Everything Is Different.

It’s about to turn cold.

Wait, scratch that, it has ALREADY turned cold, here in my little slice of the world.

Mark and I have completed herculean tasks in terms of Christmas preparation before the weather hit this week. The lights are hung on the house, we bought our tree last night and while it’s not decorated yet, it is up.

My house smells amazing.

The cats are twitchy.

Last night when we brought it in, they both immediately started gnawing on the lower branches and rubbing their faces on it and just sitting under it in some sort of tree worshiping trance.

We’ve always had a live tree, save a year or two, since I’ve had them, but they used to always be indoor/outdoor cats too.

But everything is different this year.

Everything is different.

I live with Mark, in this beautiful, idyllic almost 90 year old historic home. We have lights and wreaths on the house. Our house. We have stacks of Christmas cards partially addressed scattered on the dining room table. We have packages of gifts arriving from my cyber shopping. I opened one box, having forgot what I’d ordered, and oh yeah! Marks new slippers!

Too bad he was standing over me wondering himself what was in the box.

Everything is different.

One cannot just willy nilly open packages in the living room during December.

Gearing up for the last few weeks of the year, looking forward to what’s coming up in 2014 I am grateful for these moments of quiet, to take stock. I’m grateful for the ability to work from home, to write letters, to work on recruitment plans and strategy for rebuilding a volunteer base.

Cookie sale is coming, Listen To Your Mother 2014 is right behind it, then BOOM it’ll be Summer and Familypalooza, NYC Trip for Hedwig, Colorado, then BOOM we are right back into recruitment season and starting it all over again.

And for the first time in this job, I will have done it before. But you can bet, I’ll do so many things differently. This learning curve was a steep one that I’m still navigating and I venture to say, doing it pretty well.

But for now, I’m keeping a quiet mind, sipping my hot tea, smelling the gorgeous  8 ft tree in my living room and silently saying prayers of thanks.

Because everything is different.

And I couldn’t be happier.