Sherri Cornelius

We all try to hide our ugliness on the web, where it will undoubtedly linger for thousands, if not millions, of years. One errant photo will come back to haunt us, or perhaps our mainframe-dwelling descendants.

We pose:



We laugh:



We ham it up:



And then fate conspires to capture us in all our exaggerated ugliness, such as when we are goofing off at Christmas, and we say to our mothers, “Don’t take a picture of me like this,” whereupon we slouch and pooch and make ourselves as hideous as possible for the sole purpose of humor, and then we see the flashes go off out of the corners of our eyes, and hear previously mentioned mothers say, “Oops, sorry, I got you anyway. I was trying to get Richard.” And of course it becomes the most hilarious thing ever, and how could we keep these ugly photos to ourselves?

We couldn’t:



And you know what? I think we should all show more of our warts/bellies/neckfat. It makes other people feel better about themselves.

Christmas went well. I am blessed with a family who appreciates my hard work and who understands when I have to bow out early. It was wonderful to see my mom so happy, with all her kids under the same roof. Her favorite time of year, and I’m glad we could make it happen. Last year an ice storm came on Christmas Eve to keep us apart, so it’s been a couple of years since I’ve seen my youngest brother and his wife. And just last week my mom had emergency surgery, of all things! Thank goodness she recovered enough to entertain visitors, and that she had the good sense to let us do all the work. Well, most of it.

The kids are out of school and the hubs is on vacation until next year. I hope to keep up with laundry while the hubs is on kitchen duty, and if I prod the children they’ll keep up with their toys. During my free time I’m going to finish up the entries for the OWFI contest and maybe write a 2010 retrospective to post on Thursday, but most of the week I hope to spend watching movies and doing projects with the kids. Maybe take advantage of a few after-Christmas deals.

I know some of my Internet buds are hunkered down in a blizzard, some have family visiting, and some are playing with their first real Christmas gifts in years. How are you going to spend this last week of 2010?

A Christmas post? From me? I know, right? I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been a bit bah humbug in years past. The season starting when the kids go back to school and ending at Christmas is usually the hardest, leanest, most stressful time of the year. Fall used to be my favorite until I had kids, when the money got tight and responsibility got heavy.

This year seems to be lighter, I think because I hit the reset button last Christmas. I came to terms with my issues surrounding giving and, especially, receiving. Refusing to participate was a way of staying in the everyday where it’s safe, staying in control. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, I realized that it was really selfish of me not to receive. To defy the season and deny someone else the soul’s pleasure of giving is selfish.

So like I said, I’m better this year. I’m ready to participate and stop being such a grouch this time of year. And in honor of my new attitude I’m even writing a holiday post! I still can’t believe it!

I wish you and yours a happy Christmas, however you muddle through.

Update: This snowstorm we were expecting to be over by noon hasn't even really started yet, at 11:13. We're getting a little sleet, but the heavy stuff is taking it's sweet time. That means that the roads may still not be passable by tomorrow evening, when I'm expecting my immediate family to come. So...most of the treats are on hold until I find out if anyone will be here to eat them! Also, my back went out yesterday, so I have to let my husband do the heavy lifting--vacuuming and such--when he gets home from work today.

Since I have the holidays as an excuse, I'm going to let the blog go dark for a week or two. I'd really like to finish up a bunch of things I've started in the past couple of months cough*years*cough cough. Here's a totally uninteresting to-do list. Maybe I'll check them off as I complete each item.

I have three books going, two of them fiction with angels, and one about the sort-of angel within:

• Armageddon Bound *DONE*


• Scar Night


• A New Earth

I am making three kinds of bourbon-less balls:

• milk chocolate *DONE*


• white chocolate *DONE*


• dark chocolate *on hold until I find out if my family will be able to make it to my house*

In other preparation for my Christmas visitors,

• Dusting


• vacuuming *delegated to hubby*


• clearing clutter *DONE*


• 2 pumpkin pies


• cherry cheesecake


• bending home-bound children to my will *PENDING*

I'm still determined to

• finish this work in progress soon, though I had to push back the due date a month. You folks who volunteered to be my first readers, should be ready for you sometime in January. So I guess I won't be marking this one done until I'm blogging again, but I will be working on it.

So I hope you have a wonderful holiday season, spent any way you like. I'm sure I'll see you on Facebook, and I'm only an email away.

It's a beautiful morning, though a cold front will be coming in this afternoon, plunging us back below freezing after a day's reprieve during which the kids played barefoot in the dirt. So let's see...what else is going on in Blossomland...

• Maggie gets her cast off Wednesday. I imagine they'll x-ray her first, but I don't see any reason they'd leave it on. She's felt no pain for a week, at least. She will have to wear the cast for her school Christmas program tomorrow. I'll probably buy a red sock to cover the bright pink, or else I'll buy her a pink Christmas dress to match.


