This year we made a conscious effort to curtail our traditional cookie baking, since neither my sister nor I have workplaces to share them with and even our family gatherings are immediate members only, but we still had a ton of fun (or at least I did), and we're already halfway through eating them. Maybe for others eating is the best thing, but I love the whole tradition: Christmas music on the stereo, spending the night at my aunt's (one night when we're busy is no problem), and with my recent forays into baking much, MUCH more than I ever have, applying the new techniques to old recipes was fun for me as well.

More than ever I'm trying to enjoy the little things since I'm not obsessing over when I can get back to my apartment and start drinking, or address that problem at work that I came up with a new idea for, or being consumed by the dysfunction of my workplace and angry at the callous way we're treated and expected to say "Thank you sir, may I have another?"

*sigh* Ok, so I obviously still get angry when I think of my previous job. It's why I haven't even tried to ask for it back, even though I have an open invitation. I just don't think I could plunge myself into that situation and not self-destruct again.

Back to the little things, we went to the cemetery where my grandparents and aunt and uncle are buried to place Christmas crosses on the graves, which normally I could never have done traveling from NYC. I can participate in life here in a very different way. I think it's the suburban paradigm that has been missing from my life since I graduated high school and it's good to know it's still here if I choose this route.