![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The REASON I always walked to 10 o'clock Mass is that there is NO PARKING at that time-- also it was a nice walk-- and waddya know there is STILL absolutely no parking within any reasonable distance from the church --well, any reasonable distance that makes driving there at all have a point for 10 o'clock today. I was all up and ready on time and Jason had gone to help his dad at the plant so I planned to go and come back and have the whole day for... well, cleaning, if I can pucker up the motivation... but there was nowhere to park. Well nowhere that might as well not have been back at my house. Trying not to ponder if that sentence works grammatically. Any rate, I love the walk TO church, but coming home is all up hill. And I've had major problems with uphill lately. I've had major problems with upSTAIRS lately, let alone half a mile uphill. And Jason's not home for me to call if I need a rescue. So instead I came home and have to wait until Noon Mass so I can drive again. So I came to use this time to putz around up here rather than start downstairs on-- blah-- taking down the Christmas decorations.
I don't want to take the decorations down. They are all so lovely and beautiful and make the house look so happy. But it's officially the end of Christmas, Epiphany, and the Twelfth day was actually like Friday or something; and the sooner we get the decorations down, the sooner we move onto other things we have to do, like clean out the baby's room and clean up this office to find a space for all the sewing stuff that is now in the baby's room and then sort through the sixteen boxes of boys' clothing handed down from Cory and Andrew Hornick to put the ones that might be used in the next year in the dresser in the baby's room and all the rest in the attic... and that's the things that I have planned so FAR-- I'm sure there's more that comes after that.
It wouldn't be such a dismal prospect if there was snow outside. I know I should probably be grateful that this particular winter has been so warm, since I don't really need to be slipping on the ice and trying to get up the driveway or Belmont Street (a horrible road in snow) in the snow or ice. But winter is so DREARY otherwise. Especially like it's been the past few days-- RAINY. It's just too DARK. Snow lightens everything up. I'm just sensitive to light I guess. Which is why I love December so much, because no matter what holiday you're celebrating they always involve LIGHTS! So taking down all the lights wouldn't feel so dreary if it wasn't, well, so utterly dreary outside.
I had a dream last night about taking down the Christmas decorations actually, except we were at my parents' house, and my dad had just taken down the tree, but the Pickle ornament had fallen off and was laying on the floor amidst a pile of old tissue paper and my mom said "well, it looks like Dad has found the Pickle!" (because whoever finds the pickle on the tree wins the prize-- true tradition) and the prize turned out to be this entire outfit including wig made out of Christmas lights, and somehow because the Pickle had finally been found we decided we needed to have one last Christmas party even though the decorations had come down.
But what's odd is that there are usually Christmas decorations up all over the place at any time of year in my dreams, anyway, so I suppose it doesn't matter.
I know, I psycho-love Christmas at some very deep subconscious level. And yes, I'm aware that there are lots of people who don't, even among the people who celebrate it (Like my mother-in-law, for an extreme example). That's okay. Personally, I wish they'd just NOT do anything about it, then. I wish they wouldn't stress about HAVING to buy gifts for people or HAVING to decorate the house or HAVING to do, well, ANYTHING. They DON'T have to! Because there are people like me who WANT to do all those things! And people like me, I don't CARE if you get me a present or have a decorated house or believe ANYTHING about what the holiday means, I just want to share MY joy with YOU. All you have to do is be open to recieving it.
Christmas means to me something deeper than can be expressed in words, perhaps. There are those who say, "It's because it is Jesus's Birthday," but that is not only inaccurate but extremely SIMPLISTIC. First off, it's not his birthday because nobody knows when that was-- it's just the date of Yule, but there could not have been a more perfectly chosen date. Yule was a celebration of LIGHTING UP THE DARKEST TIME OF THE YEAR. Light in the darkness! That's what ALL the December holidays mean, and that is what Christmas means in the DEEPEST SENSE of the phrase! From a religious standpoint, Christmas is not celebrating Jesus's birth so much as celebrating the Coming of Christ into the World-- yes, once long ago in the middle east, but also at the End of Time, and, perhaps most importantly, INTO OUR HEARTS all the time, every day, sometimes when we least expect it-- this Light comes and chases away the Darkness! That means so much more than going through the routines associated with a date on a calendar. Especially for me, because like I said, I'm sensitive to light and dark. And I've been prone to Depression, a condition I took to describing as The Darkness, because that is so exactly what it feels like. That Light is the only thing that's kept me from getting totally lost in the Darkness. When I was a kid I used to say, "Nobody is afraid of the DARK, they're afraid of the things IN the dark!" but then as a teenager I knew that I genuinely WAS afraid of the Dark, not the things in it-- looking back I think I was as a child too. And I'm going to need a lot of Light in the next half-year or so I know, because I can feel the Darkness creeping up on me again; and I am really worried because I know I'm at high risk for PPD (of course the ironic thing is is that when I think about it, it makes me depressed). I'm going to bring this up with the doctor on Wednesday so maybe I can start putting routines in place that will ease the stress. Maybe keeping Christmas decorations up all year would help! But no, they'd have to be put away eventually, if only because their boxes are all piled up in the baby's room.
