Today I'm Thankful...

Today I'm thankful for coffee....not just in the usual wake up, enjoy the aroma, and savor the liquid bliss of waking up to fresh-brewed coffee kind of thankfulness, but thankfulness in that there was ANY coffee to wake up to by enjoying the aroma and savoring any sort of semblance of liquid coffee bliss sort of way.

Yep. I was all set to start a pot of coffee this morning and discovered we had NO coffee in reserve. There was one tablespoon of high octane Starbucks coffee left in one bag, and a few more tablespoons of decaf in another, but we had NONE in reserve as we usually do. I looked in the pantry. I looked through the pantry overflow in the basement. None. Then I remembered the Dunkin' Donuts coffee I had bought a while back that I thought was "okay" but not as satisfying as the Starbucks I have found an affinity for....

I had to do some serious rooting through the freezer, but I found the bag of bold, dark, high octane coffee I had stashed there a few months ago. It didn't smell bad, but it didn't have that aromatic freshness that comes from a new bag of Starbucks. I made the coffee, then went to inform the hubster that I had good news and bad news. The good news was the fact that there was any coffee whatsoever to be had, and particularly of the high octane variety. The bad news was that I couldn't attest to the quality of said coffee. I am pleased to report that the coffee was acceptable, maybe even good, though not of the order we are accustomed to. The fact that it was acceptable to good, flavor-wise, is a bonus. Today, I'm just thankful for ANY coffee at all. It makes waking up any morning more pleasant, but especially so on a cold winter morning. Yes, today I'm thankful for coffee. Thank God for small favors.

The Christmas Box

I'm STILL working on getting my Christmas decorating done. It has proven to be a much slower process than expected, and truly, than it really ought to be. In the process of decking the halls, I have found interruptions hampering the completion of the task at hand come from the usual daily aspects of life, errands, night shifts, and even, at times, lethargy. It is coming along though.

I think I have procrastinated some in getting the job done because I knew that, this year, I was going to retire a big old cardboard box that has stored ornaments and a couple of other random Christmas decorations over the years. I really hate to to retire it (READ: trash it), but I didn't realize the extent of my attachment to that old box until this evening as I was taking out the ornament boxes that have so neatly fit inside that box while waiting patiently to be opened up each year in anticipation of so many Christmas celebrations. I transferred the individual ornament boxes into new clear plastic containers that would keep the contents more protected, but that box...that box was more than just a storage container for out of season ornaments. It was (is, for the moment) also a repository for memories.

It holds memories of its past life hearkening back to the days when we were pretty broke, and our Christmas decorations could fit into a single box that also happened to be shared with random household goods from our linen closet, back when it was originally commissioned into service. In the course of time and many military moves, the box eventually came to be an "ornaments only" box, and it's contents safely traveled with us to new homes in new places that would be transformed into "home" for the Christmas holidays we spent there, anchoring our past with the present through the bits and pieces of our lives and happy memories of Christmases past that the ornaments in the box symbolized. It has symbolized the growing up of our children and the passing of pets who were loved and so much a part of our family too.

Emptying out that box in anticipation of its retirement proved to be a more emotionally difficult thing for me to do than I had expected. It was difficult enough that I had to stop and take photos and write about it before I could break it down. That task still awaits. Retiring the box - breaking it down, and hauling it out to the garage to await the next trash collection day isn't just about retiring an old, but in some ways, perhaps still serviceable box. No. For me, it is closing a chapter in my life. The Christmas box that followed us around for my husband's whole military career, and was with us for each Christmas as our children grew and as some have left home, has been a sort of friend and fixture who was always there, faithful, maybe taken for granted at times. I'm going to miss that box and the part of my life that will, in a sense, go away with the box. The memories, however... the memories I get to keep.

By the Way....

The halls STILL have not been completely decked.

There is PROGRESS though.

PROGRESS is good.

