A sullen mostly overcast day, but the gray winter world was made beautiful with the dazzle of sun on last summer’s goldenrod and fluffy cushions of white in the forks of trees as black as ink.
*End of weather report*
Category Archives: Whatever
Que linda!
I’m in a *I don’t feel like blogging* funk, but thought I’d share some happy pics from today.
My girlfriend from work Linda, on the right, had planned to have her baby daughter by C-Section on Inauguration Day, but well, things happened sooner than expected. Melanie was born a couple days before Christmas and we had Linda’s shower tonight.
I don’t often do baby showers, but this one was fun because I got to meet some of her family, including two of her sweet nieces who were busy making *hats* from the discarded ribbons and bows from the shower gifts. Isn’t their hair just the most adorable thing?
The star of the show! Little Melanie Isabel slept through the whole party being passed from arm to arm in the happy embrace of family and friends.
😉
Jeez…
and I’d thought I was awkward-looking as a teenager!
😉
Skimmers give no hint of their grace on the wing as they pass the hours between tides on a late October beach in NJ.
They’re somewhere far south now, somewhere far warmer than here.
Yet I can see the loveliness, come summer, as improbable as the bird itself, and as improbable as any lanky teenager, staring at herself in the mirror, waiting and willing her own summer come.
The other side of sunset
I’d been looking straight ahead, watching the sun sink behind the hills of Atlantic Highlands, coloring the sky above Sandy Hook Bay in pink and turquoise when a flash from the north caught my eye and I turned to see the NYC skyline ablaze with the setting sun.
Reveille
We’ve always done a funny thing in my family at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Some people shoot off fireworks; we go out on the stoop and bang pots!
Anyone else do that?
I wonder if it isn’t a city thing that my parents brought with them when they moved down here to the shore. Growing up, I remember a few other families in the neighborhood that did it, but I’ve not met anyone since that looks for the biggest pot and the klankiest utensil as midnight approaches.
😉
I think if I were to do it in the neighborhood where I live now, there’d be police at my doorstep within minutes. But if I get together with my brothers on New Year’s Eve, there’s sure to be pots.
And Brian playing the trumpet to add to the racket out there on the stoop.
Listening to him tonight, playing first Auld Lang Syne and then Reveille, I felt that sense of melancholy that seems almost inevitable on this night; another year done. Reveille tends to turn that around pretty quick tho.
😉
I wonder Kev… did Dad play his horn on New Year’s Eve too, or am I imagining that memory?
Hope it was a happy and safe night for all.
So this is Christmas
Wow. I’m pooped.
Last year I remember being exhausted with having two days worth of relatives here at home…
This year it was the running from one house to the next that has me beat…
It was a fun day that started with our tradition (lately) of breakfast with my brothers. We started this a couple years ago so that we could spend some time together and still be able to meet other family obligations (in-laws) without being away from home for the whole day. It works pretty well, as we rotate houses each year and no one gets stuck with the chore of fixing breakfast year after year. This year it was TheReluctantChickenFarmer’s turn (my brother Kevin) and as is typical of most everything in our family, we got started about two hours behind schedule.
First we had to all play with the kid’s new toys from Santa… here’s Kev boxing with his daughter’s new Wii game. What fun!
Then, the little boys (my 48 and 46 year old brothers!) had to play with the train set under the tree…
😉
Kevin borrowed our upside-down tree this year to see how they liked it – my madness is spreading!
I finally got the kids to settle down and pose for a pic with me. This is Kev’s daughter Elyse on the left and Bri’s daughter Julia on the right. (Freckles run rampant in our family.)
Eventually, we sat down to breakfast around 1 o’clock. There were crepes and pancakes and spiked eggnog and lots of good stories and laughter.
All that eggnog made the girls really, really silly…
😉
We were late for dinner with the in-laws by about 2 hours… just in time for dessert, in other words. Sometimes I worry that everyone knows I do that on purpose.
