The One Where She {Almost} Drowned in Eggnog

Alright, I am just going to come right out and admit it. I have committed myself to do too many things, for too many people, right before Christmas! There is probably a 12-step program for this, where I could get up and say, “Hello, my name is Victoria, and I am a… (I don’t even know what you call it) girl who can’t say no?” In my defense, it is difficult to pass up opportunities to earn extra money, especially this time of year. Some of these gigs pay.

But I would like to bake a few goodies, maybe put up a Christmas tree, buy a couple of presents, send out the Christmas cards and make the house look nice for my family. I haven’t had time for those things, and I really have no one to blame but myself, so I will not even begin to bore you by listing the things I have done this week or still have to do… in fact, if I get a full night’s sleep tonight, tomorrow I might feel entirely different about this. I can do without a meal now and then, but sleep deprivation makes me, well… full of self-pity. At the moment I feel like I am drowning. Maybe in a tub full of egg nog, with a strand of garland wrapped around my neck a few times, just to be festive about it.

So an hour ago, I started this post and wrote that all down, and then my visiting teachers came over. If you are not conversant with my Mormon talk, there are a couple of women who stop by once a month to check and make sure I haven’t drowned in eggnog or been strangled by tinsel or whatever, and while they are here they give me a short inspirational message. So Teri told me the message was about compassion. She started to cry, and told me that every time she has had a bad time, I seem to just know, and I see her and tell her exactly what she needs to hear, and I don’t try to fix her problems, which usually can’t be fixed anyway, but I just hug her and tell her that things will work out… and apparently other profound things. She told me that I was her personal example of compassion.

That stabbed me in the heart a little bit. I have been drowning in the aforementioned eggnog/pity, as well as ignoring thirty calls a day from someone who we will call Christine the Crazy Lady, a semi-homeless, entirely carless (that’s car-less, not careless) “born-again” Filipino woman who is unusually preoccupied with The Rapture, to whom I have given a few rides. I have not been as compassionate as I should, and that is probably why I feel like I am drowning. It was a message I really needed to hear. I am going to go take a nap, and then get back to work.



Happily ☺. I promise.