Ever have one of those days (or a few) where your brain just doesn’t seem to want to work? Where your focus goes on vacation?

Yeah, that was me today.

That doesn’t mean I got nothing done. I did the things I had to. Put out the fires. Spent way too much time on Facebook. But it all got done with as little brainpower as possible.

I suppose I understand my brain’s checking out this week. It’s been a long, taxing month. Traveling over the holiday. Being sick as well. Starting my new position on the local Board of Education. My aunt dying. Traveling to her funeral. Coming home to the news a friend is very ill. The tenants in our rental house broke a water pipe.

It’s been a stressful month.

But I know how this works. The fuzziness of grief and shock will pass. The exhaustion of stress and illness will fade. And I will be able to think clearly again, work efficiently and find my creativity.

I will need to, because I have to turn in my YA manuscript rewrite to my editor in February.

Hmm, maybe this next month won’t be as stress-free as I thought!

What stress-busters do you use to get your brain back on track?

My Aunt Dolores passed away this week. While she had been in declining health for a few months, the end came rather abruptly. She leaves behind 6 children, 11 grandchildren, and 6 great-grands and counting. Also, she leaves behind my mother, her last remaining sibling.

My aunt was something of a grandmother figure to me. My Nana—her and my mother’s mom—died when I was only 4 years old. So I really have no memories of her. My aunt was 19 years older than my mother, almost a full generation, so the parallel worked out.

I remember spending time at her house in Norristown when I was young. I stayed there when my brother was born. It was there that I learned to love Skippy peanut butter, causing many a spat with my Jif-brand loving mother. My aunt’s house was large, given that she had 6 kids, and I loved exploring what to me seemed a huge, rambling building. It was full of interesting knick-knacks and objects, a few of which made their way back to my house (with her permission) and I still have today.

We did Thanksgiving there as well, so I have the memories of boisterous family feasts (which have only gotten larger and more boisterous as the years passed). As an introverted child with only one sibling, the energy of a large family was somewhat overwhelming, but the love and welcome and warmth could not be missed. My cousins inherited my aunt’s generous spirit, and they go out of their way to help and support each other and to contribute to the wider community. I want to be like them when I grow up.

I’ll be honest, my aunt kinda scared me when I was little. She seemed so stern and strict, but I guess when you’re raising 6 kids and your husband travels a great deal for work, you have to lay down the law or go crazy. As I got older and got to know her better, I learned of her wit, wisdom, and humor, and met the real woman behind the stern aunt.

My aunt could talk. And talk. And talk. You could be on the phone with her for 2 hours and only manage to say 5 words. For an introvert like me, she was a godsend. If you stood near her at a family gathering, you never had to say a word. I believe she inherited this superpower from my Nana, although I obviously do not know from personal experience.

All that talking, though, brought to the forefront another amazing ability: her memory. I have never known anyone who had such tremendous recall of people and events from decades ago. Granted, this often meant she talked to me about people I had no idea who they were, but I still found the stories of her life fascinating. And as I grew more interested in family history, her memory was often the key to figuring out people and events in the past. My mother was so much younger than my aunt that Aunt Dolores knew ancestors better and more personally, so she was often a valuable source of information.

My Aunt Dolores was a loquacious, vivacious, generous woman to whom family was everything. She faced her not always easy life with grace and strength, and nurtured a family I am proud to be a part of and who I see as an example of what a family should be. She was a woman of strong opinion, of courage, and of faith, and she will be missed by many.

My mother is now the last of her generation, and I cannot imagine how lonely that must feel. My aunt was a fixture in my life, my godmother as well, and I still have not processed that she is no longer sitting in her living room on Long Island, watching her late night TV shows and opining on the state of the world today. My aunt was 91, and she was content to go, but that does not make her loss any easier for those left behind.

We miss you and love you, Aunt Dolores.

Happy New Year to everyone out there! I sincerely hope that 2020 brings you all good things.

My own year is shaping up to be interesting. I was elected in November to the local school board, and I take office next week. I know I have much to learn, but I look forward to learning and helping our school thrive.

I also have some challenges on the writing front. This year I want to get my illustrated version of The Witch of Zal out. I also want to find homes for some of my other works. I have the first draft of The Witch of Zal’s sequel written, so I want to get to polishing that up, too.

I prefer to call them goals rather than resolutions. Psychological semantics, maybe, but I tend not to accomplish resolutions and usually accomplish my goals. Perhaps because when I think of them as goals I am more realistic and tend to choose goals that are mostly within my control. Resolutions I choose things I’m never going to achieve, even though I would like to—and I know this because my resolutions seemed to always be the same, which means I never actually accomplished them! So instead of setting myself up for failure, I am aiming for actual achievable targets.

I wish you success in 2020. I hope you find health, happiness, and satisfaction in this New Year.

The Christmas season is my favorite time of year. It’s not the gifts, it’s just something in the air. A joy, a residual magic that lingers from childhood.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite things to do was crawl in between the tree and our schrank and read by the lights of the tree. Secluded and bathed in the colored lights, it was a quiet time to bask in contentment.

An irony of the Christmas season is that while we wish peace on earth to everyone, we are often running around stressed, and peace is hard to find. As an adult, if we have a partner, we often juggle multiple family obligations, and if we are parents there’s a whole other level of Christmas crazy. If you are also a classic introvert, like me, the constant rounds of parties, dinners, and gatherings, while enjoyable, exhausts your inner resources.

So I hope this season you can find some peace, some time to relax and recharge.

I wish everyone peace and joy during this season and all year round. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!