• Mood: content
• Music: Memphis -- Love Comes Quickly

In the Bleak Midwinter

Well, here I am. I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas/midwinter/few days. The holiday was generally quite lovely for me. No major disasters, and my family all got along pretty well (no small accomplishment, as there are quite a few of us, and we're getting increasingly accustomed to living on our own and doing things Our Own Way). This may have had something to do with the short amount of time that we were actually all together, but I'm still going to count it as a Good Thing. (*) fairplaythings survived his first Christmas with my family, and didn't run away or anything. I am ever so proud of him. :)

I was thoroughly showered with gifts too numerous, generous, and thougtful to list. I feel utterly spoiled.

And fairplaythings' family is in town now for a post-Christmas Christmas, and they have also given me an awful lot of very generous and thoughtful gifts. I hardly know what to say, everyone's been so good to me.

Anyway.

Y'know, it always strikes me as odd that the winter solstice -- the shortest day, and "darkest" night of the year -- falls in December. It's hard to believe that summer is on its way when we're just hunkering down for the true cold of winter. It's not midwinter yet, at least not in this climate -- that's sometime in mid-February, when you're still over a month away from the next statutory holiday, and you can barely remember what it's like to be warm. Or to leave the house without so many layers of clothing that you look more like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man than a person. I know, I know... the days are getting longer now. But it's a little hard to believe.

It's also impossible to believe that the first day of Spring is in March, but that's another issue.

* I feel I should clarify. I love my family dearly. I would not trade them for the world. It's just that there really are quite a lot of them, and they can be a Bit Much. I'm usually such a quiet person that I find the noise and confusion of a large family a lot to handle at times. I'm not used to it anymore, you see. We've lost the trick of cohabitating without really noticing each other.