I don't know why this year is different from any in the past 10 years or so, but I got a big dose of Christmas Spirit fairly early on. It's not from the televised hype because we don't watch TV, and it's not from the radio stations that began their 24-hour Christmas playlist as soon as Halloween was over because I never really go anywhere. I think it was Thanksgiving that brought it on. We had such a perfect one this year, we could have made Norman Rockwell's famous painting look like a portrait of a dysfunctional, crack house family. Yeah, it was that good...Over the weekend we decorated the cottage, with help from Dr. Kielbasa, who's always up for a party. There was a 220-song Christmas playlist on the speakers (and I don't mean only that Burl Ives, Brenda Lee stuff, I mean good music, like Jethro Tull, Loreena McKennitt, Sting, and a lot of classical, too), food, mulled wine—all the usual stuff—and it felt like an extension of the previous holiday, which bodes well for the rest of the season.
I even have my New Year's resolution sorted out. I never make those, but this year I feel a kind of jackboot behind my ass, ready to propel me anywhere I want to go. My resolution is simple: I want something to happen to me in 2012. I don't care if it's in my creative life, my emotional life, my intellectual, physical, or material life, I just want to make something wonderful happen. And I feel like I can do that.
We were expecting snow all last night. Up to 12 inches were predicted at first, but that number kept dwindling until, in the end, we got big piles of nothing. It's bloody cold, though, and windy. Nice day to stay indoors and edit.
Stay warm!
