Day to remember.

Christmas day was lazy for me--years ago, i used to be the one trying to get the potatoes to be ready when the stuffing was ready when the turkey was ready, and remember how the heck to make gravy. These days, and for a number of years past, i contribute in some small way, but haven't been the main chef. This has been due to the fact that my oldest loves to cook, and my youngest daughter's husband loves to cook. Me, not so much. So i'm very happy to be the cheerleader: "Go, team, go! Cook, team, cook!" These days the biggy for me is making cinnamon rolls for whoever is at my house on Christmas morning.

This year we had Christmas dinner at my daughter Corinne's house, where she and husband/chef Luis were in charge of the eating festivities. For appetizers we had a selection of cheeses with baguettes and red grapes. Then we had a tender lamb roast stuffed with sauteed chard and feta cheese, with herbed mashed potatoes, and roasted parsnips and carrots in a maple and mustard glaze. Luis had roasted beets and did whatever one does to roasted beets, and made a lovely salad of beets, watercress, and candied walnuts in a citrus vinagrette.

At not-quite-seven, grandgirl Cassidy loved the sugared walnuts and the dressing, but wasn't so crazy "about the cress." She also wouldn't eat the carrots, but ate the parsnips. Haley, ten, will eat pretty much any vegetable, and has been caught with her finger in more than one dessert, but she didn't like the sugared nuts. What kid doesn't like pretty much anything covered in sugar?

Our family seems to have a gift for overdoing the whole dessert thing, though. We had less than the usual almost one dessert per person--only a one dessert to two people ratio this time around. We all managed to get some of that down. It was a great meal, the 11 of us fit just fine in a small living/dining room, something i think a few of us (namely Corinne and Luis!) were concerned about.

It's a bigtime thankful thing for me, being together like that, especially while enjoying someone else's cooking.

Christmas thoughts.

holly trees

outside my childhood home

sweet smell

of green needled boughs dripping

from mantles

tinsel

found months later in crannies

question

each year

of white lights or colored

the new again

of treasured ornaments

the old again

of Christmas songs

the joy

in gifts given in love

the greater joy

of God's Gift

received

Remember.

Something new for Christmas.

This is not a lovely story of Christmas cheer, rather, this is a story of simply me at Christmas.

i usually am not thrilled about wrapping gifts. My sister got the ability to make neat corners and pretty bows, and the joy in coordinating ribbons and papers. i got the ability of admiring her neat corners, pretty bows and coordinating ribbons and papers. These days my answer to the wrapping dilemma is to find paper i like and buy a bag of bows, hopefully in the after-Christmas sales to use the next year. Oh--and sticky tags. i love those sticky tags. But weirdly, i was in the mood to wrap presents yesterday, so i pulled out my couple of rolls of paper, my sticky tags and bag of bows (from last year's after Christmas sales) and started wrapping.

As i pulled a gift from the box where i'd been stuffing the presents as i'd bought them over the months, i thought, Weird, i'd swear i already wrapped this same thing.

Since it is a gift for my husband, and since he does at least *skim* this blog, i can't get too specific. But yes, i have apparently bought the same thing for him twice this year for Christmas. Guess i must think he'll like it--guess i must have thought a couple of times that he'd like it.

This is something i don't recall doing on previous years--but then, i didn't recall buying the same thing twice, either.

Okay, so it's been a while...

My faithful reader tells me "there's been nothing new for a while on your blog-" Well, there were the holidays, i say in explanation, and then there are the constant games of Spider solitaire i play obsessively, thinking i will begin to win Win WIN!! but i don't. Not often. Just often enough to keep me trying. ANYway, i'm writing now.

Christmas was fun, spent with the family at my oldest daughter's, with all of us pitching in to have a simple meal of appetizers and sandwiches--and of course pie. There must be pie in copious amounts. And the grandchildren are fun and funny, and keep us all amused.

i got to have early Christmas with the England contingent--now, they know how to do cold. And dark. i'm pretty used to street lights and such, but those quaint little villages in England don't have much of that and a person really can't see in front of their nose at night. And here i thought that was just a saying. We've had some extreme cold for these mild parts of California, below freezing nights and mornings. For us that's a novelty, for my little English grandsons it's just a part of winter time, having to wear 16 layers of clothing to go outside.

i'll try to get my rear back in gear to write more often here, (although the typing is better with my hands) just in case someone drops by.

It was funny to sign on to my blog and see the last thing i wrote was about the sleep apnea--it's been pretty much 2 months exactly using the cpap machine, and i think i'm finally getting used to sleeping with it, with the mask on my face. i figure i'm getting accustomed because i no longer wake up in the night and flail madly at whatever is covering my nose before i realize it's supposed to be there. The mask is my friend. Haven't seen a big difference yet in quality of sleep, but i think i must be starting to sleep a bit more deeply, as i'm waking up less in the night. So we will see. The jury is still out on that, as that saying goes.

Well, it's late (for me, anyway,) and time to put on the lovely mask and float off to dreamland.