Influenced.

If you are like me and on social media too much, then you have likely seen your share of influencers (a.k.a. people who have made a career out of shopping) sharing their Christmas shopping guides. It runs the gamut from beauty products to age appropriate gifts for every person you could possibly know including your kid’s hamster. If gifts are your love language, Instagram has you covered for the holiday season.

After the Thanksgiving break when I went back to work, my coworker and I compared notes about our dinner. Mostly about how stressful it is to get several dishes done and hot at the same time with a kitchen full of hungry family and friends. I told her that it seemed like I was standing at the stove forever and about to lose my ever loving shit because the gravy wasn’t thickening. It eventually did, and hours later when everyone had left and I was laying in bed, all I could think about was whether or not I had seasoned it. I couldn’t remember. Was it bland? I ate it and it tasted fine but was it? Or was I so glad it finally was the right consistency that I called it done and never paid attention to how it tasted? My last thought before falling asleep was that next year I needed to pay attention to that as if that was something I’d actually remember.

I crashed the next day and did nothing until the weekend and the kickoff to the holiday shopping season where I mostly deleted hundreds of emails. The overload was intense and I’m not sure how to get off the rollercoaster of accumulating stuff. I often dance between cutting back and a running movie in my head where I am sitting on the sidewalk of a Paris cafe wearing the perfect outfit. So perfect the French say mon ami where did you get that and I say at Loft for 40% off. Can you believe it? And they say, “Oui oui, of course, isn’t your Loft always 40% off?” Then we chuckle and I sip red wine and run my fingers over my faux pearl necklace layered on top of a polyester sweater that’s supposed to mimic cashmere.

At the start of the new week a front had moved in and it snowed all day. I was off and Mike worked from home. As is typical of the first snow of the season, the roads were a mess and drivers forgot that this is what happens in the winter. Though I have no qualms about driving in the snow I never left the house, never made a Cyber Monday purchase, never saw a reason for a mad dash to the grocery store. I did some writing and laundry and looked out the window a lot like a true Midwesterner and said, “It sure is coming down.”

At 10:00 that night I leashed up Ernie and took him outside one last time before we all went to bed. Michael had spent hours cleaning off the driveway but the dog stopped on the threshold of the garage and froze. He was freaked out even though he’d been in the snow multiple times that day. We stood there a few minutes until I stepped out and coaxed him into doing the same. It was so quiet – the snow and darkness blanketing everything in an unmatched calmness that was the antithesis to the previous few days. As if it was a scripted movie, an owl started hooting and this dog who finds a reason to bark at nearly everything stayed as silent as the night.

Reluctantly we had to come inside and break the spell but those few minutes of winter magic live inside of me now. For too many days too many unimportant things were holding out their carrot sticks wanting my undivided attention. Then nature showed up and said, “Mon ami, nice sweatpants. The bleach that discolored them when you were scrubbing the shower are especially striking. Now hold my Pinot Noir I’ve got to give you something.”

What a love language.