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Christmas and the after

Since this is the year my sisters and I do Christmas with our respective in-laws, and since Richard’s family does Christmas Eve instead of Christmas as the annual day of family gathering, this year’s Christmas was extremely low key. I’d pondered getting up and making gingerbread pancakes for breakfast, but at the Christmas Eve service my mom made a random comment about when she might get up to stir up the dough for the sticky buns and I rather unsubtly invited us over for breakfast. I suppose I should feel guilty but I cannot, because I only get the chance for homemade sticky buns twice a year and they are so very, very good.

So we got up when we felt like it, and curled up on the couch with the cats and our laptops and opened our Christmas presents to each other. Since we got home after midnight last night I managed to talk Richard into opening one present then (because 12:15 am is, technically, Christmas), but the rest waited until a more traditional hour of the morning.

Richard proved once again that he is good at shopping for clothes for me, surprising me with two lovely sweater tops and two skirts. I now have, among other neat stuff, a pile of books (including a knitting book), two magazine subscriptions that I very much wanted, and the newest version of the only computer game to which I have ever been addicted (Civilization). I have not yet installed it because I very much need to be doing some work for my Photoshop class, but I am not sure how much longer I will be able to hold out.

We went over to my parents’ house for breakfast, and to exchange gifts with them (they got me a yarn ball winder, which may not seem exciting if you are not a knitter but trust me, I really needed one!), and then came back to have a very lazy day. The afternoon was spent lounging around the living room – me with books and knitting, and Richard with his laptop and a box full of tiny parts, which slowly were put together to become a robot with a computer brain. The Lego’s Mindstorm set had originally been intended to be his big birthday present, but I decided since he has all next week off from work he’d probably appreciate having lots of time to play with it. Considering how much time he has since spent happily poking about on his computer and constructing the Legos into various robotic forms, I think I made a wise decision. Plus I figure he can plow through another of his presents – the entire collection of Monty Python on DVD – while I am off at work, thus saving me from getting to enjoy the strangeness of British humor except in only very small doses when I am actually home (heh).

My parents came over for dinner later – grilled steaks, roasted garlic, homemade rolls – and brought pie for dessert – chocolate pudding filling in a traditional shortbread-type crust that my dad still makes by hand like he was taught when he was a little boy. They very nicely left us with half a pie when they headed back home, and I had a small piece for breakfast this morning because what better way to fortify oneself for the after-Christmas sales than with pie?

My older sister and her family came by later in the evening so we all headed to my parents’ house and exchanged gifts. Remember how I said I worked best with a deadline? I finished the sweater for my sister about one hour before we headed over to give it to her. But at least I got it done and it was absolutely gorgeous – the yarn I chose is a soft washable wool in shades of pale blue and watery green that make me think of serene pools and spring days, and I did tell my sister that if she, for some reason, doesn’t like it I will gladly take it back and claim it for myself.

This morning started quite early for me, since it is tradition in our family to hit the after-Christmas sales. I met my mom and my older sister at the first store while it was still dark outside and we spent the next few hours going from store to store, stocking up and saving tons of cash. We’ve discovered that since everyone tends to go to the malls, the stores in and around the Vacaville outlet mall tend to be nearly deserted, so we can rummage through bins of cards and wrapping paper, gift bags and stocking stuffers, and shop to our hearts’ content without having to contend with stress and crowds. Plus this year, since sales weren’t as high as stores had been hoping before Christmas, most of the places we went had things marked down up to 75% off.

We timed it perfectly – getting back to town with just enough time for me to zip home, show off all my bargain finds to Richard, and then dash to the church to meet the rest of the recorder ensemble for practice. By then I was pretty tired – up since 5:30 and not a drop of coffee – so it was a challenge keeping my eyes open during the sermon. But my older sister and her family came to church with us and my nephews proved just how shy they are not by piping up during the children’s time to tell the pastor all manner of things (they had the entire congregation laughing at one point), and there were friends to chat with and hug, and there were paint colors for the chancel to discuss (thereby starting my stint as chair of Board of Trustees a wee bit earlier than planned), so it was for the best that we were there.

