I have of late—but wherefore I know...

Oh, let's be honest, Rosencrantz. I know wherefore one million percent.

It's January 853rd. 

I didn't even make that up. It's a known fact, at least in the Northern hemisphere: January lasts approximately 3-500 times longer than any other month.

This January has been going on for about eight years.

I don't care how the math adds up.

Which is why I did so poorly in Mr. Gupta's class in high school. (But it was Nicole's math that broke him.)

We went away for Christmas, as you know, and it was absolutely the right thing to do.

But we went the direction of MORE winter. Shorter, grey days. Less light. More darkness.

I'm not built for this.

I just read about this woman who spent 500 days in a cave 70 meters underground. On purpose. Voluntarily. 

This, like the dark void of outer space, is a nightmare scenario for me. It's not just math and engineering abilities that kept me from NASA or spelunking.

And I don't know if you're like this, but having been depressed before, I'm always wondering: am I depressed, or just sad?

Am I depressed, or is this grief?

I think I'm sad and grieving.

Not every minute of every day. But I cry a lot. But not, I think, an unreasonable amount.

Whatever that means.

January for me has been a month of self-care. And by that I don't mean scented baths and candles.

I mean self-protection.

One of the things that last year did for me that was positive was to impose limits on what I do.

Normally, I'd just pile things on, one after the other. Things I felt obligated to do, or things that sounded fun, or tasks that needed doing, but not critically this minute.

One after the other.

I meet the needs of a bunch of people. One fewer, now, but still.

You need me? OK. I'll do it. 

And now, when I can't, I just don't.

Whereas before, I'd push so I could, and I didn't recognize the cost.

Now I feel the cost. So I stop.

Since surgery, I can do one big thing, and then I'm tired. It could be a big physical thing, or a big emotional thing like an event.

We went to two Christmas parties, both of which I was happy to attend. I was so excited to see people I hadn't seen in actual years.

And then that was my limit. Maybe I'll go to three next year.

Anyway, in some cases, I can do the big thing, something that used to be totally normal for me, and for now it's too much.

I learned this returning to yoga. Ooh, I was so excited to be back to really challenging Saturday yoga.

No, I couldn't do all I could before. But I posted photos of getting back to side crow! Handstand! It felt so good. So good.

Cancer hadn't taken me down! Look where I was already!

And then, hand to god, I was incapacitated for five days. I didn't even go to regular yoga classes. I was too wiped out.

So now I have to be deliberate about where I put my energies and efforts. 

Physical and emotional.

Jordan has needed a lot of academic support, with this start to 9th grade. This translates to time and energy.

India hasn't needed support in the same way. But she's still raw about my mom.

On Christmas Day, I forced my family to walk from our Airbnb through Hyde Park to get to Westminster Abbey, where I wanted to attend evensong.

Nick had bought a Christmas cake, but honestly, that was it. Nobody wanted to go to a Christmas service, which I understood, because we don't have any kind of church tradition.

But this, this I really wanted to do. Even though initially my people were like, no than you. So I was going to go alone.

How many opportunities does one have to attend evensong at Westminster Abbey?

And then Nick said he wanted to go. So it became a family event, which is what I'd wanted from the get-go, but hadn't had the energy to fight for.

So we were walking through the park, nearing a duck pond. 

And I was getting sadder and sadder, because we used to always stop in London on our way home from whatever country we lived in. I have concrete memories of wearing hoodies in English summer, because we'd just come from Bangladesh and we were freezing in English summer, feeding the ducks in Hyde Park.

My dad loved London. We'd always go to shows. We'd shop. I was excited to take India to Topshop, which turns out to have closed! 

On a side bar, one summer of high school, my friend Claudia and I met up in New York (our dads took us, and we met at the airport), and flew to London together.

Our dads had organized for us to spend a week with friends of Claudia's family in London, on our way back to Delhi. I was 15 and she was 17, and this was insanely exciting.

Look how grown up and responsible we were!

We went to a midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. We ran into high school friends who were no longer living in Delhi, because that was the kind of thing we just took for granted. "Oh! You're here, too?" We went to Madame Tussaud's.

And we bought music tapes unavailable in India (Nik Kershaw, whose song "Wouldn't It Be Good" I love to this day.)

And we bought trendy, trendy clothing at Topshop. My gosh, I loved Topshop. And I know India would've as well.

So our last day, without enough cash to buy more clothing, we spent our last pounds on chocolate. Like down to the final pence.

All of it.

