a bad balance

dear all,

i feel somehow in need of retrospecting 2010.

i have to go back to a year earlier.

last december i summarized 2009.

putting all the good and bad, all the events, experiences, influences into consideration i found a somehow happy balance.

why do i write about it now?

why do i contemplate 2009, why do i do it now, a few hours before the beginning of a party that is supposed to bid farewell to 2010?

-

at the first glance 2010, as a year seems to be one of the bad ones.

i know my vision is blurred by the unfortunate accident of early october...

-

you know, i still can't get some of my memories i gathered that evening out of my head.

i can still recall hearing the crackling of my bones inside my skull, and can still re-live the fear i felt when i first dared to look into the mirror.

it was the inevitable turn of events that petrified me the most.

i felt that because of the unfortunate fall, my face will never look the same again.

i felt i lost something.

something that used to be me.

i know that 2 of my 4 front teeth were of irregular shape and i didn't particularly liked the way they looked.

but the moment i met my new face on the mirror, blood mixed with saliva drooling out of my mouth, splashing everywhere in the handwash basin of the bathroom - i knew this was a moment that had a 'before side' and an 'after side' and the two sides would never meet.

-

perhaps i am wrong.

deep down i am well aware that it is just the physical that was changed and i am still the same.

-

this year i had another unexpectedly bitter experience.

i had a highschool friend who got married.

this is great news, isn't it?

this friend has been suffering from the lack of a permanent relationship in his last 15 or so years. i knew he was suffering. he shared some of his struggles.

our lives don't really cross each other's often...

we mean a lot to each other, or so i thought...
for in march he got married and forgot to invite me. all right, it was an intimate ceremony. not a big deal.
he forgot to mention to me that he was to get married.
i had to get the information from his online diary, which makes me feel abandoned. left out.
perhaps i overestimated the importance of our friendship. i mean he was important to me, but there was not a balance. i was not as important for him as he was for me.
-
and here comes a twist.
since i felt neglected i was unable to feel positive towards his new-found happyness.
and i miss it.
i think it has been rude of me to not radiate some positive thoughts, virtual or otherwise towards him and, see - it's still difficult for me to say it, for his partner, a young and lively lady (i met her in person, because he did brought her to us in the summer).
and i think my rudeness deserves some punishment.
-
just lately i have been thinking about this 'need for punishment' type of thing is kind of streching my mental health.
just lately i have been gathering that there are other areas of my life.
i'm in a kind of struggle, and right now as i'm typing my heart aches.
perhaps i'm taking it too far on me, and perhaps i also should stop whining and self-pitying.
-
working outside in the cold helps, playing with my kids helps, writing helps, and the list is endless.
perhaps this relationship should have ended anyway.
we might have been lovers, but as a married, and happily married woman with two kids this was not a realistic option for me, even with an exceptionally understanding husband :)
and yes, i talked about it with my husband.
-
and now, some positive words about 2010.
to get any, i have to look through the photographs i made this year.
-
to be continued in 2011 :)

under the snow

dear all,

i did finish NaNo, i do have that manuscript that is still being revised.

revision will surely take weeks or event months.

i have sent chapter 2 for a friend to revise and right now i am revising chapter 3.

some say we have to get to a certain distance from the text, some argue the writer should be still 'in the flow'.

i am now kind of inbetween.

-
our choir has performed a modern oratorium last week.
when we started to learn the notes in May we had doubts about the overall quality of the piece, but things started to look for the better once we started to do rehearsals with the instruments. we don't usually perform with violinists, cellists, trumpets and the like, but it did help us to appreciate the piece more.
we had a full house on both evenings, and the audience seemed to have liked it.
-

we are still preparing our kids to their high-school admittance exams. aged 14 on 30th december, my son is in the 8th grade, so he is to go into a 4-year school, while my daughter, aged 11 next march will enter an 8-year high school - provided they succeed at the tests.

the ratio of admittance is 1/4-1/5, which means that only every fourth or fifth kid applying can enter the school.

there are written and oral exams in January from Maths, Hungarian and English (for my son).

it's not only the points they gather at exams that count, but the marks they got at school.

i am worried because of the lack of effort from my kids' part. my husband keeps telling me the i worry too much, my kids sense my worries and think that since 'there is someone to worry' about high school, 'i (the kid) don't have to worry about it at all'.

-

but it's the turn of the light, the length of the day will slowly increase, as Wass Albert has put it in 'The Funtinel witch', just by a matter of good will each day'

-

it's time to make those gingerbread men :) I hope to post photos one day, but now one cable is missing, the one that connects the camera with the computer.

-

whew

i won, i did finish on time, i exceeded 50,000 words.

cheers, wine and whatnot.

-

yet, why do i have this little feeling creeping at the back of my mind that revision will take longer time and will be more difficult than the writing itself?

-

while writing, i soothed my nerves with sayings like: 'just go ahead', and 'it's good to have a good basis so you have at least something to revise', but now, after a week's rest i think i have to return and revise.

-