Ominous? You decide.

The fortune cookie that's been sitting on our kitchen table for two days became part of my breakfast this morning, and it had this to say:

They'll definitely remember all your efforts.

Well geez, great that I'll be given due credit and all, but now I feel like I'm scheduled to die today or something. With the ice out there on Somerville's uncleared sidewalks, that wouldn't be such a far-flung prediction.

_{The entertaining non sequitur on the back of the fortune was the Learn Chinese translation of the English word "girlfriend," which was neu pun yau. To those of us who are not familiar with the language, that could arguably be pronounced aloud as "New poon. Yow!"}

I really should put this under a filter, but I didn't write the fortune. I'm just sayin'.

Home For The Holidays (I stab-stab that song)

I wish I could stop stressing about the coming snowstorm and my travel on Thursday. But then, there's ample reason to stress. There will be a snowstorm, and I will be traveling in it. Sure it's Amtrak, which is probably the form of transportation least affected by winter weather, but delays do happen. And it's a 2-legged connecting journey, with the small but present risk of getting stranded overnight in Albany. I'll just to have to suck it up and deal.

If I were Queen of the world, I would change two things about Christmas:

Reduce emphasis on gifting
Reduce emphasis on obligatory holiday travel

I'd keep all the music and beauty and food and merry parties and sparkling lights, but the gifting and travel would be right out. Not banned, but not forced upon our culture to such a degree that they become two of the worst stress-creators of the season. Nobody is expected to travel great distances to be with their families for Halloween. We simply enjoy it wherever we are. Christmas (and Thanksgiving, for that matter) could have the same low impact, if more people were allowed to feel comfortable visiting loved ones at other times of the year, and not having to cram with the teeming masses into overcrowded airports, losing their luggage, getting stranded, car breaking down, and all manner of hell in the name of a holiday. Will we ever reach a point where enough people have spent Christmas sleeping on airport floors that we can stop this nonsense? How many people have to die on congested, icy roads before we finally wise up?

In the above, by we I mean me. I'm following the lemmings, as I must every year. In a tiny family of only 4 people, anyone not there causes an OMFG FLIPOUT CATASTROPHY. It wouldn't matter if a category 5 hurricane was laying biblical waste to all things between Boston and Rochester. I would be expected to get there even if I had to para sail on a freezing gale of wind. If not, Emily would be put on the phone to sob and wail dramatically (which really happened once when I had missed my flight and no more were available until after Christmas. Thus was born my Amtrak tradition).

I hope everyone who's staying put, wherever you are, has a really wonderful Christmas or Winter Holiday of your choice, and I hope I do, too. I just wish it were simpler.