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You know how, when the power goes out early in the day, and you throw a bit more wood on the fire and draw back a curtain and curl up in your favorite corner of the couch and pull something your grandmother knit up over your legs, and just sit and read in the warm sunlight that streams through the frosted glass.

And how, as you read, you begin to relish the romance of the situation: the old-world charm, as it were, the peace and quiet, and forget how you arrived to the luxuriant state you are in, and think, My, a cup of coffee would be absolute heaven right now.

And how, it's not until after you’ve marked your page, uncurled your legs and ventured the tips of one set of toes back into their slippers that you remember… “Shit! The power's out.”

A similar cycle of forgetting and remembering will go on all day for me today.

At least two dozen times in the next ten hours I will think it the perfect time to drive into Home Depot or Wal-Mart or the Feed Store or Cracker Barrel and then I'll remember… Christmas.

Because, after all... it is.

And everything is close.

As it should be. 

Merry Christmas.