I have a wicked awesome Christmas tree!
Which I would have skipped this year if the children weren't my big picture, because it seems really counterproductive to be moving and suddenly drop everything and erect a tree in the living room that we'll spend hours lighting and decorating only to take it all down January first.
I'm working on the bright side, the part that I can see up high if I stand on my tiptoes. And the fact that Ben will be away from us for a few months is maybe a price that must be paid for temperatures currently forty degrees higher than they are here. Maybe it's a small test before the easy part of life kicks in. Maybe it's par for the course and it will shake me out of my now harmless but annoying doom-and-gloom personality that throws shadows on these walls in the absence of light.
Maybe I will gain perspective.
Maybe I'll even get a grip.
Okay, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's just roll on with one foot in front of the other until we're up to our ankles in the saltwater of the Pacific.
We're going to see Santa this weekend, to ask him to stop bringing character-building kits as gifts and to throw up the horns for a rocking photo op. I may ask him for just a little more luck like the kind that Ben is to me, resplendent in full beard and flannel these days because he's cold and sad that he's leaving ahead of the move and pulling out all the stops to block my tears before they can make it over the falls.
Sorry, the melodrama is just everywhere today. I'm tripping over it and pulling it out of my hair, unsticking it from my lip gloss and clearing it off the window so I can look out. I'm not so sad this morning. Just determined. Frighteningly determined.
I really really really won't miss the cold. In fact, I'll probably rejoice for having made it so many winters here without going entirely crazy.
Wait. What?
