Help to Make the Season Bright

WARNING: This post contains candid scenes from inside my head. I'm not as crazy as House, but...Viewer discretion is advised.



My nemesis is sneaking up and lurking in the corner again--D. E. Pression is hanging around and just will not go away. I feel like I'm being stalked and I've watched enough Law and Order to know that I don't have to be a victim of stalking. Someone tall and handsome and a just little surly will come to my rescue, right?


I've been holding the creep off pretty successfully for a few weeks, but he is getting pretty insistent. I absolutely refuse to let him get me, so today was a day of service, present-wrapping, recognizing miracles like just the right person calling at just the right moment, shopping, singing loud to the stereo, cleaning, and making ta-da lists. Being aware and proactive really helps. For me, a little healthy anthropomorphizing helps as well (for those of you who aren't geeks like me, that's the process of picturing of my problem as a person and talking about him derisively).

Here's the ta-da for today:
Evan and I had to go to Target at the unholy hour of 5 pm to get a birthday present for a party that I heard about in passing while at a concert last week, but never heard from the mom about or saw an invitation. Therefore, it was not on my radar and the need for a gift was unknown to me as I was out shopping earlier in the day. Because I'm working so hard to keep my emotions under control, Not only did I not get upset, but I consciously decided to make it a memory instead of a nightmare. I told Evan to strap himself in for an adventure. We counted how many cars back we were from traffic lights, made bets on how many cycles of said lights we'd have to wait through, estimated the distance of our parked car from the store in light-years, fantasized about having the
Millennium Falcon show up to help us get out of the traffic, turned up the rock and roll and sang loud while we air-guitared and drummed, timed how long it took us to get out of the parking lot (18 minutes and 42 seconds), and other stuff like that. We ended up laughing our heads off at times, and believe me, I needed the endorphins. I appreciate his fabulous sense of humor. Miraculously, in spite of the insanity of the parking lot, Target was a dream-no lines, friendly people, etc. Even better was that they had THREE packages of my ridiculously hard-to-find favorite toilet paper (I am a TP snob like Mendy). I was literally climbing the shelves to get the last one. That definitely goes in the count-my-blessings file.

Anyway, I'm keeping ugly old D.E. in time-out in the corner. He'll get tired of waiting and leave eventually, but until then, I am incredibly grateful for all my blessings, chief among them being the people in my life right now. As long as I have something to do for or with someone else, I'll be fine. I have lots to be thankful for and lots to look forward to. The fact that I have delivered not one plate of cookies, sent not a single card, nor sent out thank you notes from my birthday 4 months ago is not a reason to let the villain in and entertain him. Some people are wonderfully talented at the niceties. How I love and admire them. I want to be them when I grow up. For now, I will look up to them and keep trying to just be nice. Like most people, I'm my own worst critic, but there is just no time for that at such a happy time of year. I need to remain positive.

The upshot for me is that I think it really is true that if you smile at the world (even if it is a slightly fake smile), the world will smile back. Usually.


So I will keep smiling. Thanks for always smiling back.