a genuine SW Virginia moment, complete with shooting out the windows of a broken truck cab lying in a backyard. My Dad built a room on stilts for his trains a couple of years ago, so the boys spent some time checking out his setup, and Frances is scheming about how we're going to landscape his layout. Right now it's rather bare bones--he's mostly interested in the trains themselves, not in developing a complete countryside. I was thinking that if he's open to it, it might be fun to have him send pictures and we could gather materials to dress the place up some and spent a few days in the spring working there.

As always, with aging parents or grandparents, there are the business moments. A big reason my Dad wanted to see me is that he wanted to give me his will and advance medical directives. I know this is all important, but it seems whenever we get together with family there's a lot of reminder of mortality in the middle of whatever we do. Sometimes it's the poem in a birthday card from Kerry's Grandmother that talks about how the recipient of the card is so wonderful and full of promise and how This Old Critter is About to Shrivel Up and Crawl In Her Grave, and Let it Be Soon. Or someone handing back to us the pictures of children we had given on past holidays or family mementos that hung so faithfully on the walls of their homes, and now were packing them into our van to bring them here. Our house tends to feel full of the furniture or things of our family, but not so often their bodies or souls. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the warm fuzzy moments could last all the time and there were not the Reality moments?

I've been joking all day today that this is the Face the Music season. The Reality season. All that magic holiday stuff is packed up in boxes (or still sitting in the front yard cold and wet and now looking like a lot of work to take down), and the store shelves seem kind of bare because everything has been put on clearance and moved out to get ready for...something. We were in Ukrop's today (right around the time I was going to fall down from the spinning), and the bakery was just depleted. The kids and Kerry were looking for something yummy to eat, and I had to acknowledge that all the fullness and sweetness and endless offerings of the Christmas season had given way to the day after a couple of days of holidays, when we've moved on to eating to live instead of living to eat, at least until everyone returns to their regularly scheduled lives on Monday.

I really miss my camera. Really, really miss it. I still have my little camera. And I have my new mini HD camcorder, which I'm having fun with. But I miss my good camera that I could really play with. We got a call from the Chesterfield County police a week or so ago saying that they had found a camera, and might it be ours (um, check the serial number we gave you?). But it appeared to have pictures of two little girls, Disney World. Not us. My goal for this coming year is to start documenting our life better, to be on top of things with the camera. And to try to be better about being in touch with people and being our best with them. I'd like to make this blog a better chronicle of what our life is really like, and to have it be something that we could use to keep in touch with the people who might care about us. Many people I know use their blogs to stay in contact with family and friends and to share a bit of themselves when they can't be close or can't explain in other ways what it is that they do when we aren't our magical holiday selves, and I've been afraid to do that with the people who really know me. I'm embarrassed a lot of the time, embarrassed about how non picture-worthy our lives often are, and a bit too aware that to make it more presentable and crisper might not be very genuine or would be a bit deceptive and would I be able to live with myself doing that? So who knows, maybe we actually will become those better selves that I want to photograph and write about. Wouldn't be such a bad resolution, would it?