After church we went out to lunch and then headed back to my parents house to play classic arcade games (PacMan! DigDug!) on my nephew’s new toy (which he very sweetly allowed us to play). There were cookies and there was more pie and then we all hugged our goodbyes and Richard and I came back home, where I promptly staggered upstairs and crawled into bed and took a much-needed nap.

For the rest of the day I foresee more lounging and companionable silence as we each work on various projects. Richard is busying himself with his Mindstorm robots, which have the added incentive of thoroughly enthralling the cats, and I think that I shall crack open my book for my Photoshop class and see if I cannot get through at least one more lesson before the evening is over. I am pondering possibilities for dinner and wondering if I really want to try to cobble together something healthy and well-balanced, or whether we should instead just use this as an excuse to finish off the remainder of the Christmas cookies and pie. Right now, as I type this and feel particularly lazy, the idea of pie for dinner is winning, hands down.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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But to me heard afar

Noel, Christmas Eve, 1913 *
— Lyrics by Robert Bridges
— Music by Lee Holdrige

A frosty Christmas Eve when the stars were shining,

I travell’d forth alone where westward falls the hills.

And from many, many a village, in the darkness of the valley

Distant music reached me, peals of bells were ringing.

Through most of the year, being agnostic is not really something I even think about. My continuing search for faith, in some form or another, is just a part of who I am. Throughout the rest of the year I attend church because it is my sense of community – something I was raised with; a place where I have found people who are willing to accept me as I am, doubts and all, because even though they may not understand how I cannot believe, they at least understand that it is a journey that is mine, alone, to make.

Then sped my thoughts to olden times, to that first of Christmas’

When shepherds who were watching heard music in the fields.

And they sat there and they marveled and they knew they could not tell

Whether it were angels, or the bright stars a-singing.

It has been incredibly foggy this year; so much so that coming home at night on any evening is a test in faith, especially as we get closer to our little neighborhood. In the dark and the mist all that is often visible are the lights on the houses, shining for all they are worth through the gloom, as if to try their best to chase it away. This is one of my favorite parts about this season – the night and the silence and the lights. Sometimes when I am alone in the car I will open the window to let some of the fog in – that crisp smell of clouds in the air all around me. There is magic in fog; there is wonder. At this time of year the fog can make me start to believe in things – that there might be fairies lurking under the bushes as I pass by a house, and that mystical creatures might truly exist in the shadows when the fog rolls in.

Of any other weather, fog can make me suspend my belief, even just a little, and I can let my imagination wander. And I wonder about stories – myths and legends – and how they came to be, and whether they were born at some point by ancient people telling stories of things they could not explain, or were born instead out of imagination, as a way to draw people in to a story that might just have been large enough to not need the embellishment, but which has now become so inexorably entwined with the magic that people firmly believe it to be true.

But to me heard afar, it was starry music

The singing of the angels, the comfort of our Lord

Words of old that come a-traveling, by the riches of the times

And I softly listened, as I stood on the hill

And I softly listened, as I stood on the hill.

Most of the rest of the year I do not question my lack of faith. Most of the time I remain silent during prayers, and I do my best to focus on what is good and right and how it seems the world should be, and I use that as my guiding light. It is at Christmas, however, that I wish that I could somehow find what I am missing. I know that it is not amid the mad rush to the mall, or the greedy clamor for presents, or the tacky decorations on lawns, or the in-your-face Jesus/God mania that is shoved down our throats by sad, close-minded people who always seem to forget that Freedom of Religion applies to everyone, and not just to them.

