December 6, 2025
Friday

Today was one of those days. I thought I would be exempt from those days this year, of all years — all the rushing and scrambling and eating on the run and self-imposed million things to do while also working full time and managing other people’s schedules all the while complaining and sighing that you’re tired and your feet hurt and why can’t people just be nice! That’s not my life now. I have complete control of my time and my tasks.

So I got up around 7:00, but instead of settling in for First Cup and some poetry and prayer, I bundled up (it was 23 °) and drove the scant three miles to the lab attached to the office of my Primary Care Physician to have blood drawn for a checkup next week. This has to be a fasting sample. I am accustomed to getting there before the copier is warmed up, and getting in and out in less than ten minutes.

The medical practices I have relied on for many years are top-notch. I have complete confidence in the quality of care. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the administrative side of things. There’s been a merger of the umbrella organization that my practice used to belong to and a gigantic soulless machine of a conglomerate that I won’t name here, but if you know where I live . . . Anyway, the merger has been a disaster for efficiency and timely delivery of care. When I arrived today, I found that there were already 23 people ahead of me, each of them waiting for their charts to be coded so they could submit to the bloodletting. Thus I had been fasting extra-long when I was finally seen more than an hour later.

Things were worse at the supermarket some five hours later — long lines at the self-serve checkout stations, clerks complaining to each other how they’ve been on since 7 am. and still have four hours to go, their feet hurt, their backs hurt, the register wouldn’t print my receipt and no one knew where the extra rolls of paper were, and one of the harried clerks (probably under 25 years old) nearly knocked me down in the crosswalk rushing to his car.

My usual process during Holidailies is to present a few of my favorites from years gone by. It’s an easy, maybe even a lazy, way of fulfilling the pledge to post every single day, especially when the creative juices have run dry from all that rushing around. The piece offered here popped up in my Facebook memories for this day. I repeat it now because I was in danger today of forgetting what the True Meaning of the season is, what I intended the True Meaning to be for me this year.

Read it. Do it. It’s what the world needs now.

Speak It Once Again