a new year

All my favorite bloggers have been busy this week and I have not. Or, actually, I have, just not here. We celebrated Christmas, we traveled, we celebrated some more, we commiserated with my sister and family who had no luggage for a week (I won't mention that my pregnant sister fits quite nicely into several of my non-pregnant tops...), we had snow, we traveled some more, we ice-skated, we had New Year's Eve with friends, we drove home. The week in a sentence.

Oh, and the tsunami. It's just...unimaginable, really, even still. The numbers boggle the mind.

Somehow the fact that it happened during that liminal week between Christmas and New Year's, when it always feels like time has stopped and nothing can happen, seems even worse. As if it may too soon be forgotten as we all go back to school, work, our regular lives. It didn't erupt into the middle of our work days, as 9/11 did. It just--well, it just happened somewhere else, to someone else, to thousands of someone elses, and we are left helplessly donating to the Red Cross and imagining--weakly, vainly--the suffering. And hoping it will end.

Still, the turning of the year always leaves me hopeful. 2004 wasn't that great, as years go. For starters, we re-elected GWB, we tortured Iraqi prisoners, we failed to protect the environment or provide adequate health care to the poor or decent child care to pretty much anyone or any number of other things I'm forgetting right now. The first one was the worst, until the tsunami hit. I'm hoping 2005 will be better.