How I know it's the holiday season

I spent most of last week baking or cooking.

We just finished the leftovers, in the form of Chris' turkey pot pie, last night.

I had to grocery shop yesterday because our fridge was literally empty. And yet.  I   am spending some part of every day cooking or baking.  Last night was turkey pot pie for Chris.  He's ailing, but I think it's more in his heart and mind than in his body.  He's stressed and I think he's lonely.  He works 12 hours a day every day, his coworkers aren't bosom friends, no one seems to understand that 5 12-hour days is just not the lifestyle he wants.  And in Burnstopia, when one suffers, the other makes pot pie as comfort food.

That said, it's also the holidays.  Today we're making bread and cranberry bread.  I bought up supplies for Cherry Blossoms, Gingerbread snowflakes, lemon sugar cookies and English butter toffee.  I'll assemble cookie plates for Chris' coworkers and for some friends of ours from church.  He has a work event at the Senior Care center, we'll make up big batches of cookies for the care-givers there.

I think the hardest thing for me about marriage is that I'm a woman of action.  I want to be DOING.  I want my hands busy in making a quantifiable difference.  But that doesn't seem to be my role right now.  He needs me to listen, to empathize, to comfort him by being still.  It is a hard thing for me.  If it were my choice, I would go to the hospital and work on things in his office, take his To Do list and working on it systematically, organize the piles and hunt people down for their part on the projects.  But that's not what he needs from me right now...so I find myself exercising the left-handed and thus, weaker side of my nature.

And I can do it.  It's hard, but fortunately it's the holidays and there is plenty of other things for me to be doing.




(in other news, I'm assembling and sewing up a Super Secret Weapon (read: TOY) for the Boy for our flight out west in January.  Stay tuned for details.)