Advent

Hi, my name is Anne, and I'm an Adventaholic. 

No, I'm not religious.  Nor do I celebrate Christmas with any particular vigor.  (In point of fact, I celebrate Christmas with the vigor of a spavined, mortally wounded mule.  Sometimes I manage a poinsettia.)

But Advent -hey now!  There's little quite so pleasurable as pleasurable anticipation- and to top it off, you get the day-by-day injection of awesome that is the Advent calendar. What's more satisfying then prising open the secrets of each day, especially if you can thereafter pop those secrets into your mouth? 

But I'll take just about any advent calendar, even the most unchocolatey.  Because there's more to advent calendars than the rather delicious illusion that you are eating time.   There's that moment - rarer and rarer in my life- of conscious, deliberate acknowledgement.  Instead of letting the days rush past, I take a moment to stare each one down and, as if I had all the time in the world, to bow.

December 1, 2013.   Nice to meet you.