Random Thoughts

Going to leave this tab open all day, and just record some of what crosses my mind.  Would that be okay with everybody?

Why, thank you.

It is my Favorite Day of The Year.  Christmas Eve is all about baking cookies (at least in our house) and excitement and being finished with all the rushing about and that marvelous anticipatory quiet and stillness that descend after the sun goes down.  Christmas Day can sometimes disappoint.  Christmas Eve never does.

Proof of the use of an Amazon gift card*:

 (Below "Bringing Up Baby is Saramago's memoir.  When I finish with his novel, All the Names, either that, or the letters to the President book, will be my next read.)

One of our Christmas Eve rituals is cookie-baking.  I'm also baking a breakfast casserole and a coffee cake for tomorrow, so there'll be more kitchen activity than usual.  We also always visit a live Nativity scene one of the local churches has, then come back to open one gift each, then watch "The Muppet Christmas Carol."  

Mama, Daddy and I didn't really have any Christmas traditions, unless you call me having to pull these off Daddy's feet after a tough Christmas Eve at the store one:

 Each year, when we go to the Nativity scene, I wear these in honor:

Inside the boots will be a pair of handknit socks --- made from Deborah Norville's "Serenity" sock yarn.  Now, I'm no Deborah Norville fan, but Jo-Ann had the yarn on sale for a ridiculously low price, so I got some.  I bought 2 skeins each of 3 different colorways, and it turns out that I got a full pair out of just 1 skein.  How often does that happen?  This is the color I'm wearing:

It's beautiful worked up, and is nice and soft.  Maybe an early holiday miracle?

Have a Magnificent Christmas.  You've been a great support in a year that I needed constant boosting.  Thank you.



*This mostly for the benefit of Twinnie.

If You Were Me Today

1.  You would have awakened after dreaming about your First Grade Boyfriend.

2.  You would have a Cat Stevens song stuck in your head.

3.  You would not be, nor would you have ever been, a Cat Stevens fan.

4.  You would be puzzled by the shape of the garment you are knitting, even though you are following the pattern to the letter.

5.  (You would think the garment is either upside down or backward --- either one not good.)

6.  You would have e-mailed your therapist 3 times over a raging argument with your daughter.

7.  You would have received an Amazon gift card from your amazing twin sister.
8.  You would have already spent the card.
9.  You would have been sent this awesome link by an awesome friend.

And I Read, Too

Just the other day, I told a friend of mine that Jose Saramago is my favorite author.  This weekend, I finished his Seeing, the sort-of companion to Blindness (one of my favorite books of all.)  It was, as all his work is, remarkable.  And though Saramago is my favorite author, my favorite writer is:

Heck, maybe he's my favorite reader, too!

Once I got finished with Seeing, I sped through two more books.  Both were fairly short, but so compelling it was hard for me not to read them.  One was Thunder Dog, about a blind man and his guide dog surviving the 9/11 attacks.  (ANYthing about service dogs --- I'm there.)  The other book was Scattershot, about a family with bipolar disorder.  And "family" here is literal --- both parents, and two of the three children suffer with it.  After all my mental health issues this year, it was both a comfort and a fright to read their struggle.

Knitting does continue.  I restarted Briton's Christmas sweater with a different color yarn --- just wasn't satisfied with my first choice.  I've got just a couple of facecloths to knit for Hannah, and all my knitting for her (so far as I know) will be done.  I'm doing little things for the etsy shop --- tree ornaments, brooches, that sort of thing.  I hope, I hope, I hope I get some traffic this year, because if I thought last year's Christmas was tough. . .  Twelve more months of unemployment have broken the back of this one.