Her family friends had to give us money to take the bus to Heathrow.

Yes.

So anyway.

I have a lot of excellent London memories. It was just normal. It was on the way home.

"Home" ha. I didn't have home. But my parents did, and they referred to the US as home for us. So "home" one direction and home the other. Or maybe they should both be in quotes.

Anyway, right around the duck pond, India started to cry. This was an awful Christmas. She didn't want to be there.

She wanted to be home (because my kids do have a concrete sense of home as a physical place), having real Christmas, eating sticky buns and opening presents with Nana.

At which point all those tears I'd been sucking in came pouring out. I started to sob. Because really, that was what I wanted as well. 

So we stood there, hugging and crying in the thin winter light of London, surrounded by greenery.

And then we continued along, and got in a long line, and did get into Westminster Abbey, and it was glorious.

It was absolutely pouring the day we left England. "Bucketing down" is the phrase Fiona uses.

She'll exaggerate the Northern pronunciation for us, too. Like, booketing down. 

I love this.

Not to dwell on the weather, because it's the boringest small talk topic, but I'm kind of obsessed with it.

Our January has been relentlessly grim.

Cold, like actual coldcold, and dementor grey. 

I don't enjoy the cold, but it's the grey that sucks the joy and motivation out of me. I've got that freckly Irish skin that burns and wrinkles, but my gosh, I love the sun.

I mean, now I wear a hat and sunglasses and SPF and long sleeves. But I love the feel of sunshine. I love the quality of light. I love the heat.

I love getting into a hot car. Truly. That intense, confined heat, like a sauna, except in DC it's more like a steam room, which I don't enjoy as much but I'd take over being cold any day.

Except that I decided this year I'm going to try ice baths.

Nicole (who is back, thank goodness for like 8 million reasons) insists what I want is cryotherapy, because it's only three minutes.

I was worried about my silicone boobs but she said I could add a sports bra if I was worried. You have to cover your hands and feet to protect them. And men  have to cover their dangly bits, apparently. 

So I looked it up and this is accurate.

I was worried after my favorite NP told me that I couldn't ever use a heating pad on my torso, because I could super-heat my boobs but not know it, and severely burn myself inside.

But in the same way that it's different from a sauna, because I'd feel my whole body overheating, a whole body cooling is fine.

Also, the freezing point of silicone is much, much lower than the freezing point of my body, so I guess I'd be a block of ice before they froze?

Now I'm picturing my chest filled with two very large ice cubes. Which would be...awkward?

A friend told me that she really likes my stream-of-consciousness writing, and I feel lucky about that because, well, ha. Look where we are now.

I've had periods of my life where I was sad every minute of every day. Where I would sit at my desk at work and drip huge tears onto my keyboard, and sneak off to the bathroom to really cry.

Where I would go for runs in the evening because I couldn't cry while I was running, and I needed the fucking break from sitting on my floor sobbing.

And it's not like that. 

I have a lot of theories that have to do with nutrition and emotional regulation and I think these are accurate.

And I have joy here, and joy on the horizon. Yesterday I chopped salad vegetables for nearly two hours, and Nicole and I laughed the entire time.

It was an elaborate salad. I made ginger lime garlic dressing.

I won't bore you with the details because look how long this post is already, and I could totally be a food blogger because I like to tell my life stories, but I couldn't be a food blogger because I'm a fairly lame, indifferent cook.

But this was a great salad.

But Nicole is back because...

Next week Nick and I return to the UK because we've been invited to this fancy party, which was not only an honor but also an incredible opportunity to do something fun just the two of us.

Nicole will be the adult in charge while we're gone, which India has been excited about every day for the month we've had this plan.

And I've got this vintage Pierre Cardin dress, which I found on Marketplace and which my dear friend altered for me, because it fit but she wanted the line to be more flattering.

As soon as I get it back from the cleaners, I'll post about it, because it's truly fabulous.

This whole thing is made more exciting by the fact that while I could talk about clothes all day, and if I were wealthy, I'd dress almost exclusively in vintage Pucci, the fact is that I wear yoga clothes or sweats almost every day.

Yesterday I wore jeans, and I got compliments. My hair was also pretty clean, so that helped.

I think it's the whole contrast thing. 

January is always a hard month for me, and this one has weighed significantly more than prior Januaries. 

We fly the last day of the month, which turns out to be the 31st and not the 927th, and that will bring this January to an exciting close.

I've been waffling—new British word—so thanks for sticking with me. 

And I guess that's all I really have to say about that.