The Plight of the Snowman

GOODNESS it's COLD outside!!!! It's windy too! I had to go outside to try to resurrect our fallen snowman yard decoration, but to no avail. When I found him (the snowman), he had the appearance of one who had been shot in the back, execution-style, on my front lawn. It should not be!!! It is hard enough for snowmen to survive the hardships of their short existence without having to endure the indignity of being blown down and left cast down on the ground with the appearance of a suburban crime victim. Unable to put the snowman back together, his present state isn't much better. He is now laying on his side on my front porch. Tomorrow, I will once again attempt to given him life...at least for the Christmas season. He does not look nearly as charming laying on the front porch as he did standing and sparkling as he welcomed passersby and visitors from the front lawn. It IS most certainly an improvement to be laying on the porch than to look as if he were a crime victim sprawled out on the cold, frozen tundra though.

E-Fame

Today I removed the "Followers" widget from my blog. I realized that being reminded that I have no followers every time I look at my blog was sort of like being reminded of some social deficiency. Not that I am particularly concerned whether anyone else reads this blog, I'm doing it mostly for me. No one else I know knows that I write here. But seeing "You have no followers" along with the invitation for someone (anyone) to be the first to "follow" your blog could invite a certain degree of self-deprecation after a while, whether one feels this way or not. I think that after a while there might be an element of desperation that could ensue from continually seeing the fact that your blog exhorts someone, anyone to (please!) follow your blog. Not that I'm desperate or anything ...

I got to wondering if others who view a blog with the fact that there are no followers displayed and the prominent invitation to "be the first!," could also serve as a deterrent for some. It's like no one wants to be the first person to step out and associate themselves with the unknown quantity... It has a feel of being somewhere in between wondering, "Who is that masked man behind the electronic curtain?," and having to pick the person to be on your team that no one else really wants to pick. I have removed the stigma. Life is good. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

Oh, if anyone asks if I have any followers, tell them that these are my followers:

My Biggest Fans



HAH!

A Christmas Miracle?

At 5:15 pm last Friday, my son got a call from his retail employer that we missed. By the time I saw that his workplace had called it was a good hour later. Now had I taken the call, I probably would have awakened him. But since no message was left, and since he was asleep and I thought he probably needed to sleep before his shift that night, and the general consensus was that we should just let him sleep, we did not wake him up to call into work and see the reason for their earlier call.

When my son got to work last Friday night, he was informed that he was fired. He had the option of working his shift if he wanted, or he could go home immediately, but his 90-day temporary position, and that of others as well, was being cut - effective immediately, only about 60 days into the 90-day period everyone had expected. Aside from the fact that it was a surprise, in general, we were really shocked that people who worked the night shift would be called, when most were likely sleeping, and informed that they were to be cut loose, effective immediately, over the phone. That would be like a person working the day shift who normally gets up for work between 6 & 7 a.m. getting a call at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning and being told they were fired - a bit shocking really.

Now I understand about the business end of the situation, but I'm not going to get into it here. That's not the focus of this post. No, the focus of this post is on the human aspect of this situation. We were really surprised our son was let go. Almost every morning upon his return home from work, he would inform us of something one of his managers had said to compliment him on his work. That Saturday morning when he returned with the news of his firing, he said that the managers were upset and that one had offered to write him letters of recommendation to the management at some of the other stores in the area. I truly believed that if they were as complimentary of him as he said they were and were that eager to write letters of recommendation, that they wouldn't want to let my son go. I wouldn't have been surprised if they had asked him to come back to work for them. I just didn't expect it to happen so soon!!!

This afternoon, he got a call from the retailer's HR department at the store he had been working at up until last Saturday morning. They have asked him to come back to work as a permanent part-time employee. This is not where he envisioned himself working after completing college, but it beats being unemployed, and it's nice to know you are wanted and appreciated. Hard work pays off. He starts again tomorrow night. I hope some of the other temporary employees were hired back too.

