Another Christmas

Another Christmas.  How they whirl past, one after another.  We have, save for a quick gift delivery to neighbours, spent it at home.  We had planned to drive to either Picnic Point or the  Range Lookout this morning, while the roads were still quiet, to have a coffee and enjoy the view.  Rain, however, put an end to that.  The promised rain has not eventuated, this morning's drizzle not counting for much so it's been quite a pleasant day - although I would've preferred a cozy rain confined day at home.  The grass has recovered but still we are in drought.  The soil is bone dry beneath a very narrow band at the surface.

The last vestige of small talk and small writing; the weather.  I have these thoughts I want to explore when I am no where near the computer (or a notebook) and have no chance of pursuing them.  

One of them is the nature of guilt and punishment.  Again.  I'm not Catholic but repeatedly I return to this train of thought.  If I don't get what I want or something bad happens, is it punishment, is it karma?  Am I not holding my mouth just right?   This house still hasn't sold and there's a part of me that believes it's my fault, that I don't deserve to live in a place more suited to me than here which is, although beautiful, killing me slowly as I watch the .... have to say it, environmental vandals/philistines/rednecks destroy it by degrees.  For years I've watched as the bush is chipped away through burning and now, tree clearing, which seems to be the new tool of the cognoscenti farmer.

I cry when I see, almost daily, the results of the latest attack.  Or at least my eyes well up with tears.  Perhaps I now qualify as a silly old woman for crying about the loss of the bush.  And maybe it's selfish to not want to feel bad when I see the new piles of freshly bulldozed trees waiting to be burnt.  But I do.  So I feel guilty because I'm still here, the house hasn't sold and I must be doing something wrong. 

Or am I being selfish to influence Richard this way?  He'd stay if I said I'd stay.  He doesn't ride through the bush so he doesn't feel as strongly as I do about its demise.  If I talk about the creatures who die when they burn it hurts him so I don't talk about it.  So I suppose I am being selfish in pushing for this but in the end, I have to.  Being old here is out of the question (or should I say older).  Is it sinful to want more (or something different) when I already have so much and billions of people have next to nothing?  There is much guilt attached to that.

The other side of me says, I am already blessed in being well fed, clothed and housed.  I just want to change locations, spend Christmas in the Tweed Valley rather than the Lockyer Valley.  So get over it, stop feeling guilty and just get on with it!