I do not know if there really is anything out there to believe. I do not know whether some single omnipotent being really sat down and crafted out some huge plan that involved causing bushes to burst into flames when old men climb mountains, or parting seas, or claiming babies as its own offspring/clone/whatever the trinity really is, or sending its hosts to visit a bunch of rather startled shepherds over 2000 years ago. Most of the year I cannot find it in my heart to believe. But at this time of year, driving home in the fog, letting my disbelief be suspended for even a little bit, sometimes, deep inside me, I listen. And I wish.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

* Recorder – my dad
Guitar – a friend
Vocals – me

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All is calm, all is bright

This morning, after sleeping in as late as we could stand it, we got up and gathered all the presents together and headed down to Richard’s parents’ house for the traditional Christmas Eve festivities.

We are lucky –he and I – that because our families live so close we are able to spend time during the Christmas holiday with each of them. His family always does the extended family bit on Christmas Eve, and for this and last year we started doing it during the day instead of in the evening, which has made things even better.

It is usually quite a relaxing day, and this year was no exception. Their adorable border collie puppy had grown at least another few inches in the two weeks since we last saw him, and a stint in puppy boot camp had him a little less prone to leaping madly at people in glee (although once Richard sat on the floor later in the day all bets were off from the puppy, and leaping in glee commenced in earnest).

We sat around the living room and talked. We ate Chinese food, and drank root beer straight from the bottle. We sampled too many different types of cookies to count, including spicy ginger cookies, and silly sugar swirls shaped like snails, with cloves for the eyes. We drank coffee and hot cider, and opened our stocking gifts to each other, one at a time, in unison (which means that I can now link to the goofy penguin that I knit for Richard for his stocking stuffer), and then moved on to the family gifts. Everyone in his family draws one name, but his parents have lately taken to getting everyone something fun and just a little goofy as well, so there were two boxes for everyone to open, and apparently this was the year of the electronic cat toy. I’m sure the manufacturers probably didn’t think they were making cat toys, but what else do you call a hovercraft and a giant hockey puck that scoots around the floor on a cushion of air but cat toys?

Richard and I headed back at a leisurely hour, with more than enough time to stop for dinner along the way. I played through the hymns a few times to get my fingers reacquainted with the songs. And then I headed over to the church early, through the dark and the fog, to practice the songs again on the piano there, since I’d yet to even touch the baby grand the church got on loan for last week’s cantata.

It was a small and quiet service, as the 11pm services usually are. I played the hymns as well as I could with improvised lighting, and my dad and I did a duet on alto and tenor recorder. Later, as we sang Silent Night, Richard and my dad stood behind me with their lighted candles so I could still see my music, and in the last verse I played only the lower parts and let the congregation carry the tune by themselves, because Silent Night is a song that was really meant to be sung in harmony, with only voices to echo out the refrain.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Eve eve

Because when Christmas time rolls around each year, secretly I am actually only six years old and have no patience at all, we tend to string out our gift giving to as many days as possible. To this end, Richard and I did our stockings tonight, on Christmas Eve Eve. Since I got off work extra early, I came home, corralled all of Richard’s presents into one heap on the floor of the library and commenced with wrapping. The cats poked their heads in from time to time, but aside from an experimental bap here and there at random bits of wrapping paper they mostly left me alone.

This is not, however, because they were being unusually well behaved; rather it was that Rosie had discovered the shelf on which I’ve been stashing various finished knitted objects, and was busily shoving them all onto the floor. I might have been a little upset about this except that the items in question were three hats and scarves knitted from an unfortunate yarn choice that (despite label claims to the contrary) felted and shrank in the wash. So they’d been sitting there while I pondered various ways in which to (try to) salvage them, and I figured if it was a choice between the cats chewing on a few slightly ruined hats and ‘helping’ me with the wrapping paper and the scissors, the hats would have to win.

Of course, I did not realize exactly what Rosie was doing with the things she was industriously dumping onto the floor until much later, as I was getting ready to go to bed, and noticed a familiar color behind the chairs in the bay window. It turns out Rosie had very carefully severed one of the pompoms from one of the hats and had carried it off as a prize. I have no doubt that she has similar intentions for the remaining two hats and their pompoms as well. Yes, some cats catch mice and bugs, but Rosie hunts bigger prey. Stuffed dragons, green beans, and now pompoms. I am almost afraid to find out what is next.

