Merry Christmas

Breakfast casserole and apple crisp. Candy canes and coffee. Mmmm. It's Christmas. Eat it up.

It's Beginning to Look at Lot Like Christmas

It's really not beginning to look like Christmas at all, but alas, Christmas is just around the corner. Hard to believe, isn't it? Though the events leading up to Christmas have been fantastic, for me the actual week of Christmas feels very little like Christmas. This Christmas is so strange, so different in so very many ways.

I keep trying to remind myself that different is okay and to find joy in all the places it's so abundant and not focus on the places it seems to be missing.

I have to work on Christmas Day and the day after, but I'm trying -- really I am -- to maintain my Christmas spirit.

Why is Christmas never like it appears in the movies? Perfect families, perfect romances, perfect time spent together...

The way

Show me the way, and I'll go.

I won't hesitate, I won't ask twice, I won't argue. I'll trust. Just show me the way.

Show me what you want me to be. What you expect of me. The person you want me to become.

Just show me the way.

La, la, la

I love butterflies, the ones painted by the brushstroke of nature in vibrant colors and the ones you get in your stomach when you're excited.

I love ice cream. Especially Breyer's Mint Chocolate Chip. And Baskin Robbins' Baseball Nut. And almost anything from Brewsters, Cold Stone or Marble Slab. Who am I kidding? I just love ice cream.

I love coffee. When it's warm and flavored and wakes me up and makes me giddy.

I love when the right song comes on at the right moment.

I love snow. Why is it 70 degrees in December?

I love photographs, expressions and moments frozen in time.

I love possibility.

Christmas to-do list

Perform, as part of the choir, in four productions this weekend of "The Answer," Alice Drive Baptist's Christmas play.

Enjoy a weekend visit from my sister, my mother and Mel's sister.

Drive as many times as possible through the BEAUTIFUL light display at Swan Lake.

Drink lots of yummy flavored coffee and hot chocolate.

Enjoy an at-work Christmas party with co-workers on Tuesday. I can only hope that it will hold as much excitement as the Dunder Mifflin Christmas party. "Everyone in this room loves you. But mark my words, we are not going to support your alcoholism anymore. The next time you light yourself on fire, we are not going to help put you out."

Go to the mountains the weekend before Christmas and hopefully see some snow!

I'm singing in the rain...or not

Today was one of those days I SO wanted to stay in bed, cacooned in my warm, cozy bed. I could have stayed there, happily, all day long. Sleeping. Reading. Listening to the rain beating down on the roof and on the ground and shimmying off the leaves of the trees.

I love the rain. I just hate trying to be productive when it rains. When I'd rather be unproductive, lazy. Just listening to the rain.

Today I'll have to muster extra oomph to try to get my daily tasks accomplished. Everything will be just a teensy bit harder.

Follow the yellow brick road

Just follow the yellow brick road. No big deal. The blindingly fluorescent yellow bricks will lead you in the right direction. But what if there are no yellow bricks? What do you do then?

Follow instinct? Your gut? A certain intuition?

Or, better yet, what if there IS a yellow brick road, but it forks. Then what? Which path do you follow?