Solstice Satisfactions

This morning, in the pre-dawn dark of the day of the Winter Solstice, my father-in-law and stepmom-in-law drove away.

What a dramatic sentence!  But the story that precedes it does not justify that sentence--a classic creative writing mistake. 

No, the story that precedes it is that they came and we had a lovely visit and they decided that Sunday is a better day to travel than Monday.  They had thought they might the whole trip from South Florida to Memphis in one day, but yesterday, they began to reconsider.  It's a long trip to make in one day.

So, here I am, with my holiday visitors come and gone (my mom and dad last week-end, in-laws this past week-end) and the holiday still to come.  We celebrated Christmas yesterday--and we get to celebrate it again on Thursday.

I go to work tomorrow, and then it's time to use the rest of my Paid Time Off before the year ends and the days off vanish.  I will not return to work until Jan. 2.  We will not be traveling, which is odd for us.

I plan to get some writing done, of course.  I hope to make the final decisions that need to be made with the memoir/essay project--perhaps the draft that's ready for the final edits will be done by 2015 after all. 

We will have friends over here and there.  And of course, there will be church, more church than usual.  And I need to get my online classes ready.

I am so looking forward to this holiday time.  Even better, I feel like I'm getting a bonus time, since I've already had such a wonderful holiday time with my family.