Today's post is in response to Addy's writing prompt, thank you, Addy! 

Changing seasons means the holidays are coming. What are your plans, hopes, fears and dislikes for that time of the year? Do you make resolutions or just watch everyone else break theirs? Will you have a neighborhood celebration this year? Too many questions?

I like parties. Thus, I like the holidays, even though I always shrug them off immediately after like a wet coat. (I have been known to take down my Christmas tree first thing in the morning on 12/26 if I am close enough to it.)

The thing about holidays: they make you realize another year has gone by. And yay! Right? I mean, you're still alive! Consider the alternative! But at the same time I get bittersweet and nostalgic, which I hate. Hate? Here's why: If you focus to much on how great things were years and years ago, you miss out on how great they are now. I find myself getting really nostalgic for when I was a kid instead of focusing on making my daughter's holidays ones that she'll be nostalgic for later. I have to remind myself this is her childhood. These are her memories. Get out of your head, Rita.

The holidays, now? Are not about me. I don't sacrifice my whole life for my child, but holidays? Yeah. Sort of do. I'm okay with it, because from the minute that little redhead appeared in my life, life has been different. I can try to tell myself it's not, but yeah, totally is. Before I had a kid, did I consider 8 pm to be crazy ass late to be out, driving, on a road?

There's not as much downtime. Not as much money. Not as much freedom. Initially I felt sort of sorry for myself because of that, then a few years rocketed past and I realized how much life there will be on the other end of this childrearing business when she's off in her own apartment calling and asking how to boil water and I'm finishing work and looking into a full evening of Whatever the Hell I Want. (That does seem unfathomable now, as I type it.)

So I will subject myself to lines and crowds and uncomfortable sweaters and too many cookies and TV specials I've seen 1763 times in order to give her something to be nostalgic about.