In Between

I'm certainly not a Grinch when it comes to the Holidays. But I have a confession to make.

My favorite moments during the Christmas season aren't the parties and lights and music.

My heart is the happiest in the moments in between. When frost and woodsmoke are the stars of the show. When December sparkles all by itself, without help from me or General Electric. When there aren't school lessons to complete, so the kids and I can breathe and relax and enjoy quiet moments.

I try my darndest to keep it simple and focus in on what really matters, but it seems that things still get away from me during the holiday season.

But those in-between moments when I can breathe; that is when I find the peace that I know this Season is supposed to be about.

Into October

I returned from my late September retreat to a newly-revamped bird & squirrel feeder outside my kitchen window. I returned to continued mild weather, making a very green Autumn. I returned to a mound of firewood needing to be stacked (a seasonal favorite; no joke). I returned to just enough crisp in the air to justify the dusting off of my most delicious stew recipes.

I also returned to a scary call-back for a second mammogram and ultrasound (they found nothing but exceptionally dense breast tissue, thank goodness). And... after a few brief weeks of transitioning back to normal life, there was a fatal hard drive crash that ended everything abruptly.

With a family vacation on the calendar for the next week, all I could do was take the failed hard drive to the Geek Squad and pray for the best. Normally a faithful monthly backer-upper, I had lapsed in my good habits for months. Meaning master copies of any new design and financial records were under threat of being lost forever. Re-creating them would have taken weeks of my time, so I paid the big bucks for the highest chance of retrieval, packed my suitcases for vacation and tried to leave the worry behind.