Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Missing Christmas

So I'm in Arkansas as I write this, as I have been for the past five-ish months. Now, don't get me wrong, Arkansas isn't that bad of a place by any standard; I have a roof over my head, three meals a day, and seventeen billion (or so it would seem) hours of homework a night. In fact, the biggest thing wrong with Arkansas is the fact that it is not, through no fault of its own, Colorado.
Now, I understand that I chose to come here. And I understand that I'm choosing to come back in January. But at the moment, I'm wishing, rather forlornly, that I wasn't here, and that I had chosen to go to a school in Colorado instead.
Why? Because as I said before, Arkansas is not Colorado. In fact, it's very much not Colorado (You call these mountains? More like "largish hills.") And as it is not Colorado, many of the things that I'm used to happening in Colorado do not happen here.
Things like snow. Now, a few weeks ago, everyone was all excited because it had snowed. I got kinda excited, so I went to my window and looked out.
That was not snow. That was thickish frost. It was thickish patchy frost at best. It didn't even stick to the sidewalks. Laaaame.
Now, Colorado has snow. Snow means winter, winter means Christmas, unless you happen to be in pre-Aslan narnia.
Arkansas does not have snow. Therefore, it stands to reason that it is not winter (it is a nuclear apocalypse and all the trees have died), and therefore, there will be no Christmas. Santa Clause does not exist. Rudolf is a lie. And Frosty the snowman? Yeah, right.
This makes getting into the holiday spirit difficult, to say the least. The hall decorations are helping, but until frozen whiteness falls out of the ceiling (at which point I am MOVING OUT), it ain't the holidays that I'm used to.
But snow's not the only thing that's missing from Christmas down here. There's also a crucial lack of Girl Scout related excursions (though I got at least one of those over thanksgiving), assorted madness trying to get Operation Christmas Child together, and staring suspiciously at mysterious packages that arrive in the mail and are rapidly whisked away to the magical land of wherever mom hides stuff. This was supposed to be happening all through the month of November, eventually leading up to the annual deciding not to get a real tree this year and decorating three smaller ones to look like a big one. Yes, true holiday traditions. And all they have in Arkansas is ice and paper snowflakes.
But what I really miss, surprisingly, is one of the things that I least looked forward to when I had the option. Wrapping books at Borders with my girl scout troop. Getting stiffed by the lady with five oddly shaped books who's yakking on her cell phone the whole time and running out of tape at crucial moments isn't something you'd think I'd miss, but it is. At least, right now. Maybe in a few minutes I'll be missing having a heater that isn't schizophrenic, or pretending that my mom doesn't already know everything she's getting. Who knows. But right now, I'm missing Borders, and I'm missing it like crazy.
The sad thing is, it's one of those things that even if I had stayed in Colorado, I wouldn't be doing. My girl scout troop is done. Over with. Graduated. I don't usually adress real life stuff here, but it's happened. And even if we do get together to go to the mall once in a while, we will never do another fundraiser. That includes Borders, and all the cell phone yakking, odd shaped presents, reciept not-having and tape running out of that comes with it.
Somehow, I miss it.
It's hard to grow up in Christmastime.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

We miss you.

It's not really Christmas without you here, either. A piece of my holiday cheer seems to be stuck in Arkansas with you, so just bring it back with you when you come.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, finally read this one. And yes, I'm feeling the same, in a way...it's weird to not have seen the Christmas decorations in the hallways of CSCS, and weird to think that last year I hadn't graduated. One thing that gets to me is my old house - our last day in it last year was Christmas day, and I'm really missing the glow of the Christmas lights on my BLUE walls, instead of these lame white ones.

But I should probably blog about my own grievances (kinda got off topic there...)

And hey, I agree with Ivy - as much as I didn't realize it, my Colorado friends, or lack thereof, have really been affecting this year, so I'm glad I get to see you guys soon. Maybe that'll cheer us all up a little :)

Anonymous said...

Sheez, that guy up there is a serious babblemouth. You should ignore his random tangents.