It's looking a bit dusty in here ...

Good lord! Neglectful and disgraceful! I'm so, so, sorry!

The funny thing about life is that it moves on, whether you're ready or not. I've pondered at least half a dozen blog topics in the space of time in which I was monstrously missing. Did I write any of them? No. Do I remember what any of those blog topics are? Ha! And so I face you here now, embarrassed at my absence, and desperately searching for something interesting to say. And all I can think about is Christmas.

Christmas has come early this year - earlier for me than normal. In fact, until this year, I was ardently against the massive retail over-hauls that happen at Halloween's termination. I've not been a big fan of early Christmas, and will not accept the Christmas season until the Thanksgiving weekend is long over, around December 1st. If I heard so much as a "deck the halls" playing over retail radio speakers, I'd glower and clench my jaw, and hurl a "bah-humbug!" in anyone's general direction. Christmas has it's place, and it's time, and it's NOT in November.

However, this year, I needed Christmas to come early. I really, really did. 2010 has not been kind to me. It's been a hard year, a sad year, a heart-breaking, indigestible, painful, rejection-filled year. And I'm done with it. And so when the first decorations went up, and the dulcet tones of holiday cheer shot out of the grocery store audio system, instead of scowling and growling and being grumpy at our country's love of holiday retail madness - instead, I said, "Thank you." I breathed a sigh of relief, and smiled, and looked forward to the kinder, gentler days of greens and reds, of people tacking on "Happy Holidays!" or "Merry Christmas!" to the ends of their conversations, of seeing the ones I love and remembering that I am loved in turn.

But it's not just me who needed it early this year - I think we all did. I think everyone I know has more or less breathed a collective sigh of relief at finally reaching the end of a very long, tight, stress-filled year. I'm certainly not suggesting that the holidays are any less stressful. But with the end of the year comes the rising hope that the impending new year will be so much better. And after months and months of no hope, of being unemployed, or removed from a home, or deaths of loved ones, or whatever the case may be - the new year looms with tidings of comfort and joy and hope for a fresh start, a fresh chance to make our lives better; not with resolutions, necessarily (though they're nice, too), just that the tide will turn, our luck will change, and we can move on to something better.


We can be better.

For the first time - ever - I'm sending out Christmas cards. This is a big commitment for me, because I'm terrible at this sort of thing. But I've been thinking about people who are not around me, and I think I should tell those people - just because I don't talk with them very often, doesn't mean I don't love them, or that I'm not thinking of them. I believe that's the reason that people originally started sending Christmas cards, though I'm no expert on the subject.

My Christmas cards have Polar Bears on them.