The Sole Survivor

The holiday decorations have all been put away … all except for this dude.

Because he is not explicitly a holiday decoration, per se, we like to leave him out for the rest of the dismal abyss known as “post-holiday winter.” It is up to him to fill, in some small way, the massive void created by the sudden absence of all of the lovely holiday decorations that had become a part of the house over the past month.

Once the holidays are over, I have no use whatsoever for winter. What just days ago was a seasonally appropriate backdrop of frigidity and snow that served to enhance my holiday spirit is now a lifeless, frozen tundra that makes me wish I could crawl into bed and hibernate like a bear for the next three or four months.

I have made tremendous progress, though; throughout my late teens and much of my 20s, I used to be depressed from the moment the first leaf hit the ground until the moment I set foot on the beach again.