Last night the Chaplain and I were catching up on John Oliver and Trevor Noah, and saw a clip of an Amazon worker, pleading for non-essential items to stop being sold. He is risking his life, he said, to package and ship dildos.
How are employees having to work at a time like this in order to package the unnecessary stress purchases of others? I am anxious and afraid, and I’m a nurse. I cannot imagine being told I was an essential worker, showing up for work, and then having to do something like taking care of patients who had had elective surgery to get horn implants. Or a tail.
I used to have a weighted blanket that I used to chill at the end of the day.
Except I wasn’t chilling, I was roasting a lot of nights. At some point, I realized I was experiencing peri-menopause, and it wasn’t the blanket that was causing the night sweats.
I spoke to my endocrinologist about it. He was the doctor I saw the most often, and he ordered unnecessary hormone tests that confirmed that I was not menopausal. Which wasn’t even my question. But, men. Alas, they are helpless in the face of a woman in distress and sometimes they do foolish things the woman must then pay for. In this case, literally $300.
There are a few traditions we have at Christmastime that everyone in our family really loves. Our family nativity photo shoot was such a hit the first year that we did it twice.
The second year, the kids were less enthusiastic, but willing.
This year, I put it off for weeks.
I was afraid One would refuse. Or something else would go wrong. The idea of gathering and coordinating costumes for everyone is a little intimidating. Getting costumes together and helping each person choose who will depict who is a delicate dance between filling all the spots and making sure everyone is satisfied.
We didn’t decorate our tree, and I wrapped the gifts in pillowcases. After the Christmas baking and traveling were done, there weren’t really any other excuses, but I still put it off.
The Chaplain and I talk about hibernation frequently at this time of year. We feel sluggish. All we want to do is sit on the sofa and eat carbs. The Chaplain can’t do that, because the Christmas season demands even more work from him than usual between his church responsibilities and work commitments.
I can slow down during the winter season, and I do, because my body won’t let me do anything else. I struggle with it every year. Surrender and Acceptance are all very well and good, except when Christmas is coming and you are the Magic Maker.
The Serpent King, by Jeff Zentner, is the second book I read for the YA Book Club I joined at my library. (The last book I read for the book club was The Cruel Prince, by Holly Black).
I started The Serpent King at a tender time. I was spending a second weekend at the bedside of my grandmother, who was dying. Many of my most vivid memories of my time spent at her home were from my teenage years, when my friendships with my cousins were one of the most important things in my life and the summer visits, full of new experiences, were larger than life.
The house itself is full of senior photos of the cousins and grandkids, all of us gathered on shelves and side tables, frozen in time as 17 and 18-year-olds, and the home’s interior has barely changed over the course of the time I visited there from childhood until I was an adult.
