There’s a meme floating around to see what the first sentence bloggers posted each month. I’m feeling like being a lazy blogger today, so I thought I’d see what mine said about my year. Then I discovered they were, with a couple of exceptions, boring. Apparently I can’t be that lazy, so I also offer you a haiku for each sentence. At least it offers variety….

January: “We rounded out the year 2005 with a quartet of movies over two days.”

Four movies were watched
during the last waning days
of the dying year.

February: “Parents in Williamson County, Tennessee, have been asked to sign an anonymous petition demanding that the classic To Kill a Mockingbird be removed.”

A classic challenged —
more parents unwilling to
let their children grow.

March: “February was a quiet book-buying month, coming on the heels as it did of the heavy book acquisitions of January (and frankly, the month was filled with Winter and Knitting Olympics — who has time to hit the bookstores properly?).”

Knitting booties and
watching sports on tv cuts
down on book buying.

April: “Happy April Fool’s Day!”

On the first day of
April would you expect a
different first line?

May: “The medals plaza has been disassembled.”

Eventually
even the lazy knitter
must finish her work.

June: “Karen took me bra shopping on Friday (this is how good a friend she is; she didn’t force me to stand under fluorescent lights in my underwear by myself).”

This sentence stands out
as being the only one
complete on its own.

July: “Several more books were finished during the second fortnight of June (the first half of the month’s reading is here), including one I acquired at the Orange County Airport.”

Vacations are a
great way to blow through a pile
of books to be read.

August: “Rudi and I are heading north on Amtrak in the morning to join friends Karen and Michael, Erica, and Erik (and maybe old college pal Mike) for An Evening with Harry, Carrie, and Garp.”

Who would miss out on
spending a sultry evening
with cool authors? Who?!

September: “The rain and wind have finally kicked in.”

Blustery weather
is a real treat. Too bad it
all came in month nine.

October: “I don’t normally root against the Mets, but I’d like to see them lose today.”

Please don’t ever ask
me to type those words again.
They pained me to say.

November: “Today marks Day 1 of NaNoWriMo.”

Thirty-five pages
is nothing to sniff at, but
just wait ’til next year.

December: “How long are candy canes good for?”

The general thought
was that candy canes may
outlast us all. Huh!

I’ve had a nice weekend in Connecticut in a pre-Christmas celebration with my brother, who is in from L.A., my uncle’s family, who will be in Oregon for Christmas, my folks, and my grandmother.

It was a nice visit and now I head back to D.C. to finish up some work, some shopping, and some baking (plus writing those aforementioned cards). I’m hoping to get lots done during the week so that next weekend can be spent visiting friends and my dad’s side of the family and doing relaxed Christmas-related activities. (That’s not my normal m.o. so only time will tell how successful I’ll be….)

Yarn-related projects progress. People who read the blog will benefit from my productivity, so the rest of you will just have to wait for photos until after the recipients open their presents.

If you haven’t received a Christmas/New Year/Hannukah/Solstice card from me yet and were expecting one, well, it’s because they’ve not yet been sent out.

But rest assured that the only thing that’s holding me up from sending them on their way to you is writing the cards and addressing the envelopes.

I want the card to mean something — and to be able to spend a few minutes thinking of you as I’m writing it. We don’t use an auto-pen or e-signature here in the Burrow.

So chalk it up to the fact that I have not had adequate time to spend thinking about you in a meaningful way — and that I will … soon.

In the meantime, accept my generic good wishes and love and appreciation and wishes for a happy holiday season for you and yours.

Three beautiful things from the last week:

1. Toddlers from a local nursery school are at the corner when I surface from the Metro this morning. I am not thinking clearly at first, but then realize their day care providers must have brought them down so they could see the whimsical Christmas window displays Macy’s has created for the season. I switch direction so I can witness their first peek.

2. Holiday decorations are up in the neighborhoods and I enjoy looking at them as I wander around the city doing my shopping. Many decorations are tasteful and restrained and totally fit the income bracket in which their owners reside. The more fun ones are ones that don’t. Two single-family fancy houses in upper Georgetown had lights that blink in time to tinny music. Another, around the corner from my house, is a 13-bedroom mansion (with carriage house) that went on the market last year for $8 million. They boast a plastic lit tree and manger scene in their front driveway. I love that Christmas sanctions breaking out of what society expects of us to celebrate in the ways that make us happiest.

3. The warm weather has contributed to the delusion that I have plenty of time until Christmas. But coming from New England, I refuse to look a gift horse in the mouth, and have been spending plenty of time outdoors. Tuesday, after my dental appointment, I stopped to have lunch at a local restaurant and convinced them to serve me outside. My waitress, who admittedly was wearing a flimsy short-sleeved outfit, wasn’t pleased with my decision, but I found it hard not to bask in the late morning sun like a cat.

I’m celebrating Christmas with a 13-year-old cousin on Saturday and I’m going to give her a knitting kit. (I want Gramma to show her how to knit while they’re together so that she has that memory, so it’s largely irrelevant to me that she might prefer an iTunes gift certificate in the here and now.)

Anyone have a suggestion for an easy first project for a young teen? A scarf might seem kind of intimidating… An iPod cozy? A headband that she could knit flat and just seam up the back? Any other ideas?

The work meeting is over. I will be able to return to the office tomorrow knowing that the participants generally were happy with the things that were within my control to make good. Unfortunately, I also will be returning to a number of things that I put on hold that really ought not to have been. Oh well. I’ll work hard to clear them off my desk this week.

Except on Tuesday. I have a dentist appointment in the morning, so I’ve just booked the whole day off as a sick day. Going to doctors and dentists always makes me feel pretty queasy, so it’s really not much of a stretch. Plus, I haven’t come close to using up my sick days this year (I even worked through that nasty bout of strep I had this summer), so I’m not going to feel bad about it.

I am looking forward to sleeping in until 8 a.m. tomorrow. What excitement!