But I digress. I got all my wrapping done just as Richard was walking in the door, so I busied myself getting dinner finished while he headed upstairs with boxes and scissors and worked on wrapping his own pile. We ate dinner and then sat on the couch in the living room while the cats milled around at our feet and emptied our stockings to each other.

There were traditional stocking stuffers – socks for me (Richard got his socks earlier), a chocolate orange for him, paperback books, little toys, a handful of super balls supposedly for me, but which I know are really for the cats, and so on. And then we sat on the sofa and watched random shows on HGTV and ate early Christmas candy and it was a lovely start to the season.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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A little stuffing for Christmas

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This morning on the way to work I dropped off a little early Christmas present. I posed him carefully on the porch, rang the doorbell, and then dashed back to my car and drove off. It wasn’t until after I’d arrived at work that I got the phone call to tell me it had been found.

Isn’t he just the cutest thing? He’s very huggable and I knit him up in just two evenings. Really, how can you not like a squishy snowman like him?

We will just try to forget about the fact that underneath his fuzzy purple hat and red scarf he looks like an albino butternut squash – much like if Mr. Lunt from Veggie Tales had a close encounter with a blood sucking vampire. I *knew* there was a reason I found him so gosh darn adorable. Heh.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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All I want for Christmas

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I suppose I could blame the Gemini in me, but the truth is that I am a procrastinator of the highest level. If you give me a deadline that I know I cannot miss I will get things done. I am marvelous under pressure, actually – I’ve done some of my best work in the last frantic moments before something was due. Projects at work (and when I was younger, at school) will be completed on time and consistently because my job (or my grades) depends on it. But when there is no deadline and no urgency about getting something done, I lack the incentive to finish. Setting deadlines for myself does not work because the problem is that I know that I am a big slacker and will just find a way to move that deadline back again and again until I ignore it completely. After all, it’s not like I’m going to fire myself, or give myself a failing grade, or do anything remotely dastardly that would convince me to not mess with myself as task master again.

But I recognize that my procrastinating tendencies can be a problem. I tend to start things with the best of intentions but then they fall by the wayside as I move on to something else. However, in my own defense, it’s not like I’m incapable of finishing anything at all. After all, for the past several years we’ve had all our Christmas shopping done early, the cards out on time, and all the baking done. And occasionally I manage to surprise myself and follow a project through to completion (such as sponge-painting the dining room, or sewing and hanging curtains, or organizing the garage). But most of the time I will get almost all the way through, and then find something else that drags me away before the final pieces are complete. This would be why the molding was never put back on the floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelves in our bedroom (and why we have a large wad of tissues stuffed under one corner because there is a little bit of a draft there that the molding would likely cover if we would actually PUT IT BACK). This is also why there have been pencil marks on the wall of the claustrophobic toilet room in our master bathroom for probably over a year now, and cans of paint downstairs for the faux sky project I keep intending to get to, one of these days.

So this year I have decided that, of all the things that I could want for Christmas, the one thing I want most of all is a Finisher. I know such a thing does not exist, of course, but that does not prevent me from dreaming wistfully of getting one underneath my tree. In my imagination it looks kind of like a little house elf, but with lots and lots of arms that whirl around at top speed, and it mutters to itself in a squirrely little voice and there is a sound like a high-pitched motor when it darts here and there around the house while I watch in awe. Actually, I don’t even want it under the tree. I want it zipping about the house while I sleep on Christmas Eve, doing what it is meant to be doing, which is finishing all the projects that I have started over the years and that still languish, dusty and undone.

The Finisher could start, for example, with the breakfast nook tree. The artistic friend who helped me start this thing has agreed with me that perhaps in hindsight we should have made it an oak tree – something with really big leaves for which I could have created a nifty stencil or sponge and which would have been finished one heck of a lot sooner. But no, we picked teeny tiny leaves – each one taking careful application of three different shades of green – and that is before she even starts in on giving them their final realistic touches. I will let my artistic friend take care of the ending details, but if I had my very own Finisher, at least all the rest of the several thousand leaves still to be painted would be finished.