• I finished up my final project for Eternal Press last night and sent it off to my managing editor. I'm absolutely certain the decision to leave is the right one for me at this time. I'll let you know when this vampire erotic fantasy is released in February.


• That post I did about being blocked by a  friend? Well just a day or two after, one of my best friends from college reconnected with me on Facebook and salved my soul. He's a world traveler and drifts in and out of my life every few years. I'm pretty easy to find, as I have never lived outside of Central Oklahoma.


• Can't wait to see Avatar! But how come aliens are always shaped like us? Even down to the women having breasts? I'm sure it's a choice between realistic speculative world-building and concessions to characters a human can identify with. You know, because if a creature has boobs our brains supply woman seamlessly, and then they can focus on other aspects of a story. But still, it bugs me.


• So far I haven't had anybody tell me I should be linking to them, so maybe those people don't read me anymore. Thanks to those of you who checked your links.


• I will be making bourbon balls this year, and some other goodies for our Christmas night gathering, only I'll have white, milk AND dark chocolate coating on the bourbon balls, and maybe even actual bourbon if I can talk the hubs into going to the liquor store. Maybe he could also buy a bottle of wine

I feel like there's so much more I could be talking about, but I'm scattered. Anything you'd like to hear more about? Wanna tell me what you've got going on?

I don't even know what to say about my Christmas. It was...it was...teh awesome! I started the week thinking my holiday would consist of playing with the toys the kids opened that morning, but Monday my mom confirmed, and soon after both my brothers did, too. I could easily have gone off the deep end cleaning the baseboards with a toothbrush, but I chose to let them see my house as I live in it, which ain't that bad anyway. Except for the fridge, but every household has its junk room.

So I looked through the cookbook to find a couple of desserts I could make with minimal effort, went to the store on Tuesday afternoon for ingredients and sandwich supplies. No turkey. Sandwiches, a veggie platter, pumpkin pie from a can, and apple cobbler.

Since my resetting declaration in the previous post, I've really been thinking about why I feel such pressure and confusion at Christmas, whyI feel tremendous guilt for absolutely no reason, and why it's so hard for me to feel good about receiving gifts. Here are a few things I think may play a role in my weirdness.

• I was very poor growing up. Heck, money's still damn tight right now. But I remember my mom's struggle to get us gifts, and how guilty I felt every year because of seeing how guilty she felt. And because I've always had to struggle to make the money stretch, I figure everybody else is in the same boat. Hence,


• I feel I don't deserve to receive gifts. Or to have people care about me. Or to breathe. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suffering on a daily basis with this like I used to. I think that Christmas coming only once a year, and me trying to just put my head down and get through, has stunted the work I've done at Christmastime.


• I've never been very good at parties in general. Besides Christmas parties I also avoid birthday parties and cookouts and masquerades. I could fill a book with my party-disaster stories. It's not only other people's parties. Every party I've ever had flopped. Hugely.


• I feel like there are some Commandments of Social Behavior that everybody else received at birth, but I didn't.

I'm sure there's a lot more, but that's all I'm willing to look at right now.

Been thinking a lot about Christmas and what it means to me. I've known for a while that most of the Christmas activities I partake in every year are solely for other people, not for me. I've never really given myself permission to have a Christmas I enjoy. I'm not even sure what kind of Christmas that would be.

Well, this year, with the emergence of the fragrance sensitivity, the normal activities will necessarily change. Going to my mom's will be an exercise in torture--purely in the physical sense, of course--if I know why I'm feeling like crap but can't get away from it. In years past I just felt like crap and stayed because I didn't know why.

Besides the fragrance, there is the exchange of gifts, a huge stressor for me. I almost feel like I have PTSD about the gifts. Every single year I feel this tremendous pressure to spend money I don't have in order to follow rules of giving which are not ingrained in me. I dread getting gifts, and I dread giving them, because then I might get some in return. Not to mention that I never feel my gifts are good enough.

Then there is the guilt. Guilt about not having the money; guilt about feeling sick at family gatherings that are supposed to be a happy time; guilt about all the family events I have missed over the year; guilt about celebrating a holiday that is named for a religion I do not follow. Lots of guilt for lots of nebulous other reasons.

I have decided to hit the reset button. This year I will not be attending any family events. I will buy gifts only for my children, and I asked my extended family to forgo any gifts for me. I would love for my extended family to come and hang out at my house with me, if they feel like indulging my need for scentlessness. My husband has surprised the hell out of me by volunteering to do the Christmas shopping, so that's one more pattern I've released.

I realized something in all this reset button-hitting. My ideal Christmas is quiet. Reverent. Small. I guess my idea of Christmas is sort of opposite of the rest of the world's, in that I feel it's more of a solitary thing. It's more about the God-given gifts, and I see how that could extend to family and friends and wanting to do something for them, but I want the desire to give gifts to grow naturally from the spirit, and it hasn't up to now. I have to find that spirit again, if ever I had it in the first place. I've been too distracted, too sick, too guilty at this time of year. I'm changing that now. Reset.