On Decking the Halls

Since Thanksgiving weekend, I have been on a mission to deck my halls for the Christmas season which is now in full swing. I really would prefer to put up my Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving because Thanksgiving is a busy holiday unto itself, and as a purist, I don't like to let Christmas infringe on my Thanksgiving holiday. I really believe it is important to let Thanksgiving be Thanksgiving, and only Thanksgiving, because it is so important, to me, that the day of thankfulness and harvest blessings be honored on its own merits with the emphasis on expressions of thankfulness to our Creator, as well as in remembrance of the pilgrims who held the first Thanksgiving feast with the Indians who helped them survive that brutal first year, here, in the new land. I like the Christmas season too, but I don't like the commercial aspect of the Christmas holiday with it's encroachment on Thanksgiving nowadays.

I can remember when stores were closed on Thanksgiving, then the push for marketing Black Friday became the norm, and eventually some stores opted to be open on the Thanksgiving holiday, itself, with promises of fantastic deals to entice people away from their Thanksgiving celebrations in order to buy the perfect Christmas gifts at unheard of prices. Granted, merchants couldn't do this without the cooperation of the consumer, and in all reality, the diminished significance of the place for Thanksgiving in the hearts and homes of Americans, today, while the push to start the Christmas spending frenzy as soon as possible, really speaks to the values of the nation and shows what is important to its people. I can't help but think of the following scripture: "for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." [Matthew 6:21] We give our attention to those things which are most important and valued by us.

But getting back to the matter of decking the halls in anticipation of the Christmas celebration, because of my conviction that Thanksgiving should be honored as a standalone holiday, I do not even begin to put away the harvest, autumn, and Thanksgiving decorations until after Thanksgiving. However, at the behest of my children, I do so immediately after Thanksgiving! They would have the tree up on Black Friday, if they had a choice, and we try, but it doesn't always work out. The Christmas tree is usually up Thanksgiving weekend though. Other decorations follow, in the process of decking the halls, in the remaining weeks leading up to Christmas. It is a challenge because in addition to all of the usual things I feel like I barely have time to do in a given day or week, I am embarking on a major temporary redecorating project that has to be squeezed into the schedule of routine things that must be done, and all of the chaos associated with hauling out decorations only adds to the routine upkeep of the home and inhibits the usual process, which I already mentioned I find difficult to keep up with in an ordinary day or week. I was thinking about this last night, and I came to the conclusion that there is a certain insanity to this. This year I've been seriously considering multiplying the insanity by putting up a second Christmas tree, however. We used to do this a few years back, but we haven't done so in about 4 years. I'm thinking I'd like to have the second tree this year though.

This year, for the first time in a number of years, we actually put colored lights on our main large Christmas tree. It just seemed like it was time. I really like the clear lights too, and they do such a nice job of illuminating your ornaments at night, but we missed the colored lights. I think we have a certain sense of nostalgia for the past when our kids were little, and we only used colored lights on our tree. I think our kids were feeling some of that same nostalgia for the paradise of their childhoods and the magic of Christmas. My oldest son has even been quite vocal about how Christmas is about colored lights. I made the mistake of asking what he thought about our Christmas trees over the last few years that were adorned with clear lights, and I was tersely informed that he essentially tolerated those Christmas trees, but they did not say, "Christmas," to him. Having put up a tree with colored lights though, I still found myself missing the clear lights on a Christmas tree. If all goes well, I will have a second tree with clear lights up by this afternoon. THEN I can see about getting all of the boxes of ornaments and tinsel that are occupying valuable real estate in my great room and dining room put back in the basement where they belong and focus on enjoying the rest of the Christmas season!

Dogs!!!!

