While on one hand I've been celebrating my first full holiday season back in Harris County in ten years, it also means that for the first time since 2001 I'm not with my chosen family members and experiencing all the traditions we'd built up during my time in Da Ville.
I wasn't there to bounce up and down Bardstown Road the first Saturday of this month to experience Bardstown Aglow and play DJ for my Edenside Christian Church congregation. They didn't get to hear me spin Christmas tunes with soul and ask the holiday revelers to "Sliiiide into Edenside"' and take advantage of our church's holiday hospitality.
And I miss talking to my pastor at Edenside, the Rev. Sally McClain and various people in the congregation.. I also miss Maestro Stawicki, LFC and many of the people I had the pleasure of meeting in the fencing community up there in Kentucky and the USFA Great Lakes region. .
I'm going to miss taking part in the Christmas Eve service at the church, scarfing up Dawn's sugar cookies and homemade waffles, and Christmas dinner with Dawn, Polar and Mama Bear. I miss riding around checking out Christmas lights with holiday music softly playing in the background on the radio.
I miss those times I got to hang out and spend quality time with Angie Fenton, my homegirl Shaha and various peeps in the Louisville liberal progressive activist community, at U of L and the LPTS.
I'm going to miss seeing the Light Up Louisville ceremony downtown and already miss Impellizzeri's. I'm also going to miss the pajama breakfast at wonderfully quirky Lynn's Paradise Cafe on New Year's Day.
The snow, shoveling it and 20 degree temps? Not so much.
That trip down Louisville Christmas memory lane got triggered by a package I received from Dawn and Polar earlier this morning. In addition to some mail from peeps that didn't get the memo I'm back in the Lone Star State, it had some wrapped Christmas presents in it.
I'd already received Christmas cards last week from Dawn and Maureen Aubrey. Maureen is one of the members of my Louisville church family who every year since my arrival there sent me a Christmas card.
Aww (sniff sniff) Thanks Polar and Dawn. I miss y'all and the good people of Louisville just as much as I hope y'all miss me. Merry Christmas.
And can y'all send a sister some Derby Pie for her birthday?