(happy) winter

I have this problem where the longer I go without posting the more I feel like the next post I make has to be really profound to make up for the gap. I'm trying to get over that. This is not profound at all.

I've been joking with people that I don't want winter to start, I feel like I have PTSD from last year (104.5 inches of snow, breaking a local record of some decades, not to mention a few delightful days of blizzards and/or freezing rain). It's getting less of a joke as the snow keeps falling, especially as this year I've quit my horrible job but I have finals stress to deal with instead. Oh, and thanks to the surgeon not warning me ahead of time what my followup surgery would entail, I'm back on crutches for a week. Yep, crutches. In the snow. help.

Which I think is why I was struck by a quote from a Vodou priest that The Wild Hunt posted a couple days ago:

This year, they spent what they could to honor the dead, while still trying to support the living, Josue said. 'I don't think the Gede [the spirits of the dead] will be offended,' Josue said. 'They will be concerned about the condition of the world, because they have a lot of work to do now.'"

Which I think gets at why I don't like the religion-only-in-a-crisis mode that I (and I think a lot of other casual-religious folks) was brought up with: if you only turn to your gods when you need them, you feel like you need to do a lot of work to earn that help, at a time when that work is hard/expensive/impossible; but if you've been keeping up the relationship all along, you just all pitch in together and pull through. Rather like humans do. All of which is to say that while the snow is still mildly traumatic, I'm in a much better place this winter than I was last winter.

Now if only I could walk.