Supposedly, childbirth is something like this, on a grander and more primal level: you hate every single moment of the process but, the moment it's over, you forget the pain and oooh and aaah over the end result.

Bonus point #1 to childbirth: the end result provides you with one Eternally Good Guilt Trip card for the rest of your existence.

Bonus point #1 to furniture finishing: people look at you funny if you kick off your shoes and prop your feet up on your kids when company comes over. Bonus point #2: unless your table sets amazing new records for furniture intelligence, your college tuition costs are pretty much guaranteed to be nil.

Bonus point #2 to childbirth: grandtables are rare, and according to rumor, not nearly so satisfying as grandchildren.

Once upon a time, there was a kitty, and, like most kitties, this kitty had a birthday. While this kitty said very little about her birthday, when her back was turned, many of the other cats gossiped about it. "Whatever shall we get Miss Kitty for her birthday?" they said.

I've promised for a couple of years now that I would someday do a holiday skin. 'Sleigh bells' is as close as I think you're going to get. Just a wee bit of holiday, and no pink (you're welcome, Geof).

The sugar is in from the store and the new table is lying in pieces, half of them stained, on the front porch. One set of side railings and the bottom platform are stained and drying, slowly, in the chilly breeze slamming in from the north-northeast.

We are south of the ice line, which, tonight, is going to hover somewhere near Nashville. Here, we will have nothing but chilly winter rain.

My hands smell like wood stain, but several pieces of tight-grained, pale wood now bear a golden-brown color some company or other has chosen to call "golden oak." The grain, originally little more than freckles or dashes in the wood, now contrasts as a darker brown against the gold of the rest of the wood.

So much not to say, see.

On Sunday morning I found myself curled up next to Jeff and thinking, "When did this stop being home?"

What was it over the course of four years that did it? There are too many culprits to select just one: friends, cats, mortgage, jobs. All. Nothing. Everything in between.

…for one thing, which encompasses so many other things that it's hard to continue calling it just one thing: that, over the course of this year, I walked to the lip of an abyss, faced it, and came away alive, human, and still capable of reaching out to the people who cared about me.

So many things - that I got to have time with Dad before he died. Jeff - for making it bearable. For Jeremy, Suzan, and Colter, who among all my friends stand so high in my memory for being so much and giving so much when I had so little to give in return.

For the cat-feeders, and the voices on the end of the phone during all hours of the night. For those of you in different time zones or on different sleep schedules, who were around to see me during the ugliest parts of the healing process.

For my friends for understanding, not asking questions when they probably wanted to, and trusting that one of these days I'll wake up again and be me again...