Happy Solstice!!

Oh, friends and loved ones, today is the day!! Brent asked if we had to dance around a bonfire or something. I told him not to be silly. It's much too cold for a bonfire. We'll just put a candle in the middle of the living room floor.

You know some of the depression struggles I have cannot be helped. My brain does not fire the way other people's do and for this reason I am very happily medicated. That being said, some of the fight I fight comes down to making a choice. I am careful with what I watch, what I read, the people with whom I hang out. I try to be careful what I eat. (Except for the butter on saltines snack I am having right now. Okay, it's not even butter, it's margarine. I'm sorry. It's tasty.)

Today is the day I make a choice about winter. Today is the day I am done grieving, done whining (don't hold me to that one, okay?), done feeling sorry for myself. Today is the day I buck up and move ahead.

Oh my sweet friend, it doesn't take a visit by three ghosts to make me see it's time to embrace some holiday joy. If not for the Christmas baby, I would have no strength to tackle any of this. If I did not believe that God really came down and became a human who could identify with me, I wonder what would be the point of living in this crazy world.

So let us take a cue from our chum Ebenezer:

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!

I am going to take a little blog break to focus on Christmas with my family and then take that long awaited trip to the Sunshine State. I will see you again, precious friend, in the new year. Stay safe! Stay warm!