How to avoid the holidays and save money

It’s the same every year. Every year as the holidays approach people are inundated with holiday cheer, dinner plans, and that incessant need to buy someone a gift. Lights, packages, and bows, trees to find an adorn, stockings to be hung, the impending weight that family members you haven’t seen in nearly a year will be present at dinner watching you eat. It can be a bit overwhelming at times. And if by chance, you are a part of that unlucky group that’s actually suffered a loss during this time, then you can just add those emotions on top of all of it, to complete the long, slow, growing feeling of dread as the date approaches.

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Aces and Eights

The dead mans hand. Most of the time you’ll know it when you’re dealt it. Other times, it will elude you until at last it reveals itself and the sharp prick of what it means will pierce your heart, like ice.

Takes the wind out of you.

Hold your breath, hoping the cards will change. Whisper a prayer in an effort to curb the outcome. Try as you may, the results are the same. Only one thing to do once those cards been dealt.

Play them.

You know what they mean. Everyone knows. The death cards. End game. It’s over. Time to pay your due and cash in.

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Wine Night

Thanksgiving is in nine days. Nine days from now people will be gathering together with their families, eating food, and talking about the things they’re thankful for. Happens every year here in the U.S. .

I say in the U.S., because for some reason this was the first year it occurred to me that not everyone celebrates Thanksgiving. I know, I know. I judged me too. As well as, gave myself all sorts of internal smacks in the head for not thinking. It was a Scooby. Totally got me to thinking….wait, so other countries don’t take a moment to be thankful for anything? Other places on the globe don’t have a national holiday dedicated to the thoughtfulness and appreciation of their life and the people that are in it? How sad.

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The Weather Changed

He sat in my chair fiddling with his keys as he went on about how he didn’t understand what he had done wrong, why she was upset, and what he could do. As he talked, I just listened. Then he looked up at me and said, “I just don’t get it”.

I looked at him, and said matter of factly, “The weather changed”.

His face was the look of confusion as I could see his mind attempt to process what I had just said. “What does the weather have to do with anything I just said”, he asked.

Nothing. And everything.

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