1:17 AM

I am suddenly over-committed for the end of January. Naturally, I must procrastinate.

I have nothing particularly interesting to tell. I have not made a great use of the break; I'm struggling through "The Monsters of Templeton," hoping to finish it before I head home to visit the family on Christmas day. The annual spate of bad holiday TV has been on, and so I can't even claim to have watched much of that.

I have spent the week taking small drives - long ones lead to things like me screaming in my car and flipping grandmothers the finger (honestly, I'd feel bad about it if they were even close to being good drivers around here). I have committed to eating every cookie I am given, and this is fortunate as two of my neighbors seem to have entered a cookie-making war. I have made great strides at organizing the vault that is my room. It now looks less like a bunker after a bombing. Still, the break seems wasted so far.

There is a paper to be put together, a faculty research presentation to be drummed up, and syllabi that need to come together.

Words are failing me. I've been trying to write a letter - now there's a second to be written - and they refuse to come together, to echo even a little what I'm trying to say. How many new ways to say "thinking of you" can there be before they sound hollow and forced?

My dog is sleeping in the chair, and I feel guilty that I have to put him in the kennel while I head home. My flight is on Christmas day - anyone lingering around the Detroit airport: I'll be the bored one with the Mac and the attitude. I'll likely be starving. Cookies will, in defiance of my cookie-war attempts at appeasement, be more than welcome. My parents are stressing because my crazy Republican uncle is coming to visit over the holidays. Fights can be expected at hour four. This year they decided they didn't want to do gifts, which helps me a little but doesn't make the holidays feel any better, really. For oh so many reasons, I'm less excited about heading home than I feel like I should be.

The wind outside is picking up. The apartment is a galleon in a storm, creaking as it sails along. But it does sail. Any moment now the phone will ring. The message it brings - even before the voice on the other end speaks - will be that joy will find you, whether you believe it or not, whether you are hidden or snowed under or in the midst of loss or whatever. Any moment now, the song will come on the radio that makes you sing a different tune.

The time will come.