The tree is up, and the packages have been mailed. One party down, only one more to go, and all of this despite the fact that I’ve felt a bit under the weather for the last few days, and finally decided a trip to the dental clinic was in order this morning to deal with some tooth pain. While it’s not as bad as I feared, I do need to have my wisdom teeth removed as soon as I can get to it! Yes, I still have all of them, even though every dentist I see tells me they need to come out. I don’t know why my teeth were bothering them, since they weren’t bothering me, but since they are now I guess it’s time.

I didn’t put up as many decorations this year as I usually do (the reason for this will become apparent soon, but for now I have to be a bit mysterious). The tree and the wreaths are up and about, but other than that I decided to limit the decorating festivities to the nativity scene, and I had to choose it’s place very carefully this year or all of the figures were likely to become casualties well before Epiphany. I can just imagine Shadow carrying little Jesus around in his mouth, and tearing bits of fabric and trims off of the rest. The mannerless one has absolutely no respect!

My mom made this nativity when I was very young, maybe as young as two years old. She started with cones from industrial size thread, and added stocking-covered styrofoam balls for heads. Scraps of fabric became robes and clothing, and bits of trim and jewels were pinned in place to complete the ensembles. I think Baby Jesus is a chunk of salt dough under the swaddling.

Mom gave the nativity to me when I moved out, and I remade their faces in cross stitch, and added hair and a few newer and different fabrics and jewels around 1989. After we moved to Germany, I thought about adding a quilted background for it, and I made a Mariner’s Compass Star of Bethlehem, but I got stuck trying to make the landscape under the star too realistic and never could put something together that I was happy with. Time and experience have resulted in some new creative ideas for finishing that quilt, so it’s good that I still have the UFO creativity pieces 10+ years later!

I just love looking at these pieces and remembering which fabrics and jewels were original and which ones I added later, and seeing how it all works together. When I decided on the only place in the house that I thought was safe from the evil cat, I realized that the quilt that was already hanging there is somewhat star-like in the center and it all goes perfectly together, so all is good and will do until that other quilt gets done. I’ve never seen a nativity that I liked better than this one. Maybe someday one of my girls will add her special touches and make it hers.

Share This

Hard on the heels of clearing the mechanism and getting back to what’s really important came the thought that if I don’t make some sort of a plan and get to work on it, all the things that need to get done before Christmas won’t. I’ve done this to myself every year for the last few, just sort of waited to even think about the holidays until they’re here and then it goes downhill from there.

I remember being more organized once upon a time, maybe more than five years ago, when I would start shopping and planning in September, though like all parents who buy too much and spoil their kids, we were still up on Christmas Eve wrapping like madmen. More recently, I’ve been completely unmotivated to deal with any of it until the dreaded season is threatening to mow me down, and that doesn’t work too well when many gifts have to be ordered from the States and shipped soon enough to arrive on time.

I think it may have started to degenerate when I realized that no matter what I did for one of my kids, it was never “enough.” There was always something completely unreasonable on the wish list that we wouldn’t buy for a child in a million years, and then she wasn’t happy with what we did buy. There was always something she wanted to do that just didn’t work (usually because it was, again, something that a child wasn’t going to get to do anyway) and then everything we did do was met with surliness and/or noncooperation. She’s still kind of like that, though there are (very) brief moments when I see a faint glow toward the end of the tunnel, and last year Christmas was a bit better than previous years had been with her.

My reaction to that and all the rest of the holiday stress is to just not deal with it for any longer an amount of time than is completely necessary. (ITMan calls this my “Bah Humbug” response) Thus, the shopping and planning scramble starting on Thanksgiving and continuing on through December, ending with a complete crash on Boxing Day. Read the rest of this entry »

Share This

The observance of Veterans Day means more than sleeping in (though I must say, that was heavenly this morning!), but I’ll bet my kids have no idea why they’re not doing school today. That’s completely sad for two kids who have spent a good portion of their school years in Department of Defense schools, and whose father is a 24-year veteran of the US Air Force. Maybe we can cut the DoDDs schools a bit of a break, due to the fact that three of the most recent school years were spent at an international school, and not much (if any) mention was made of US Veterans Day.

Other than that, I think that maybe the pace of life these days is so wild that when a holiday weekend comes along, people are just so thankful for the break that they don’t care why they get it. I have to say that I don’t remember my parents ever discussing the whys and wherefores of holidays with me when I was a kid, and I don’t remember much about it from school either. Obviously, it’s up to me now since my kids have school at home, so they may start getting an extra “mom project” every now and again. Yeah, they’re upstairs sleeping late or otherwise vegetating in their rooms, but I think a short discussion about why they’re getting the bonus is in order later.

ITMan is at work today, despite the fact that he is a veteran. His company is one of those that says “we’ll give you the day after Thanksgiving off instead.” I think that policy ought to apply only to employees that are not veterans! Of course, there’d be a skeleton crew aboard at the office on Veterans Day if that were the case, since a huge number of these people who work for government contractor companies like this are veterans, I think.

In the spirit of the day, I think I’ll begin work on a small quilt with a patriotic theme that’s been floating around in my head for a couple of years, and is now destined to be donated to the Silent Auction at the Guild Quilt Show in spring. What about you? Are you home from work today to observe the holiday? What about your kids? Do they understand the significance of Veterans Day? Whatever you do this Veterans Day, say a thank you to all those who serve or have served our country.

Share This