I wonder if I'm the only parent in the UK who had to wake her children up at 06:30 to open their presents? I was far too excited to wait, and after the eldest had an abortive attempt at waking us at 04:00, they all decided to stay asleep. Weird.
The Christmas dinner was a wonder; my cake turned out fabulously; there was an obligatory Boxing Day argument with my eldest sister; the children have piles of loot they can't possible appreciate (not like when I was a girl, many millennia ago) and the worst disaster was that I decided to try to heat the plates by putting them on the short dish-washer cycle, but had misjudged how long the short dishwasher cycle was. Worse things happen, and it didn't spoil anything, though it may be the first time I've stood around saying, 'Dinner'll be ready when the dishwasher's done. I'm sure it'll only be another minute or two', while hungry family stare at me as if they think I'm strange.
Before I can knuckle back down to any work I want to, there's a lot of clutter and toys to be found homes for, and a lot of fun still to be had with my family. I've been thinking of what I had hoped to achieve this year, and finding that I may not have hit all my targets, but that I've still had a more productive writing year than ever before. I've certainly been much more focussed on being a Writer (capital and all), and although the coming year might throw a few obstacles in the way of that aim, I'm determined to keep at it. It's that art of writing in shrunken, discrete time slots which I'm not very good at, but that I'm sure I can get better at with practice. It's so exciting to think of all that I have still to learn, and how much I might be able to close the gap between those elusive, perfect ideas and the bodged prose that ends up on the computer screen. How lovely to know: My book isn't the finished article, and nor am I. I have a hunch this journey might last a lifetime.
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