I am getting older, for time now flies by and months fall off the calendar. I dare not think of what milestones await me around the next corner, but suffice it to say I'd love to find the pause button: I need to catch my breath. The last four months both crawled and flew by, proving that my perception of time is as firm as it has always been, which is to say, tenuous at best. Thanksgiving, Christmas, the New Year, Valentine's Day, and St. Patrick's Day have all come and gone, and not all of them left pleasant memories.

In short, I've been feeling quite sickly all this time. A good portion of it has to do with the upheaval commensurate with a new job. I've gone on at length on my other blog about change, but to sum up, change brings with it a tremendous amount of stress. There is but one other time in my life that I have been as stressed, and that was the year I served as the Interim Pastor. Stress of this magnitude and this duration always makes me sick to my stomach all the time. As you can now well imagine the holiday feasts were no joy to me, but a chore in not embarrassing myself by publicly displaying what was previously in my stomach. To those poor souls who supped with me, this is why I was nowhere near cheerful.

This year's Thanksgiving was different in nearly every aspect of tradition. We had ham instead of turkey, there were only four of us (the older and the younger Barbers), and the usual activities were not to be found. For the younger barbers the day started off on possibly the most down of notes that could be found. We awoke to a broken furnace and wet wood that we had been unsuccessful at keeping lit. The house was a cool 54 degrees Fahrenheit and we had no prospects of making it warmer, ever. Thankfully Holly was able to get a fire going through perpetual fire-tending, and combined with the oven cooking our share of the family meal, we were able to get some heat.