Next, the Finisher would move on to the sewing machine – or rather, to the pile of half-finished curtain panels that have been sitting beside it, slowly gathering protective layers of cat hair as the feline members of this household make them into comfy little nests. I had the best of intentions for these curtain panels, and in my defense I did, over the course of about a year and a half, manage to plow through curtains for the computer room, double-panel curtains for the bedroom, and a set of lovely yellow ones for the dining room which hung for only a few days before we realized that they just weren’t going to do and replaced them with lace panels. So all that remains in this entire house in the way of curtains are the ones for the breakfast nook – very simple tab panels in white cotton, with little tiebacks in blue. I cut the fabric and did half the pressing and hemmed up half the panels…but that was quite likely almost a year ago. The Finisher would de-cat fur them, sew them, iron out all the wrinkles, and even hang them for me so I can finally get rid of that last set of temporary paper shades which have hung in those three windows for the nearly four years we have been in this house.

Because this is my fantasy, my Finisher would be super-speedy in getting all my tasks completed. Next it would tackle all that billing paperwork I’ve been meaning to file for the past year, and it would organize all those photographs that are overflowing the cardboard box I’ve been stuffing them in since 1992 (the last time I put a photo in an album). It would riffle through all those print-outs of all the recipes we’ve tried in our quest to expand our repertoire of healthy dinner ideas and copy them neatly into the cookbook I bought for this very purpose several months ago (but which has exactly two recipes copied into it so far), and it would also decipher my scribbled notes on the margins of those print-outs to incorporate all my recipe modifications so I don’t have to try to remember every time whether or not I left in some crucial ingredient. It would move all that miscellaneous desk stuff from my old desk to my new desk – the new desk that was built into the office and which has been there for nearly four years, drawers still mostly empty, waiting for me to do this very simple transfer. But my Finisher would immediately know what size organizing caddies would fit in the drawers and separate everything out by type and I would no longer have to extract my passport from a glob of Petromalt at the back of the miscellaneous drawer because it didn’t have anywhere else to go. Oh, and speaking of my passport, the Finisher would also fill out and actually *mail* in the paperwork to get the darn thing updated with my ‘new’ married name. Do I need to point out that I have had this ‘new’ name now for over three years?

At our monthly craft night earlier this month the hostess asked each of us what one thing we wanted to work on for ourselves for the next year. And I immediately said that I needed to work on finishing things. So Santa, if you’re listening, I could really use your help. Just one Finisher. I am even willing to forego my yearly request for a small, winged dragon (fire breathing optional). Just bring me a Finisher, even just one on loan. And in the meantime I swear I’ll do my best to keep on working on those procrastinating tendencies so that next year maybe I won’t need that Finisher underneath my Christmas tree.

I swear it, Santa. I’ll get right on it. Just as soon as I finish this baby blanket I’m knitting. Oh, and did you see that cute pattern for the afghan? And I have this great idea for painting stripes in the downstairs bathroom, and I was thinking that maybe I need to put together emergency kits for our cars, and one of these days I really need to get outside and weed the path in the backyard like I’ve been saying I’m going to do now for months, and while I’m out there I really ought to finally organize all those leftover rocks from when we built the raised flower bed so they don’t lie in untidy heaps all over the ground for another year, and we really need to take the recycling to the recycling center, and, and, and…

I think I am doomed.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Recap

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Yes, it’s 2004 in review ( because I have decided I am not going to subject you to the entirety of the letter we mailed out, and instead do a slightly modified version that might have a wee bit more snark than I’m willing to send to distant relatives).

