2002-12-26 - 1:27 p.m.
It is the day after Christmas, and work has given me a wonderful gift�I get to work from 8AM to 7:30PM today. Ahhh lucky me. But then I guess I should be happy that I have a job.
So I wish I could explain it�I wish I had words to express the feelings that are ripping through my head. Christmas is usually a very happy time for me. Hectic, but happy�but this year has been a completely different story. I am in a funk that is seemingly impossible to get out of. But what really gets me is that I am not really sure why this feeling has decided to settle on me. Perhaps it is that I am just lonely�I dunno. Perhaps it was having to face Christmas by myself for the first year in�God, I don�t know how many�12 or maybe 13 years. Yeah I had family to go visit with, but that is just not the same as having someone to spend the holiday season shopping, making lists, decorating (not decorating them you dorks�), and all of that other Yule Tide stuff with. Everything just felt so forced for me this year. Sigh�this sucks.
In other holiday news�
I went up to Mom�s on Christmas Eve Evening after spending a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon/evening with the SpineDoc, his Lovely wife, and family. I rolled into Williamsburg around 11:15PM which left me enough time to drop my stuff on the floor, bark at my little brother to get ready to go (we had little to no time left to get our shit together for Midnight Mass), and get back in the car and make tracks for the Church.
Midnight Mass has always been one of my favorite services of the year. It is the one mass that I always make the extra effort to get to. Perhaps it is cause it feels more �real� to me. The Church is always packed. There are people standing in the aisles, crowed around the entries, and packed into the pews. The Church is always lavishly decorated. Candles lit everywhere, poinsettias decorating the altar, burning incense, and one of the most fantastic nativity scenes that I can ever remember seeing. Well that is aside from the ones that I used to make as a child. I had 5 complete sets to work with. I tell ya nothing beats a child�s imagination. See in my world, if one Baby Jesus was good, the two were better, and then there was Mary and Joseph, and then Aunt Mary, and Uncle Joseph, and Grandma Mary and Grandpa Joseph and I am sure you get the picture. Then there was the supporting cast in my nativity scene�there was a flock of sheep and oxen, and of course about a dozen shepherds, and finally there were the 15 Kings. Well ok they were not all Kings, some of them were Princes. And all of these little people (who were all different scales) were put into a cardboard Stable that I made (but Grandma wouldn�t let me put grass, cause I didn�t have and straw into the �stable�. Too messy she would say). Hmm�ok so I am rambling along quite nicely�back to the original story�
I have always loved midnight mass. It was the one service that it didn�t matter if you showed up in sweats, or jeans, or a suit. People seemed more forgiving of you appearance because of the late hour. That you were there to celebrate Christ�s birth was enough. And when the service was over, everyone left the Church all bleary eyed but content. There was no mad rush to escape the parking lot, no push to get out of the church�it makes for a really nice overall experience.
After Church, my little brother, sister, and I stayed up till the wee hours of the morning wrapping presents and talking. Kinda weird really considering that the folks were all in bed and asleep. In fact at one point I remember thinking how ironic it was that we were the ones up late wrapping like little demons trying to get things right for the morning. It seems like just yesterday that my folks were the ones doing that while I was the one asleep. Heh�
Well I have managed to get derailed in writing several time today now. You would figure that the day after Christmas the library would be empty�not the case�So I am going to stop here and try again later�
Hope yall had a wonderful Christmas�
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