I love dogs, really I do. This morning dogs have been an annoyance though, not necessarily through any fault of their own; they are just being dogs. My first encounter with an annoying dog, being itself, was finding the neighbor from up the street's dachshund rooting through my other neighbor's recyclables. I yelled at the dog once but it ignored me. I did find it amusing that it appeared at one point as if the dog was putting a cup it had been chewing on back in the recycling bin. Overall, seeing the dog rooting through trash and chewing on wadded up aluminum foil was too much though. I not only had visions of all of the trash ending up blown into my yard, but I had concerns about the dog getting a bowel obstruction, internal bleeding, or some other malady in addition to concerns that it could get run over by the trash truck, or someone in a hurry to get to work.

I thought about taking the dog home to its owners, but I suspected that they probably weren't dressed, and that was why their dog was running loose, and I don't get the impression that we are on the best of terms with them anyway (I'm not entirely sure why, but I have an idea...most likely just differences and probably misunderstandings; more on their part than ours, I suspect.). I deferred taking the dog home to the owners because I didn't feel like initiating more conflict and getting in their face first thing on a Monday morning. I did chase the dog away from the trash it was exploring, however, and then started walking/herding it toward home. When it looked like it might try to take a meandering path and go somewhere else, I picked the dog up and carried to almost to its front door. I have no idea if the owners will know I did that, and I really don't care.

I'm debating whether or not to mention the issue of loose and unsupervised dogs to the HOA, without mentioning any names. People know who they are... Seriously, if you can afford to drive a late model Mercedes, can you not at least afford to put in an invisible fence if not a regular one? It's not fair to the dog or the rest of your neighbors when you let your animal roam loose. Depending on the time of day, your pet runs the risk of being run over or becoming food for coyotes. Letting your dog roam about unsupervised just is not a loving or responsible thing to do.

My other dog annoyance this morning came from one of my own dogs. Again, she was just doing what dogs do. She is a herding dog, and she may have been trying to herd me. I just didn't know she was there, and when she cut me off, I crashed right into her nearly knocking her over because I was moving quickly and not anticipating impediments to my movement, or obstacles. All is forgiven though, because I love dogs, really, I do.

Like a Kid in a Toy Store

Yesterday was a day of much running around. If the two Target stores I visited were any indication, people are spending right now. The lines at the checkouts were especially long at the Target we stopped into about an hour before closing time, and it was next to impossible to find a person to help you in either electronics department as both were literally swamped.

I must confess, and I hate to do so, but I have not been in a Hallmark store for some time. It may have been as little as a year, or it could have been 2-3 years, but it's been a while. I can think of a couple of reasons for this: 1) I buy a lot of my greeting cards at either Target or Wal-Mart. My Christmas cards, even when I buy Hallmark cards, are often bought at Kohl's, on sale and with percentage-off coupons. 2) The Hallmark ornaments we buy usually come from Kohls and other stores that carry some of the Hallmark Keepsake product line too. 3) I just don't usually think to stop in to the Hallmark store.

Last night, we went into the local Hallmark store though. We were in search of a Santa ornament, for our oldest son, who really only likes Santa ornaments and more specifically, "Hallmark" Santa ornaments. I felt like a kid in a toy store! I got so excited about all of the different ornaments on display and finally announced to the hubster that I couldn't take any more cuteness, I needed to look at some of the other items in the store. The rest of the store was full of more Hallmark goodness and eye candy. The staff at our store was awesome too. They were friendly and made themselves available, in the event we needed assistance, but they didn't hover. It was a wonderful shopping experience. I probably would have stayed a little longer if we hadn't needed to stop at Target, it wasn't so close to closing time for the Hallmark store, and if staying wouldn't have inflicting more damage to our bank account. But I will be going back soon and I probably will buy more goodies.

Girl vs. Ladder

Today I battled with one of those 22-foot multi-position extension ladders on a staircase. It was a hard fought battle, but since I emerged with only 2 slightly chipped fingernails, did not fall down the stairs with the ladder, did not fall off the ladder, AND accomplished my mission, I can confidently say that I emerged victorious in the battle with the ladder.