I’m still happily employed at the company by the river, poking at databases, collecting data on random things like the number of cell phones in Lichtenstein, writing papers, organizing food drives. We entertain ourselves by trying to identify the various birds (Finches! Starlings!) and river critters (Otters! Sea lions!) that pass by in the river down below, and the blue heron across the river entertains itself by occasionally swooping right past the window and trying to give me a heart attack. Back in February Richard was finally offered a permanent position for the job he’d been doing nearly a year already as a temp. We cheered. We celebrated. We eyed his insurance and my insurance and immediately switched both of us to his insurance because the one I have access to stinks. We checked out all the nifty new benefits he gets as an employee of the university. For example, since I am now married to an employee of the university, I qualify for a discount on classes through the university extension. You would not think that would be all that complicated, but apparently I just might be the first employee spouse who’s attempted to take advantage of this nifty deal. Great merriment ensued as faxes and emails zipped back and forth among departments as everyone tried to figure out just what this whole thing actually entailed. Luckily we finally worked it out by Thanksgiving, which meant that I started my Adobe Photoshop class (which is online so I do not even have to *go* anywhere to take it. Yay!) last month and am looking forward to finally learning the secrets of how to remove red eye from photographs without manually coloring in every stupid bit by hand and thus ending up with family portraits full of people with large black irises, much like scary cartoons.

This year we’ve done a bit of traveling – for once, most of it not work related. I zipped up to Seattle in May to take a class in chocolate making with my little sister. We had a marvelous time. We made piles of beautiful, delicious chocolates. I could not repeat anything we did now to save my life, and it’s probably just as well, because the last thing I need is recurring knowledge of how to make perfect truffles. Less than one week later we drove to Ashland for five days and four plays, and had a marvelous time. Being good little nerds we tracked down a pub with free wireless access and made use of it, even though we had a perfectly good (okay, I cannot type that without laughing) dial-up connection at our hotel just a few blocks away. After we’d recovered from that I zipped off to the mountains for our annual girls-only weekend with my sisters, and instead of regaling strangers in a bar with karaoke and gambling away tens of dollars in quarters, like we did last year, this year we decided to rappel into a big bottomless pit. Okay, it had a bottom – it was just very, very, very far down. It is important to note here that we were all scared out of our wits, but it was marvelous fun and we ate a lot of ice cream to recover and have decided that one time dangling from a rope over certain death is enough for one life time for our family.

Chocolate making and rappeling haven’t been the only new skills I’ve picked up this year. Thanks to two very long Saturdays spent at Habitat for Humanity workdays, I now know how to pour (and smooth) cement, dig (and fill) a french drain, and hang dry wall. We also learned that after you spend eight hours breathing gypsum dust from hanging dry wall you start getting a little punchy and pose with your fellow drywall hangers and your matching cordless drills in Charlie’s Angels poses. Also, cement is heavy. And pea gravel. And, for that matter, sheets of drywall. Oh, and this year I also participated (sort of) in an emergency goat c-section, but I figure that’s not a skill I’m going to be using again and again.

After putting our names on a waiting list last Thanksgiving of 2003, we finally got our Prius. I can now obsess about miles per gallon with the best of them. Cruise control is my friend. Also it does really well on road trips over mountains, even though it seems to not be too crazy about the cold. Pretty much as soon as it arrived we got antsy to take it on a road trip, so in October we took another five days and decided to do a whirlwind road trip up to Seattle, and then back down the coast of Oregon. I do not recommend doing this in only five days. I also do not recommend doing this in a really big storm. Whoosh

Richard and I have found new ways to share experiences together this year. In August I finally broke down and decided that I could either live with the chronic sinus infections, or I could suck it up and go get stabbed with tiny needles in the hopes of making it better. They tested me for all manner of allergens and it turns out I’m allergic to dust and pollen and pretty much anything furry and four-footed. Yes, that includes cats. Luckily I’ve now graduated to only one shot a week (although the nurse still shakes her head every time she has to measure my hives and welts), but since Richard’s been getting his for years, every three weeks we get to go in and get stabbed together. Heck, we even recently started getting our quarterly allergy check-ups together. It’s all kinds of romantic.

