When I began this Christmas series, I figured it would be good discipline for me. Although I love to write in Got My Reservations, I’m not a faithful daily blogger.

Writing the series has turned out to be an allegory for my life.

• Sometimes I just blow it off. I didn’t write every day, which is similar to what I do in other areas of my life. Most of the time I trudge along responsibly, doing what I’m supposed to do and following the rules. Occasionally, however, I have a breakout moment where I just say “forget it” and sit down in my Lazy-Boy and watch hours of mindless television. Should I beat myself up about that? I don’t think so.
• I look at the world with a writer’s eye. I was constantly thinking about the blog’s contents and possible subjects about which to write. Everywhere I went, I looked at scenes and people through a critical lens, wondering if I should snap a photo to document the story. I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking of a turn of phrase or a germ of an idea and rush to the computer to get it down “on paper.” I suppose that’s the curse of the writer; but most of the time I found that oiling my squeaky creativity wheel was good for my soul.
• I’m still struggling to find my voice. I found a lot of other interesting blogs while I was researching my own posts. There are so many niche blogs out there, but many of them don’t seem to have much of a following. I’m looking for my own audience but I don’t seem to fall into any regular models.  Writing this series made me think about why I write and for whom. For the twenty or so of you who regularly tuned in for 25 Days of Christmas, thank you. I hope it was worth it.
• I love Christmas, with all of its philosophical and historical warts. I struggled with the lack of Christmas decorations in my own house — this coming from a person who has a significant amount of her basement crawl space dedicated to boxes filled with Christmas items. Writing about my remodeling process helped me to cope with my own discomfort about the shape my house was in. Writing about the other elements of my life — music, teaching, friends and family — made me see that one’s house is only one part of the Christmas picture. My darling husband is probably cheering right now and hoping that I’ll be prompted to sell some of the stuff currently living under the house. Maybe, honey. I’ll think about it.

So, today becomes the end of this particular series of posts, and the beginning of another chapter in my life. Thank goodness I’m celebrating Christmas where there are Christmas decorations. My life may be complete.

All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go. Unfortunately, we have a very long day ahead of us, starting with the full body scanner at O’Hare. Talk to you on the flip side.

One of the things that school teachers do during their vacation from school is to go to the doctor, and I am no exception to the rule. Once every five years, I schedule a colonoscopy during my school vacation. This, my friends, is my fifth day before Christmas Public Service Announcement, and it’s not a pretty story.

My father was a colon cancer survivor through no preventative behavior of his own — they caught his cancer accidentally because of another test. He had about a foot of his guts removed and lived to tell about it. My mom, unfortunately, somehow didn’t think that having a colonoscopy might be a good idea for her, and five years ago ended up with a colostomy due to diverticulitis that led to peritonitis. She’s still living with the choice she made, and with dietary changes her problem could have been avoided.

Many of us will end up with some sort of diverticular disease by the time we are sixty, but we don’t have to die from it. All you need to do is to keep your bowels moving so that you don’t get pockets of nasty stuff caught in your gastrointestinal tract (I warned you that it wasn’t a pretty story!). It’s pretty simple, really. I’m not a doctor, but this isn’t rocket science either.

1. Drink lots of water

2. Eat food with fiber: fruit, vegetables, whole grains

3. Exercise

4. Talk to your doctor. He or she will probably tell you to have a screening colonoscopy if you are fifty, or before that if you have risk factors such as family history.

So that’s my story for today.  I didn’t get my dining room table cleared off or decorated, but I’m pretty sure that I will have five more years to be alive to enjoy Christmas in the future. That’s more important.

I was all set to write a rant about this photo I took last night.

I was going to say something about the entitlement that some people feel in shopping malls when they choose to ignore obvious markers that say “don’t park here.” I was going to go on a tirade about impolite behavior in the guise of Christmas cheer. That was before.

On my way home in the early dusk of the solstice sunset, I encountered a motorist pushing his car across a very busy intersection. All the cars in the opposite direction were stopped, waiting for him to get across the street while he pushed his medium-sized sedan by himself in very cold weather. As he cleared the intersection and traffic began to move through, one of the cars rounded the corner and pulled up behind the guy who was still pushing his car. The new motorist got out of his car and went to help the guy push his car further out of the intersection and away from traffic. The Good Samaritan was not elderly, but his shock of grey hair marked him to be significantly older than the kid whose car had broken down. Then he went back, moved his own car further down the street and away from the intersection and appeared to confirm that the driver of the now safely parked dead car was going to be okay.  As the Good Samaritan returned to his own car, I rolled my window down and told the GS that what he had done was really nice, and then drove off myself.

This whole scenario took about 3 minutes but it broke the hold the jerk in the mall parking lot had on me. For every person who mows down a cone in a parking lot, there’s another person who will take the time out of their commute to help a stranger. That’s the true meaning of Christmas spirit to me.