I'm Just Saying

Remember the scene from A Charlie Brown Christmas in which a despondent Charlie, finding no joy in the upcoming holiday, sits on the other side of Lucy’s makeshift ‘Psychiatric Help’ booth in the snow, grasping for answers?

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls! It’s time again to play…(insert woman screaming)

What the Heck is in my Tack room?

Look, I expect mice.

Mice live in barns, no matter how tidily you keep it.

Ask anyone who works outside for a living who might begrudge rising from a warm bed, and in my case, stumbling out into the freezing dark to the barn, and they will tell you there is nothing, I tell you, nothing, like observing a winter sunrise.

It had been a long day, Monday.

When I was a child my mother on a few occasions purchased an Advent calendar from our church’s tiny ‘gift shop’ with proceeds going to charitable concerns.

We bought a tree quite early this year as there has been a shortage of trees of late (owing, I was told, to the recession 12 years ago when many tree farmers went bust and, therefore, far fewer fraser firs were planted).

Tucked up with a coffee in hand and the heater blasting in my truck, what better atmosphere than to listen to a bit of Christmas music, I thought, as I pulled into the feed store for my weekly equine grocery shop.

Yes, the holidays are upon us and people everywhere have been gouging and scratching each other out of the way to snag the best deal as they prepare to celebrate the birth of The Prince of Peace.