Reprieve

It's the first of December, the 11th hour of this weird, wild year. I traversed the long holiday weekend drinking, eating, dancing, shivering, watching the sun rise and fall quicker than I ever remember it doing.

Thanksgiving was had at the Bracewell residence with some of my very favorite dogs and people. Everyone arrived with a bottle of wine and a casserole dish, so that when all the food was out, no inch of surface wasn't supporting a bottle or steaming bowl. Mountains of food. The dogs played for hours, slobber-mouthed and wrestling in the middle of the floor and providing grand entertainment to a room full of people who wanted to be entertained and yet to move very little.

Sunday was so bright and ferociously cold that the mere act of living burned up all your calories. Skating in it tore teardrops from my eyes. I was exhausted by 7:30 p.m.

Really, these long black nights are a gift—a reprieve. See, I'll take a potent allergy pill (doctor's orders—I'm not an abuser) and sleep the sleep of the dead, or of the very innocent. Of which I am neither.

Brrrrrrr.