presence

tonight i almost found myself going to bed and wishing i'd had time to write for the second night in a row. but no - i won't do that. so despite the freezing temperatures outside, i retrieved my laptop from the car and now i'm curled up in bed with mega and my keyboard.

i'm fully immersed in christmas, both preparation and celebration. we put up a second tree in the sitting room off my bedroom and decorated it completely differently than the main tree in the living room - bright colors, silly, and even gaudy ornaments. i've got christmas lights across the headboard of my king size bed and my bedroom floor is a cross between a gym and santa's workshop. ribbons and weights, wrapping paper and medicine balls, scissors and a bosu trainer, scotch tape and a body ball - you get the picture. hazardous doesn't even begin to cover it.

but i love it.

after i took mega out tonight for her last time, i sat down at todd's computer briefly to look at something. (this was before i braved the cold for my own computer.) his screen was filled with warcraft. (not real war, i mean world of warcraft, the game.) when i see the gaming websites pulled up on his page, the screenshots on his background or his homepage he's set to a game related site, it takes me back for a second.

yes, i admit it, i was briefly an online gamer. i played for about a year.. and quit playing about a year ago. it was very fun. i played with the boys and i played with strangers; and a fair number of the strangers became friends over time. but mostly i played to escape.

so when i walk up and see the game on todd's computer and feel no draw, no interest at all in getting reinvolved, it tells me something.

it's no coincidence that the time in my life when i became suddenly sick coincides with the year i disappeared into my computer screen. and it's no coincidence that when i started taking care of my body and mind, i reemerged.

mind bodymindbody mindbody mindbodymindbodymindbody... connection is an understatement.

but now - i don't want to escape! in fact, the life i live i can't get enough of. i definitely don't want any less. i don't want to miss a thing.

and my christmas theme speaks to that. somehow i often have a theme that runs through my gift giving.. last year, it was books. i was putting reading and writing back into priority in my own life and i gave everyone on my christmas list books that i selected for them, with accompanying letters explaining my choices.

this year, i have a different theme.. (though i did love book-giving and will definitely revisit it!) i don't want to say what it is, because there are still 9 days till christmas after all. but i will say that it's something i couldn't give if i weren't fully present.

a present of presence, as it were.

d: presence with my family over the holidays
b: present in my life
g: presence of my family and my haley