BAH HUMBUG!!!!!

I know I have been gone for a while and I will make no excuses.  You know that an excuse is just the skin off of a lie.  I could say I have been busy and I have been but as I have been heard to say, "we make time for those things that are important to us."  Plus the fact that I just can't seem to get it together to figure out what I want to write about.  Not that there is nothing but that there is too much!  As you should be used to by now, I digress.  I feel like I owe people around me an apology but I just do not have any Christmas spirit!!!!  I want the whole holiday season GONE!  I even told the preacher and his wife last Sunday if we don't quit singing 'Beautiful Star of Bethlehem' every Sunday in Dec. that next year I was not coming to church at all in the month of Dec.  They thought I was joking.  You see, that was Bobby's favorite Christmas song.  He looked forward to singing that song every year and wanted it sung the first and last Sunday in Dec.  This past Sun. would have been our 23rd wedding anniversary and guess what song the trio that sang one of the specials sang.  Yep, you got it.  I know my feelings are maybe a little more tender this year as we are going to have our 1st Christmas gathering without my brother but I just can not help it.  I told all of ya'll last year that if I was by myself this year at Christmas I was not dragging that tree out.  Well guess what and guess what?  I made one small concession.  My 9 year old niece (yes, my brother's daughter) seemed to be a little bothered that I didn't have any decorations up so I let her put the small tree that I put on the dining room table up.  I am sorry but I just do not have the heart for this.  I really am not a negative person but this is the time of year that it just seems to be so in your face that couples are doing things together and planning what to get each other for Christmas that it is an even stronger reminder for those of us who are alone.  I think I am doing the 'alone' thing pretty well most of the time but there are those moments when it does get to be overwhelming.  Well, ya'll have listened to me whine long enough.  I am ok but still even after all this time have those moments.  Remembering a couple of Indian proverbs:  "Live to fight another day." and "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger."  The picture I am including is Christmas of 2010 when all 5 siblings were together at the holidays.  And yeah, you might be a redneck if you have your Christmas picture made at the Waffle House.  Thanks for listening.  I will try to be back sooner.  I am looking for a New Year's Eve party not so much to see the new year in but to see 2012 gone.  The year has pretty much sucked!  And my nieces and nephew would be disappointed because I always scolded them for using that term.  Oh well, see ya'll later.