not quite as planned

Picking Will up from the airport in a couple hours...he had a family emergency, which led to a last-minute flight to the other side of the country, then he stayed through Thanksgiving. Been holding down the fort here, bouncing between houses, keeping an eye on cats and dog and mail and sprinklers and gardeners and life here in the Bay Area. More stupid frustrating shit: garage door opener stopped working, Bean is slowly getting worse so doing the mental ping-pong game of 'when is the right time to say goodbye?', slipped and fell in my entryway [wet shoes + slick tile = slapstick comedy with bruises], light in hallway is flickering and burning up light bulbs again [landlord's husband says he can't find anything wrong with it, just needs a fresh bulb...sigh]. But it's all really nothing compared to what Will has been dealing with this past week...rough times for the poor guy, can't wait to have him home.

I will say that I fucking *hate* this time of year. I love winter, love the cooler weather, love so much about it, but these months just wear me down. It's a result of many years of bad seasons...shit going down during the winter months, stuff that just keeps piling on each year. Death [too much death], sadness, loss, frustration, all starting more than ten years back and just adding on each year. It's gotten so ridiculous that poor Will, sweetheart that he is, apologized when he got his bad news...he hugged me and said that he was hoping to give me just one good winter for once [see what a good one I found? In the middle of everything he is dealing with, he thinks to take care of me...he's a keeper].

The trick each year is not falling into the 'self-fulfilling prophecy' trap, of assuming things will be bad, which in turn can make them bad. On the plus side, the stuff that has happened over the past years was nothing that I could have controlled, so I'm pretty sure they weren't caused by my negativity or "down-ness"...on the negative side, there was nothing I could have controlled, damn it, so there wasn't anything I could do to turn it around and make it better. Harrumph.

So here is how I'm working on getting through it: by finding the individual moments of brightness and smiles, trying to let the big picture flow over me and not focusing on it quite so much. There can be a lot of good moments in every day, even if sometimes you have to seek them out or make them happen...and in a couple of hours, I'm heading to the airport to make one happen. Can't wait...