December 5

I will not be gloomy today.

I refuse.

...Even though today is the viewing (which, may I go on record as saying I hate. I understand people need them for closure, but to the immediate family, they can feel like cruel and unusual punishment.)

My children are all home and safe, even though Brad flew home practically alone on a small rickety jet, and though when Melissa went to Ephraim to pick up Jenny, and as they were loading the car, they placed her sketchbook on the roof while getting everything else situated - and you guessed it - it stayed there.
...But not for long.

They didn't even realize it until they got all the way home and unpacked everything.

Jenny anxiously called her room mate to go find it - yep, it was still there in the road, luckily undamaged. She needed it to do her final project, and couldn't be persuaded to a plan B (buy a new one,) So I donned my shoes, grabbed the keys, and grudgingly headed off down the road, repentant daughter in tow.

I've been at a boiling point all day - nerves, blood pressure, tension, etc. so it was good for me to get out of there. I was so tense in fact, that I couldn't even speak.

Fearing that my daughter would think I was angry, I told her that if she wanted to sing or something, I was okay with that - I just didn't feel like talking.
(And she was plugged in to her headphones anyway.)

We made the entire trip in silence. A first.

Something about that drive is so good for me. All the open spaces, and watching the storms move across the sky - it calms me.
By the time we reached her apartment, I was able to be civil.
We had lunch at McDonald's (I had been to upset to eat earlier, and was starving.)
On the ride back home, we happily chatted and got caught up on what's been going on in her life.

~*~

I started reading "The Christmas Blizzard" by Garrison Keilor this week (keeping a Christmas novel on the night stand at all times this month - finished the last one, and the next is still in the mail, so I found this at the library.)

Haven't been able to get far, but the first couple of chapters are a perfect description of how I've been feeling lately...

"The snow and the cold, the bleakness of light, the sheer horror of 'The Little Drummer Boy' coming at you when you least expected it"

"Mr. Sparrow wished that the mice would carry Clara away and lock her in a dungeon and that the Hallelujah Chorus could be embargoed for ten years and that Tiny Tim would learn a useful trade and stop blessing everyone."

Well, you get the idea, but gosh darn it - I don't want to feel that way. It's Christmas, and I want some Christmas cheer!

Jenny is home now, with her incessant chatter that could coax the hind leg off a mule, and Brad is here with his interesting and humorous stories - there's always so much laughter when Brad is home.

No matter what else happens, today will be a good day.

"I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.

'We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,'
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December."
- Oliver Herford, I Heard a Bird Sing
.