It's just so DREARY out. It looks like late February instead of early January. But spring isn't right around the corner to look forward to. I wish it would just snow nice and heavy on the grass, and leave all the roads and sidewalks and windshields clear. That would be nice.
I don't want to take the decorations down. They are all so lovely and beautiful and make the house look so happy. But it's officially the end of Christmas, Epiphany, and the Twelfth day was actually like Friday or something; and the sooner we get the decorations down, the sooner we move onto other things we have to do, like clean out the baby's room and clean up this office to find a space for all the sewing stuff that is now in the baby's room and then sort through the sixteen boxes of boys' clothing handed down from Cory and Andrew Hornick to put the ones that might be used in the next year in the dresser in the baby's room and all the rest in the attic... and that's the things that I have planned so FAR-- I'm sure there's more that comes after that.
It wouldn't be such a dismal prospect if there was snow outside. I know I should probably be grateful that this particular winter has been so warm, since I don't really need to be slipping on the ice and trying to get up the driveway or Belmont Street (a horrible road in snow) in the snow or ice. But winter is so DREARY otherwise. Especially like it's been the past few days-- RAINY. It's just too DARK. Snow lightens everything up. I'm just sensitive to light I guess. Which is why I love December so much, because no matter what holiday you're celebrating they always involve LIGHTS! So taking down all the lights wouldn't feel so dreary if it wasn't, well, so utterly dreary outside.
I had a dream last night about taking down the Christmas decorations actually, except we were at my parents' house, and my dad had just taken down the tree, but the Pickle ornament had fallen off and was laying on the floor amidst a pile of old tissue paper and my mom said "well, it looks like Dad has found the Pickle!" (because whoever finds the pickle on the tree wins the prize-- true tradition) and the prize turned out to be this entire outfit including wig made out of Christmas lights, and somehow because the Pickle had finally been found we decided we needed to have one last Christmas party even though the decorations had come down.
But what's odd is that there are usually Christmas decorations up all over the place at any time of year in my dreams, anyway, so I suppose it doesn't matter.
I know, I psycho-love Christmas at some very deep subconscious level. And yes, I'm aware that there are lots of people who don't, even among the people who celebrate it (Like my mother-in-law, for an extreme example). That's okay. Personally, I wish they'd just NOT do anything about it, then. I wish they wouldn't stress about HAVING to buy gifts for people or HAVING to decorate the house or HAVING to do, well, ANYTHING. They DON'T have to! Because there are people like me who WANT to do all those things! And people like me, I don't CARE if you get me a present or have a decorated house or believe ANYTHING about what the holiday means, I just want to share MY joy with YOU. All you have to do is be open to recieving it.
Christmas means to me something deeper than can be expressed in words, perhaps. There are those who say, "It's because it is Jesus's Birthday," but that is not only inaccurate but extremely SIMPLISTIC. First off, it's not his birthday because nobody knows when that was-- it's just the date of Yule, but there could not have been a more perfectly chosen date. Yule was a celebration of LIGHTING UP THE DARKEST TIME OF THE YEAR. Light in the darkness! That's what ALL the December holidays mean, and that is what Christmas means in the DEEPEST SENSE of the phrase! From a religious standpoint, Christmas is not celebrating Jesus's birth so much as celebrating the Coming of Christ into the World-- yes, once long ago in the middle east, but also at the End of Time, and, perhaps most importantly, INTO OUR HEARTS all the time, every day, sometimes when we least expect it-- this Light comes and chases away the Darkness! That means so much more than going through the routines associated with a date on a calendar. Especially for me, because like I said, I'm sensitive to light and dark. And I've been prone to Depression, a condition I took to describing as The Darkness, because that is so exactly what it feels like. That Light is the only thing that's kept me from getting totally lost in the Darkness. When I was a kid I used to say, "Nobody is afraid of the DARK, they're afraid of the things IN the dark!" but then as a teenager I knew that I genuinely WAS afraid of the Dark, not the things in it-- looking back I think I was as a child too. And I'm going to need a lot of Light in the next half-year or so I know, because I can feel the Darkness creeping up on me again; and I am really worried because I know I'm at high risk for PPD (of course the ironic thing is is that when I think about it, it makes me depressed). I'm going to bring this up with the doctor on Wednesday so maybe I can start putting routines in place that will ease the stress. Maybe keeping Christmas decorations up all year would help! But no, they'd have to be put away eventually, if only because their boxes are all piled up in the baby's room.
It's just so DREARY out. It looks like late February instead of early January. But spring isn't right around the corner to look forward to. I wish it would just snow nice and heavy on the grass, and leave all the roads and sidewalks and windshields clear. That would be nice.
