Turning on the television has always been the first thing I do when I get home, but right now it’s lighting over priced and festive smelling candles in jars from a store in the mall I’m ashamed to admit I went to.

There’s cinnamon and a hint of pine wafting through our space and it. Is. Delicious.

At the same time, I’m preparing for the weeks of solitude that mark the span of time from my birthday to the new year.

I’ve done this for years – this sabbatical thing. Since my mother and father passed at during my 21st and 23rd years, respectively. During my 25th year, after my first major crash and burn relationship, my sister (seester) sent me a book that introduced a new dance step to my routine: one that taught me dancing alone can be fabulous and wild and magical and mysterious, and needn’t be cause for pity from onlookers.

With one foot in each place, I’m on the edge of the holiday dance floor wondering which I’ll choose this year, or if one will choose me.

I get all geeked up about buying or making gifts for loved ones and beat myself up at their always inadequate wrapping jobs as well as what they are. Always heartfelt, I question their reception – like the year I sent my siblings each a framed reprint of the only photo I have of us together as children with my parents and heard not a word.

If nothing else is certain, this is – I’ll make my Irish Crème and consume it by the liter, I’ll ponder my navel and catch up on the movies I meant to see this year but didn’t have the time for. I’ll devour a pile of books I’ve been hoarding and avoiding and maybe I’ll even write.

It’s a special time I look forward to with great anticipation and over hyped expectations every year, and every year something different comes of it. A break in my exile to see friends, an unexpected road trip, a technical project or shooting spree (cameras, not guns, silly)…or nothing at all.

So don’t mind me as a I waffle and wane, as I abruptly jerk between giddiness and gloom. It’s just the holidays and me missing my folks, my siblings, my innocence and my youth in a place called “home” that no longer exists.

A few snaps while I’m here, along with happy happy holiday wishes for those of you who haven’t given up on me yet and still come back…