This year Richard and I also got to share another experience – leaving school. After lots of thought, he decided to withdraw from the Master of Library and Information Sciences program because, although he still loves books and libraries, the MLIS program was not meeting his interest in information technology and computers. At least he was smarter than me and made the decision more quickly, instead of waiting until the last minute to drop out (like I did after four years in graduate school, when I knew I didn’t want to be there after the first quarter!). He’s still serving as library commissioner, however, which is really cool because, as his wife, I got to take part in the library drill team during a parade this summer. I got a free t-shirt out of the deal, plus the realization that some people cannot spell ‘Book’ while marching.

I am still obsessed with yarn, and knitting, and yarn, and needles, and did I mention the yarn? This year I have made some gorgeous sweaters and afghans and other things which I will not mention here because some people who read this journal are quite possibly getting them for Christmas. I still have not yet tried socks, but once I get over my next spate of gift knitting (and by the way it would be nice if my friends could plan their pregnancies better and not have their babies due all in the same week!) I may just break down and tackle the sock mystery. We’ll see.

While this year’s been pretty good to us, it hasn’t been so good to the cats. There was the whole incident with Zucchini in April (involving daily x-rays and all manner of fun, and the realization that there are times when you actually look forward to the nastiest hairball you have ever seen in your life). In October, our oldest cat Rebecca died unexpectedly and with no warning. And not two weeks later Allegra was diagnosed with bone cancer in her jaw and given a window of about six months. Luckily the other cats remain fairly happy and healthy, even if they are starting to put on a couple of pounds as they grow older, and continue to take an active part in ‘assisting’ me with my knitting, distributing small stuffed toys all over the house, pruning the indoor plants, and holding down the furniture by taking extended naps.

So that about sums up my year. There’ve been ups and downs, but it’s mostly been a pretty good year. Here’s hoping next year brings more of the same.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Sunday at random

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As we were driving down the street this afternoon, on our way to meet my parents for lunch, I eyed a few of the more tawdry holiday displays we were passing in dismay. And then I turned to Richard and said ‘Promise me that there will never be any inflatable creatures on my front lawn.’ And then I relented just a little and noted that the only inflatable creature I would be willing to accept would be a lemur (mainly because I figure the chances of Richard tracking down an inflatable lemur are slim, and even if he does it’s likely to be far too expensive for just a joke).

I am a little concerned about the fact that he said he wasn’t sure he could make that promise. And that was before I agreed to the lemur. Hmm.

********

It is very hard to type when there is a cat leaning on my arm and licking the back of my hand. He is purring though – quite loudly – so through the rules of cat ownership, I cannot chase him away. I am also telling myself that one should never pass up on a full-hand exfoliation for free. If he starts in on my nose (like he sometimes does at night) I may have to rethink this decision, but for now, the hands are getting mighty clean.

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After seeing Green Tuna’s entry about this very unique nativity set, I cracked up, and immediately showed the link to everyone I could. This included, among others, every member of my family, several coworkers, and my boss, who just happens to be the husband of the pastor at church.

Today I asked her if he’d shown her the set and she immediately started laughing. Not only did she, too, think it was wonderful, but she then noted that it spurred quite the lengthy discussion afterwards on other key marshmallow moments in the bible. Consider, for example, marshmallow Adam and Eve, in graham cracker fig leaves, or perhaps an ever so slightly toasted Moses in front of the burning bush. Really, the possibilities are endless.

My little sister says they need one. I am pretty much now convinced that I need one too. After all, it has been pastor-approved.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Flight patterns

Yesterday my boss came into the office and went immediately for the binoculars. At first I wasn’t sure what he was looking at, until he pointed to the tree directly outside our office door and mentioned that it was full of finches. It took a moment to realize what he was talking about – finches are tiny little things and their colors blended into what remains of the leaves on that tree, but I finally saw one, and then another, and then suddenly I realized that the entire tree was swarming with them. Through the binoculars I could get a better glimpse of the green feathers on the males, and the perfect black and white striped wings, but without the binoculars they were just tiny little brown blurs, bouncing from twig to twig. There was something almost a little disturbing about the whole thing. And it’s not that the tree hasn’t been swarming with birds before – occasionally huge flocks of mockingbirds or blue jays decide to perch there, and sometimes the starlings that nest on our balcony zip around in the branches, but they are all large enough to see. This was a little different, however – they were too small, too well camouflaged, until suddenly you realize that the tree is alive with them. It was sort of like suddenly discovering that something is swarming with ants.

