I am NOT a Humbug This Year!

I must confess that I used to be kind of a Humbug with Christmas (Hate the snow, the decorations, most of the music) though I've always LOVED giving gifts to my friends and family.

From 2009, back when my mom died, on, the holidays were even harder for me. My mom LOVED Christmas. She'd decorate the whole house, sing the songs, make the cookies, and believed in Santa Clause until her last breath.

The first Christmas without her, I was such a wreck I don't even remember it. The year after that, I was determined to be strong for my family's sake and at least pretend to like Christmas and celebrate it in her honor. Still it took several years before I could listen to a Christmas song without bursting into tears.

I've managed to fend off the holiday depression by staying busy and with two big families, that's actually pretty easy.

But something changed this year. Well, several somethings, but what's most astounding is this:

I'm totally in the Christmas spirit this year! I'm seriously not faking it, you guys!

I think part of it is because I got my Christmas shopping done early and in an efficient manner. Also I made some epic awesome gifts for a few special people in my life. I will be blogging about these after Christmas. :D

Also, it hasn't been snowing much here. (Which is really bad for my area environmentally, but face it, I HATE snow.)

Or maybe it's because I got to spend more time with my Grandma... who's almost as giddy about the holiday as my mom was.

And maybe it's because I've received so much joy from my friends and family this year.

Either way, it feels good. I was even at a store and smiling when the song "Mr. Ginch" was playing.

Holy wow, I actually LIKE that song.

But don't worry you guys, I will still ALWAYS be #TeamHalloween first and foremost.

Anyway, just thought I'd share this fascinating epiphany and I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas/ Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza/ Merry Yule, etc.

"Sisterhood of the Travelling Uterus": a viewpoint on gender misunderstandings.

For my last semester in college I am taking Literary Analysis and Survey of American Literature. I'm also taking zoology and humanities, but we can talk about those later.

Anyway, both of my English professors are best friends and totally in cahoots with each other. This was once more proven last week when first, in American Lit, we read "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It's a short story about a Victorian woman who believed she was sick, (she'd just had a baby) but her husband, who was a doctor and a man, thus right about everything, told her she was fine.

However, he decided to rent an old country house and kept her locked up in isolation in a dilapidated nursery with bars on the windows and chains on the walls and really messed up wallpaper. Naturally, this did not end well. I highly recommend reading it.

An illustration for the tale. Her hair is down. Clearly she has been overtaken by madness.

The story was inspired by the author's experience with a doctor who had prescribed what was called "the rest cure" for her "hysteria." She was to limit any intellectual stimulation, have few conversations with others and under no circumstances, pick up a book or a pen for the rest of her life. I almost cried when I read that.

Anyway, "hysteria" was believed to be a woman's malady. The term was first coined by Plato who believed the condition was caused by a woman's uterus wandering through her body. The cure was for her to have a man to put it back in place either physically (sex) or simply by controlling her. The ancient Greeks were freakin' terrified of women. I learned this in my last literature class.

Anyway, so next I went to my Literary Analysis class and the instructor had written "Sisterhood of the Travelling Uterus" on the discussion part of the board. So credit for the blog title is given to the lovely professor Michaud. ::waves::

Our current topic was psychoanalysis and we discussed Freudian psychology concerning hysteria, which turned out not to be any different from either Plato's or Victorian theories. We also discussed absentee mother issues in "King Lear" and other depressing things that happen from obsessions with erroneous concepts of gender roles.

Anyway, it occurred to me that the crazy beliefs regarding "hysteria" and other aspects of a woman's psyche were definitely still in place during the regency era, which is when my upcoming paranormal romance series takes place.

Seriously, think about this. From appx. 300 B.C.E. to the twentieth century, people believed that a woman's uterus wandered through her body and a man needed to control her to keep it in check. No wonder HEAs are rare in real life.

How will crazysauce concepts like this affect historical romance characters?       

An Author's Ka-Tet.

I'm rereading Stephen King's DARK TOWER series again. (Hence my slacking on the blog) and I've been thinking a lot about the concept of a "Ka-tet." "Ka" is the word for "fate" so, (Quoted from Wikipedia):   "A ka-tet is a group of beings brought together by ka. "We are ka-tet. We are one from many," says Roland Deschain on the day before the Battle of Algul Siento.^[1] Ka-tet is the belief that a group of people can be tied together by fate, or ka. It is said that a group has shared "khef" or the water of life. Sometimes the symbol of water is used literally, as in a ritual Roland and his ka-tet performs the night before the battle of Algul Siento. In the seventh novel, Susannah Dean, who ends up understanding ka maybe more than Roland himself, comes to the understanding that in simple terms, "ka-tet" means family."

I'm all down with this. I firmly believe that some people are meant to become part of each other's lives. And when my crit group formed, our skills and accomplishments sky-rocketed. We are definitely a ka-tet. :)

Who's your ka-tet? Or have you found them yet?