Not quite looking forward to Christmas

I may not look it on the outside, but I’m actually quite sentimental if I let myself, which is why Christmas and especially New Year’s Eve are always a bittersweet time of the year for me even in normal circumstances. Everything surrounding Christmas is drenched in sentimentality about the family and love for the family of course, which is nice if you have a family, not so much otherwise. And then there’s New Year’s Eve and the runup to that, as we all get to reflect on the year past and what went right and what we’d like a do-over on. I always hated that anyway — “another year of not achieving much” — but this is the year Sandra died.

And it’s only been slightly more than a month since she died and it’s been hard, but as long as I can keep up my routines I can cope: go to work, obsess about blogging or cataloging books and comics, don’t try to think too much. But I will be off work from Friday and going to see the family (taking the cats on the train too, which will be fun) and I’ll have two weeks without much distraction but everything reminding me. Not that I won’t have fun at Christmas or not look forward to be away from home for a while, but I think the wee small hours will be a little bit less comfortable…