I blame Hitchcock for this, of course. My brain would never try to convince me that swarms of finches were the remotest bit disturbing if it hadn’t been for Hitchcock.

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I had grand plans today – plans that involved lounging around in my pajamas and bathrobe until afternoon, working on Christmas cards and some last-minute Christmas knitting, and maybe even tackling another lesson in my Photoshop class I’m taking through University Extension. But Richard suggested cornmeal waffles with pecan butter for breakfast and that, of course, meant that we would have to go out to get them, which meant that if I was going to leave the house I had to do things like put on presentable clothing that doesn’t have little purple moose all over, and shoes that are not fuzzy inside, and do things to my hair so I would not scare small and unsuspecting children.

So instead of lounging today, there has been waffles and a little shopping, and lunch with my parents and my sister and her husband and the world’s cutest nephews. The oldest charmed the computer/math nerd side of his family by informing us that he’s been acing the timed math tests and by quizzing us on our multiplication tables. He’s only in first grade and he’s already doing multiplication. I figure we’ll have him coding by the time he leaves elementary school.

This afternoon I did get some of that knitting done (although not as much as I’d hoped), and this evening we had a three-hour choir rehearsal, which went surprisingly well, considering this is the first time we’ve actually practiced with the string quartet which will be playing with us during tomorrow’s cantata performance. We drove home through pea soup fog and listened to the BareNaked Ladies Christmas album on the way (an early Christmas present from Richard), and managed to do the final batch of signing and folding and stuffing and sealing all the Christmas cards with annual Christmas letters enclosed. And now there is nothing left to do but just a little more present-related knitting, and the last round of present wrapping, and we are done.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Decisions on food

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As proof for why it is that our no-cookie mandate was a good idea this year, yesterday morning I had three of them for breakfast, slathered with a little glob of chocolate frosting. I have no willpower when it comes to Christmas cookies. We’d hoped to foist most of them off on the rest of the group at the potluck, but it turned out that, despite many more of our group saying they were going to come, there were only five of us who actually showed up. Luckily I’d brought lasagna, someone else brought a salad, and we found a bag of rolls in the fridge, so we had a complete meal. The other cookie-bringer was feeling a little overwhelmed with extra cookies as well so we all sat around the table – kids included – and painted enough to feed to the choir, since rehearsal was last night. But that still meant there were great piles of cookies to go home with us. What to do, what to do.

Yesterday morning I piled cookies onto two festive paper plates, Richard wrapped them in plastic wrap, and we took one each to our offices. The remaining cookies were left on a plate at home with a note for the cleaning elves (aka Merry Maids) to please help themselves. So – no more cookies. Sigh. This morning I was hoping there might be one or two cookies still lurking on the plate at the office, but by the time I made it in there was nothing left but crumbs. I was reduced to eating chocolate for breakfast, which, in retrospect, made the cookies look like quite the nutritious alternative. Yesterday was a veritable cornucopia of goodies – my cookies, the See’s chocolate we were sent for meeting our office food drive goal, and a bag of extremely flaky pastries my boss brought in. Today all that was left was the chocolate, for which I was grateful because otherwise breakfast would have been bad coffee and microwave popcorn and I am not sure that is the best way to start the day.

Speaking of our food drive (which officially ended last Friday, but who’s counting), the fifth and last office finally met their goal. It might be a week late, but we’re going to let that slide because the important thing is that, as a company, we managed to bring in nearly a ton of food. For the first time trying to coordinate a company-wide event that seems to me like a pretty good success. Also, there was chocolate (or in the case of the late office, there will be chocolate later). So we are all quite happy. Even though there are no more cookies to eat. For now.

This has been a Holidailies entry.