Melancholy

The holiday melancholy is settling in already. It happens every year as Christmas approaches, and I'm not entirely sure why. I think I long for the innocence of childhood when Christmas didn't seem so overwhelmingly commercialized; it was steeped in family tradition and often filled with relatives not seen for years. With parents long gone and family spread far and wide, such gatherings don't happen anymore. With no children, there is less need for tradition in our home. The Christmas decorations are out for no more than 10 days before I am ready to pack them away.

I am feeling worn out and run down these days. The summer of inactivity - due to vertigo, headaches, TMJ, and the heat - left me sadly out of shape and it's taking forever to regain any fitness. I'm constantly sore, and often mildly bruised, from my krav maga classes. My poor muscles haven't seen this kind of action in ages. I'm still resentful that I can no longer drink coffee, and today I am angry that I got confirmation that cinnamon, a favorite spice for baking, does indeed give me heartburn.

We have been searching for the right place to move for about a year now. While we are grateful our home (out of town) sold in this lousy real estate market, our options are limited by what little we did get from it. And now, as the economic news continues to grow more grim every week, leaving a relatively secure job makes little sense but staying in a city of one million mostly unprepared people also makes little sense. Nearby communities are not what we were hoping to find. Some look like they never left the last Depression and others are increasingly plagued by border issues and crime. All are in the desert where climate predictions paint a bleak picture of ongoing drought and rising temperatures.

Plans to stock up are also in limbo. If we move locally, supplies can be moved. If we move further, however, supplies complicate the move and increase its cost. If we move locally, there is less need for cold weather gear but more need for water conservation measures. If we move north, my quilt stash will not be adequate but I may not have to sweat every drop of water the plants need to grow. The garden also languishes in our limbo status. Why plant anything that takes months to mature when we keep hoping to find something and move out of this rental? Luckily, the CSA provides 90% of our produce needs as long as we are here.

And, last but not least, I got the news this evening that Angel's mass that was removed this week was a mast cell tumor, a potentially malignant skin tumor. The good news is the edges were clean, although the bottom only by a scant two millimeters. The bad news is that it could come back and she could be prone to additional tumors. We will be doing more reading on this and checking her vigilantly for any bumps or lumps.

I have some tendencies toward recurring depression and worry that I am heading that direction again. The fact that I've had a shot of my homemade liqueur in a hot drink every day for five nights straight also worries me, especially since we rarely drink. One or two glasses of wine a year is my norm. When juicing oranges today, I did not dehydrate the peel as originally planned. I started yet another flavor of liqueur - orange with vanilla bean.

I am not posting this to garner sympathy but to explain that posts may be sporadic. They may be downers like this one. Or they may be hyper Christmas carols written in an attempt to keep up the facade of holiday cheer. Or, maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and see everything in a new light. Perhaps going to see holiday lights will do the trick. After all, I can enjoy them this year now that many of the light strands have been replaced with LEDs which use far less electricity.