White Christmas

Written yesterday evening, December 25th, 2010

What a lovely morning it was; the perfect white Christmas. Every bit of the landscape covered in glistening cottony white dressing but all the roads dark and wet, easily passable. We spent the day tidying the house without haste, snacking a bit, preparing a trip to a local Chinese restaurant to enjoy my Christmeas tradition. Our friends, Grace and Billy, let us know that they were skipping Christmas celebrating this year and so we told them that the little gifts we had for them were thank yous for their help in our recent emergency, and joked that we are celebrating "Christmakwanzikah". It's true about the gifts anyway. I don't care for enforced gifting, and I have not done much of it this year. But when I have time and the ability to discern a proper choice of gift, I do enjoy it.  And thank you gifts are always easier to come up with than annual ones, for me.

I treated gift shopping this season as Occupational Therapy. I went out into the stores a couple of weeks ago, when I was just back to being able to get out and about, and I mainly focused on getting some things for my co-workers, who have been so supportive all the long year bringing me meals and making sure I was able to handle the load at work. And shopping was hard, despite having time without constraints of conflicting schedules to spend at it, I found it difficult to determine what would be a nice gift for each individual, how much I could afford to spend, etc. Judgement is impared when one is in-between opiates. I think I did okay though, and now driving, working and just getting my daily activities done is much easier.

Had my 3rd "expansion" on Thursday and Dr. W told me that I am now off of any activity restrictions. If I have the energy, if I have the strength to do it without pain stopping me, I am allowed to do it.