Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity. –Henry Van Dyke

Greetings Dear Ones!

Well, it’s already noon on a Wednesday and I am doing what I do best this time of year (and most times of year as well): Procrastinating. I am Pro (i.e. “for, in favor of, in support of”) crastinating. Crastinating comes from the Latin combination of crass, tin, and ate. Which means instead of doing Worthy Work, I am instead distracted by making crass confections using tin, which I then eat. (I eat the decorations, not the tin.) (Oh hell, who am I kidding? I’m eating everything that isn’t nailed down…) It’s too soon to decorate (or eat) the bit of slain shrubbery that is relaxing in a bucket of sugar water in the garage, and too late to knit everyone a new pair of socks before midnight on Dec. 25th. I’m in that luminal space where I cannot find the Christmas cards I stashed away last January, thinking “damn it, now I’ll just have to send these next year…” and I refuse to buy more. Gone are the days when I would hand stamp them and send artful collages of my kids dressed up as Victorian carolers to all our friends and neighbors. My current idea of “decorating” the house means making sure the toilet lid is down. There are messes and projects all over the farm that need doing and fixing and tending but all I want to do is look out the windows at a dull sky trying to snow, and burp. Come to think of it, the sky does look like it needs a good burp too. It has a faintly constipated look.

Bitterly, I regret not being a different sort of person—like those joyous (IRRITATING) Pre-crastinators. They get things done for the giddy sake of Getting Things Done before the rush. They have their holiday socks all knitted by July. They celebrate Thanksgiving in August. I envy them their smugness and their bargains. It’s like how we Larks who rise early in the morning tend to feel about owls who work best at midnight but can’t function before lunch without mainlining coffee for two hours. We know there is an “us” and a “them.” And now, with shame, I realize I am one of the “them.” My horrible inner Elf on a Shelf is watching all the bad things I am doing and all the good things I am not. He’s going to tell Prudence. I’m on the Naughty List again.

It’s terribly easy to get resentful and start “shoulding” all over myself. I should get this done now; I should have done that yesterday; I should have done that weeks ago. Then my inner Nietzsche decides tragically that This is All Futile, God is Dead, and no one really deserves my efforts anyway—that I alone should consume all this cookie dough. “Resent” comes from that messy mix of Latin by way of French—F. resentir, from L. sentire “to feel”—to feel the need to eat cookies, to feel like one has had too many cookies, to feel like one now hates cookies and all the people who were supposed to get these miserable sugar-bomb “gifts” in the first place. The prefix re, I presume, means “again.” Yes, I have definitely felt this way before. Apparently the French have too.

One of the things working against me is Time. Moments are taking a very long time and weeks are flying by. Every time I look out the window, the sky is a completely different shade of day. It goes grey then navy like a senior citizen dressing for Bingo. Deadlines are speeding by in the shop and yet it seems like I will never, in this lifetime, ever get new tires on my car—the current ones have as much traction as boiled eggs. I’ve had an appointment scheduled for “three weeks hence” for at least six weeks now. In the shop, the entire “Nutcracker Season,” which used to take weeks for costumes and fittings, was condensed into minor alterations on one tutu for the Marzipan Fairy. We’re dashing through the snow to ski gear already.

I know for those grieving (and for those suffering the tyranny of the Elf on the Shelf) this time of year can last forever. Nights can be years, especially just before dawn. For students studying for exams, nights spent poring over textbooks pass faster than guitarist Nirvana Bista can play 400 chords in the key of D at 1600 beats per minute. Time makes its twists and turns and the same day, or night, expands or contracts to give those who don’t need it too much and those of us struggling to get six pairs of jeans and four down jackets altered by Friday not nearly enough.

Einstein introduced the idea that “time is relative.” That is that the rate at which we perceive time passing depends upon our frame of reference. (It also means that if we are spending time with certain relatives, things are going to take way longer…) I totally believe this. Doubters need only attend a jam session in an Irish pub to understand that banjo players just learning triplets, bodhran players, and certain enthusiastic audience members with a skinful of Guinness inside of them perceive time in radically different ways from the rest of the musicians.

Another aspect of this theory of relativity is that the faster we go, the more time is affected. The result is that all this seasonal rushing some people are doing is actually making time speed up for those of us who are Procrastinating and time slow down for those who are already wondering how many hours it is until Santa arrives. Time dilation describes “a difference of elapsed time between two events, as measured by observers that are either moving relative to each other, or differently, depending on their proximity to a gravitational mass.” Put differently, the cookies are not helping.

So! In the Holidaze spirit, with the best of intentions, I beg you. Please! Sit down, put your feet up, and have a warm mug of something soothing and cinnamon-ishy. You need to Stop Rushing so that those of us paralyzed by procrastination (and cookie dough) can get off our gravitational masses and get something done! You will give those of us who desperately need it, a little more Time.

If this blog seems shorter than usual, it’s working already. Thank you! Rest some more. You deserve a break. Enjoy the Hygge. Have a few carrots. They are way better than cookies—just ask the reindeer, who are due any minute now.

Enjoy the Waiting, Dear Ones. I love you sew much!

Yours aye,

Nancy