They are saying it supposed to snow today. Light this evening and then more through the night and day tomorrow. School children and people that don't have any responsibility to the outside world or need to commute long distances are excited at the possibility and being surrounded by the quiet and peaceful glory of all that soft downy white. There's a certain sense of calm that comes with snowfall and around here it can be a welcome reprieve. Normally I would take extreme joy in being surrounded by soft blankets of rolling icy white dunes but this week I'm quietly begging God to hold off for a few more days so that I, and my employees, can get to work and feed a lot of very wealthy folks Thanksgiving dinner.

Yesterday I went to work at three thirty in the afternoon and finally left at four thirty this morning; I had to fight to keep my eyes open driving home. With the exception of three phone calls from work throughout this morning, I slept from five thirty until noon. Normally subsisting on a breakfast of a piece of fruit, cup of coffee and a few slices of toast, today I decided it high time to have a heartier sort of meal to nurse my achy back and the bloody feeling soul I'm sporting these days. I fed my bruised and broken heart a giant mound of pancakes, four of them to be exact, grilled slightly crisp with butter and drenched in a downpour of real maple syrup. I drank two mug-fulls of lemony french pressed Ethiopian coffee, some of my favorite, and watched the oil swirl in the top of the cup. I sat in silence and listened to my little red dog breath quietly, inhaling the world in and out slowly, and wondered what he worries about, what it is like to live a life in his body, in his world.

I have cried more in my life this November than ever before. I have probably shed more tears in the past four weeks than in all my other years combined in actuality. When my mom died I didn't cry much. I would have occasional breakdowns, only when I talked about her with anyone so I've mostly just tried to never do so, the showing of emotion always feeling horribly embarrassing and shameful on my part. I tend to be one that hides her true feelings from others most of the time and drowns her sorrows in something like a giant plate of pancakes with real maple syrup. But this November it seems that all in the world that can go wrong has and feels like whenever I manage to scrounge up a small spoonful of faith that it will get better after some upset, something else troubling occurs. The saying 'when it rains it pours' feels an understatement these days. I guess every cloud has a silver lining and one small lining amid this month's heartbreak has been the blessing of the reemergence of an old and endlessly true friend in my life. Yesterday she came over and she brought me pizza for lunch and we watched my favorite movie, Sleepless in Seattle. And at least three times during the movie, feeling swept away with my life's own recent love story gone horribly wrong, I sat silently and cried, tears billowing in the corners of my eyes. She sat gently beside me and rubbed my back and let me feel and be without question. The end of my nose is terribly sore this morning, flaky and red from having run so much from all the crying I've been doing. I look sickly, my face badly broken out and I've had three cold sores last week and my back has been killing me. I think my heartache and stress about all that's gone wrong this month and in the past thirty years really is starting to catch up to me as of late and show symptoms externally. A friend told me to breath in and out, to take it day by day and to have faith that over time, things will get better and I will be stronger. This is exactly what I would say to someone and I know that it was said with the utmost authenticity and love... but I'm having trouble having faith in anything these days, much less myself and my own ability to rebound and grow stronger.

I could write a novel here about all the failures and stresses that have made this November pulsate with sadness and heartbreak but I'll refrain. I'll simply say that it's bitterly cold outside and its supposed to snow. Its two nineteen in the afternoon and I'm still in my pajamas and I look an absolute disaster. I'm snuggled up under a blanket of down in bed with one of the few loves of my life curled up against my leg. He hasn't had a bath in weeks and sheds badly and normally I wouldn't let him sleep up here with me but today it's cold outside in the world and inside of me and I need the gentle comfort and warmth of his silent love perhaps more than ever before. I'm feeling more hopeless than I can ever in all my days recall feeling and find myself trying to just survive from one day to the next and not think about beyond then because then the tears and the stress and the feelings of unworthiness ensue. I wonder, isn't if funny how in the matter of a month, in love gained and then painfully lost, the world can seem to swell with joy and then so quickly after, seem to ring so loudly with sorrow? From my October 28th entry when all in the world felt happy and hopeful, how in the hell did I so quickly, arrive here? I suppose today rather than drown in my own feelings of inadequacy and disappointment and sorrow about what has transpired in my life between now and then, I will get up and I will take a shower and I will bundle up and walk the dog and I will drive to work and eat an apple in the car and I will serve the world and all the while I will be waiting anxiously to see if that soft, quiet blanket of snow returns early this year to quiet the world and blanket all of our hearts with familiar memories of home and if in its return, it will gently cleanse my soul and melt away some of this sorrow and heartache with it when it goes...

Namaste.