I don’t know how to break this to my mom, but I just heard that “As the World Turns” is going off the air next year. Mom has been watching “As the World Turns” for 48 years – which means she’s been keeping up with the likes of Nancy, Chris, Lisa and Bob longer than she’s been keeping up with me.

When I was little, she took a break everyday from housework to watch her stories. Or she watched while ironing shirts – shaking the iron at the TV, warning Betsy, “Don’t listen to him! He’s a snake in the grass!” She watches them still, but I long ago lost track of the leading snake.

I watched the stories daily until first grade; after that I could only see them during sick days, Christmas vacations and summers. But it wasn’t hard to catch up – Mom always filled in the gaps. Over the long years, there were fewer cases of total amnesia and more unplanned pregnancies, kidnappings and murders. I haven’t seen the soaps since college, but I’ve heard some of them have gotten as wild as alien abductions.

Mom was sad last year when “Guiding Light” went off the air, but “As the World Turns” was always her favorite. The Lisa character, played by Eileen Fulton for 50 years, is like an old family friend, albeit, one who’s been married nine times.

They say that “As the World Turns” might continue online, and I hope it does. Because then, finally, my mom will get herself a computer.

What is it about the cold, cold mornings, the dark nights and short days that stirs these fantasies in my head? It’s all I can think about, from the time I wake to the time I go to sleep. Thank God it’s warm here most of the time, because otherwise I would be driven crazy by the thought of it. Yes, gentle readers, I’m talking about FOOD.

All I want to do is bake something warm and sweet, whip up a big hot vat of something steamy. Then lie on the couch with a Snuggie and eat a giant bowl full, watching black-and-white movies all day. If I lived up North, I’d turn into Jabba the Hut.

You readers up North will have to forgive our general reaction to snow. Yes, it’s pathetic that we don’t know how to drive in it. I had to turn around on my way to work in the midst of a flurry, because even if I was able to keep my car on the road, I wasn’t too sure that other people could. Plus, nobody knows what to do about icy bridges ’round here. Except skid off of them.

As for a snowman, this here is as about as close as we come. It has leaves and sticks poking out of it because there was only a half-inch of snow on the ground, and this is what it looks like when you start rolling it up. And there was the snow angel Girl made, which looked a lot like a mud puddle.

Still, this was the whitest (almost) Christmas we’ve had in quite a while. It’ll be another four years til we see another one.

We didn’t recognize the address on the envelope and there was no name on the return address. The Christmas card, our first of the season, turned out to be from an old friend. Last year in his Christmas newsletter, he wrote about the cruise he had taken with his whole family. I was envious of him — in his vacation photo, standing there among his grown children and cute grandchildren, he looked as if he had gotten everything he ever wanted.

This year there were no photos on his newsletter. First he explained the new address — he had lost his job, and he and his wife were now living up north with grandma, essentially moving back home at age 60. His wife had gotten a job at Walmart, and he was trying to become a substitute teacher. He joked about being reverse snowbirds — the only folks his age moving north instead of south. The main thing for him was hanging on to some kind of insurance, he said. Both he and his wife had battled cancer this year.

So there in the first Christmas card of the season was the story of the Great Recession. God bless you, my friend. May 2010 be much kinder.