It’s a bit early, I know. But, this year, more than ever, I noticed Christmas (decor, music, sales, advertisements, and more) showing up mid-October with greater force than ever before. As you all know, I’d like to get through Hallowe’en before I see any of that. Thanksgiving, too. I can’t enjoy Christmas when it’s been shoved down my throat for weeks on end. By the time it gets here, I’m sick of it, sometimes literally.
I’ve been deleting emails and unsubscribing from catalogs (print and electronic) for weeks, already. I can find better places to spend my money than with companies who act like too many whores on a street corner.
So, I was relieved to find this in my email this morning.
“…I’m moving slow and mindfully—particularly knowing what the next sixty days hold.
Before you find yourself feeling overscheduled, overextended and overworked during the holiday season, I invite you to slow down and PAUSE.
While this is a favorite time of year for some, this upcoming stretch can also be incredibly stressful, emotionally-taxing and just plain exhausting for many of us. (There is a reason therapists offices are packed in January.)”
Given the difficulties we’ve had this year, her words are especially poignant. Just yesterday, I learned that Grandaddy is not making any improvement since his last fall. Mama Bee is now getting ready to move him into a V.A. home. Because she’s not a Vet, too, she can’t stay there with him. They will be apart for the first time since 1947; she will live alone for the first time in her life. Oh, and just so you all know what’s ahead for your own families’ future, even the crappy nursing homes are $6,000 a month in rural NE Texas. And don’t save your money, if you have even slightly significant savings, you won’t qualify for any other kinds of benefits. Sell the house, and you might make two years.
I have bigger things to worry about than stupid gifts and stressful travels that are only for others.
Thank you, Renée. I’ll heed the advice, but for different reasons.
I started typing my comment, and realized I needed to do a blog post. You always make my brain work. I love you. Hang in there.
Made with the Clicky Clicky on Midnight Ferret’s blog & here I am. I’d already posted my Black Friday Rant before I happened on that post.
What’s making me nauseous this year is the fact that WalMart is open ALL FUCKING DAY on Thanksgiving Day. Corporate greed is driving it, and I think that the assholes who will shop late in the day (beyond the “oops, I forgot to get stuffing mix & have to grab some quick”), and into the night are selfish morons, who think it’s more important that their precious additional shopping day is ever so much more important than allowing those employees, who, likely will not have a single day off for the next 32 days after that, to spend a day with their families are utter and complete jerks.