Today is Boxing Day or St. Stephen’s Day or just the day after Christmas.  St Stephen was the first Christian martyr, so maybe he is the best symbol of the season.

I discovered I have access to HBO Max last night.  I opted for the slow moving Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest, Candace Bergman tale of three old friends on a reunion voyage on the Queen Mary II.  Meryl is a Pulitzer prize winning author (of course she is) about to win a prestigious literary award.  The other two are along for the ride, which turns out to be long-winded (a lot of talk, mostly awkwardly improvised) and little action until the end.  It put me to sleep and fit my grinch mood.  Try the new Wonder Woman instead, or just rewatch one of the old classics, if you really want to laugh or be moved (The Christmas Story or It’s a Wonderful Life).

I have the new Jeffrey Archer Hidden in Plain Sight and have been alternating between the fictional Royal Governess and the true story of The Little Princesses – all on my iPhone, but today I think I need to hold a book in my hand.  Maybe the William Kent Krueger paperback I’ve had sitting on the shelf.  He is usually an author who inspires or at least commiserates.

I’ve pretty much had it with the holidays and cooking and being good – bah humbug.  I hear about people traveling on planes anyway, the vaccine being delayed to the islands, the surge and the next surge as the virus keeps rolling along morphing into a different form, the Congress hoisted by their own petard, the president playing games, and on and on.  I know I should be looking for things to be grateful for, but, as I said, I am tired of being good.  I want to have coffee with a friend again, I want to go out to dinner again, I want to walk around the block and along the ocean without worrying about who is coming toward me again, I want to get on a plane again, I want to live my life again. Please.

Tomorrow I will raise myself back up to be a positive purveyor of optimism, but today I think I’ll just watch the rain, read my book, and wallow.

“4:00, wallow in self-pity. 4:30, stare into the abyss. 5:00, solve world hunger, tell no one. 5:30, jazzercize; 6:30, dinner with me. I can’t cancel that again. 7:00, wrestle with my self-loathing. I’m booked. Of course, if I bump the loathing to 9, I could still be done in time to lay in bed, stare at the ceiling and slip slowly into madness.” — The Grinch