Thanksgiving, you're great and all, but Christmas is the best holiday of all time.
Because I'm lame and don't chop down my very own Christmas tree, Saturday after Thanksgiving is officially time to erect and decorate my pile of fake pine needles. Most of my ornaments were bought while traveling. I find the Christmas tree a much more manageable place to keep souvenirs than, well, everywhere else. But by far my favorite ornaments are those that have been handmade.
These are just a few of them: The snowman ball and quilted heart made by my sister, the sequin Santa and wooden angel made by me, and the mรถbius strip Christmas card that my friend Andrew made a few years ago.
Did you get your sticker? I did! I'll do a great many things for a sticker, including participating in the democratic process. Just one of the reasons that I prefer to vote in person, but, and this might come as a shock, not the biggest. I admit I get a little Leslie Knope about voting. There's something really exciting about showing up, waiting in line, and filling out your ballot in a sketchily constructed little plastic box. The smell of democracy is in the air. Mmmm.
And also the smugness of getting to walk around with a sticker all day that basically announces what a good person you are.
It's interesting to see places that I've been destroyed. Natural disasters are so massive in scale that often I can only think of them in the abstract, but when I can look at photos that I've taken and compare them to photos that I'm seeing in the news from Hurricane Sandy, it all becomes very real.
In the grand scheme of things, every landscape is temporary. Some are more temporary than others. I'm glad that I was able to experience a few years of the previous iteration of the barrier islands of New Jersey. I'm certain there will be rebuilding, but not everything should be rebuilt, nor will it. It will be the same as it was before and yet it won't. Life will go on, eventually, as it always does. This time with a more recent reminder that this land is just on loan to us. Enjoy it, bask in it, soak it in. It's not forever.
