Here's Johhny

It's here.

Every fall there comes a day when I realize that the holiday season has begun.

Today was that day.

The days are shorter/darker/colder, people become more and more frantic and difficult, and the days seem more and more chaotic. Suddenly anyone that works in retail is swept up in the whirlwind of the holidays just trying to keep their heads up--forget about swimming upstream. All you can do is try to get through it. And we do. But it also means the inevitable change from autumn to winter.

I hate winter.

I am not psychologically prepared for winter. But it's coming. It actually snowed yesterday [thank goodness none of it stuck]. All of us here are just hoping this winter is better than the last two. We had so much snow last winter that Spokane effectively shut down for days. Roofs collapsed, people were stranded in their homes because they couldn't get out of their driveways or the streets; it was chaos.

BUT

The holidays have their perks too:

Halloween
-candy and scary movies [although Hocus Pocus is my usual Halloween movie of choice]

Thanksgiving
-Turkey Soup is a delicious inevitability at my Dad's house
-my Step-dad's sweet potatoes [my mom and I fight over them every year]
-pumpkin pie

Christmas
-well having a paid day off is always great
-playing Santa's Little Helper at work is fun, plus we always have a smorgasbord of yummy holiday goodness [including prime rib] set up for us in the back of the store on Christmas Eve