The quiet before
I love the stillness that finally comes on Christmas Eve and I’m up way past midnight enjoying the quiet of my living room lit only by the tree and the soft sounds the bunnies make in the dark as they nibble hay in the next room.
I had to work today for the first time in many years and wasn’t very happy about it, really. Christmas Eve feels to me like the most solemn of days, yet I think being at work today let me see how the people I work with and the agency I work for can really shine in the lives of people in need. All week there’s been bundles of donated clothes and toys hauled out to god-knows-where and the quiet phone calls we social workers sometimes make to appeal directlty to charities on behalf of the families we work with so there’ll be toys or breakfast or heat on Christmas morning.
I was off early enough to enjoy some last-minute shopping, final touches to the tree – these sweet, glittery fabric butterflies that are wired to the branches – and the chance to visit with a couple friends and neighbors in the midst of their own Christmas Eve craziness.
The quiet now is complete until morning when another sort of craziness starts. I anticipate that, not nearly as much as I did when I was a child, but I still do. The stillness now is wonderful, though. I hope you find a moment of it yourself.
The larger darkness of night
I want to be enchanted by the season, by its dreams and starry ideas, by the quiet solitude of snowfall.
The things that fill the larger darkness of night, the things we so deliberately weave into our days in this season of diminished light…
What are your rituals, like the coming together with family, that let you treasure this season? Not the glitter, not the wrapping paper, but the true meaning beneath the things we do for the sake of vanity?
Maybe it’s the occasion to extend a hand to someone who’s been without or…
What?
I’m so lost in the glitter and the busyness that I hardly have time to hope for more.
Oh! Heather from Pa. sent me something I’m to pass along to other members of the flock. Probably I’ll send it to Susan first, for her to send on to the flocker of her choice. So be looking for something. Thanks, Heather!
Lukamoose and favorite Xmas songs
Yes, he’s a ham for the camera!
Can you imagine the torture I’d inflict on a child?
He’s not knocked down the tree or lifted his leg on it. Yet. Stealing ornaments is another matter altogether.
😉
I’m playing along with a holiday meme I saw over at Liza’s and elsewhere to list 10 favorite Christmas songs. My favorites are mostly traditional carols…
1. O Holy Night – this is my absolute favorite carol, I think.
2. Please Come Home for Christmas by the Eagles
3. Carol of the Bells
4. Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy by David Bowie and Bing Crosby
5. Same Old Lang Syne by Dan Fogelberg – I won’t admit to liking anything else by him, but this one makes me cry every single time I hear it.
6. Earth Abides by Philip Aaberg – a nicely quiet piano piece
7. Fairytale of NY by The Pogues – not one you’d ever hear on the radio, but an old favorite I was reminded of by reading other responses to this meme. Be warned… The Pogues are something of an acquired taste!
8. Silent Night – this one is all about the setting… I love hearing it on Christmas Eve, at midnight, holding a small candle in front of me at church with hot wax dripping onto my fingers.
9. Wexford Carol
10. Peace by Norah Jones
Why not share a few of your favorites?
Sparkle and shine
One of my favorite ways to avoid actually shopping at Christmastime is to wander around stores, pretending to be shopping, but instead just enjoying the sparkly displays.
Most are way too over the top and garish for me to do anything but gape in a sort of childlike wonder. Bubble lights! Penguins! Glittery stuff! Fake snow!
My tastes for home are much simpler, but by God I’ve got tons of decorations! Each year a different bunch of boxes is hauled down from the attic and I feel as if I’ve never seen most of it before because it’s been so many years since I last used whatever is in that particular box.
I have a particular weakness for glass ornaments and try very hard to avert my eyes and avoid displays like this one! A store around the corner from me has a wall solid with nothing bu
t glass tree ornaments in every conceivable shape and size… animals, lighthouses, flowers, birds, insects…
I only looked long enough to find a sweet little shorebird; a group that is poorly represtented among the bird ornaments on my tree. That was my excuse for buying it at least.
😉
Today wasn’t entirely wasted on ogling; I did manage to buy a few gifts. Not many, but it’s a start at least.
How many shopping days left?