Monthly Archives: December 2010

Me Too

It is December 31, 2010, and the world is hovering between the old and the new. Our New Year’s Eve plans were cancelled at the last minute when the hostess was hit with a nasty case of the flu. So here we are at home waiting for the guitar to drop on Lower Broadway, and reminiscing about the highs and lows of the past three hundred and sixty five days. I won’t bore you with the details of the upheaval and trauma that our family experienced last year. You probably had your own, maybe more so.

Over time, bad memories soften and fade. But these past twelve months will probably live on as one of the best/worst years of my life. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. Charles Dickens wrote those words in 1860 but he could have been describing my life in 2010. Unlike Great Expectations, however, it was the spring of despair that turned into the winter of hope. For that, I’m very grateful – not that the year is finally over, but more that it came at all, and even more thankful that when it came, there were friends offering a hand to pull me up, a shoulder to lean on, a listening ear, or a thoughtful word. Continue reading


Welcoming Advent

I don’t go to the mall much. It’s not that I don’t enjoy shopping for Free People Anthropologie Uggs and massage gift certificates, (yes, dear this is a hint) but maybe like yours, our disposable income is a little harder to come by this year and honestly we’ve accumulated enough stuff over the past two decades to warrant a break from buying more of it.  So the last time I really hit the mall was October sometime. The Mister and I were there for a big Friday night out with our girls. (Read: no good movies to be found and we couldn’t come up with anything more exciting to do.)

We opted for fine dining at the food court, a bit of strolling and a pleasant but firm no thank you to the Chinese massage guys in the red shirts before a final stop at Auntie Anne’s. As we headed down the hallway we couldn’t help noticing that the holiday decorations were already coming out, shiny big red Christmas balls hanging from the ceiling and press-on window decals proclaiming Share the Season! Give Heaps Get Happy! Lowest Prices of the Holiday Season! There was piped-in music pointing out that it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas. (No, it wasn’t.) Just a whole big bunch of tacky reminders that retailers were breathlessly awaiting the arrival of their holiest day of the year, Black Friday. Continue reading