Ho, ho, ho

Christmas morning without any of the rituals is strange. No children, no church, the accidental event. We straggled down to breakfast, coffee and English muffin, exchange of presents. The presents were surprises - Bruce got the Nook tablet and gift cards - a perfect gift for a guy trapped in a wheel chair. I got a cover for my iPad with the promise of a keyboard. Mike got some warm clothes to carry him through dog walking. We had a German dinner of Rouladen and spatezel shared with friends who have Hungarian and German ancestors so the dinner was familiar. Very low key but it felt like Christmas.

I need a little Christmas right this very minute

This is turning out to be the strangest Christmas ever. In Jinni's World in October it was going to be a white Christmas snuggled in West Virginia with hot cocoa and cookies, kisses and sticky fingers from the little grands and awesome snowboarding from the older grands. We were going to be a happy extended family for several days. Then slowly the plan began to fall apart. Work schedules conflicted, older grandchildren had plans windows of opportunity shifted but still there was hope families would come and go passing in the night but by New Years all would have been up to the house. The plan went into full crumble when Bruce fell and ended up having surgery on one knee and braces on both legs limiting him to a walker, wheel chair and limited range of motion. One leg is in full lock position making it challenging to get him in and out of most anywhere. The snow is not cooperating with balmy rainy days turning the ground to mush and snow a figment of my imagination.

As Christmas Eve draws close Miss Madi has her first full blown baby cold, Ashby and his Mom are recuperating from their own bout with bugs, Kama is down for the count and Jason is still on the mend from the Pneumonia.

The spirit of Christmas will flit from home to home hopefully leaving kisses on the cheeks of each of my children, their beloved and the amazing gran's. My wish is you wake up smelling cinnamon in the sticky buns in the imaginary oven.

The gods must be laughing

Monday I slipped down the wood stairs in the house and ended up battered and bruised. Bruce came back early from Cary so he could help me get out of bed in the morning. Today he picked up the grocery order from the store before heading out for his first golf day since his shoulder surgery in October. I took a pill to quiet the muscle spasms and prepared to do a little work before he got back when what to my wondering surprise the phone rang and Sandy his golfing buddy says "Bruce fell down on the fairway and I have called 911 he can't get up.".

So I quickly dressed. Mike walked the dog. We headed up to meet the ambulance as they took the backboard and stretcher down. Quick summary. Sandy sent for one of the maintenance carts. They loaded Bruce on the board into the back drove him up to the road, loaded him into the ambulance and headed downtown. After almost 6 hours in ER X-rays and consultations they moved him upstairs to await surgery in the morning. He tore his quadriceps ligament and cannot lift his leg. His other leg is badly bruised and not taking weight.

So here we are the lame and the injured spending the night in n lovely room on the 11th floor overlooking downtown Charlotte

Gone in 2 seconds

It started as a sunny morning. Coffee in hand I did some administrative work and sent out the meeting notes. Quick shower and with sneakers in hand headed down the stairs to walk Zed. Three steps from the bottom my feet slid off the step, my back hit hard and I finished crumpled on the floor wondering if I would ever get up. Long story short several ice packs and Advil later along with a two hour trip to urgent care it summed up to bruises, bangs, pulled muscles and aches that make a cough a side clutching event. It will probably take several weeks before twisting, coughing or lifting won't bring tears to my eyes. I am seldom thankful for the mornings I wake up and am pain free, I think that is short sighted.

Christmas

For as long as I can remember I have had a love hate relationship with Christmas. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the season. It is so much less stressful. Christmas brings out all of the angst, the ghosts of Christmas's past, the unfullfilled wishes, the golden ring of bringing peace and happiness to everyone within my realm. Every year I say that I will not let myself fall in to my own trap of trying to meet all of the spoken, unspoken, hinted, wished expectations for Christmas morning.

I am in West Virginia this sunny weekend to decorate for Christmas. We brought up the decorations and the lights. Bruce wrapped the front porch, Sandy installed a new outlet in the front hall so I could plug in the tree, I chased dust bunnies and eradicated cobwebs under the old chest in preparation for THE TREE. Down it came, in it was plugged, on came about 20% of the lights. Undaunted I pulled out my handy dandy tester and spare bulbs and started tracing the wires. After replacing several fuses, possibly bad bulbs, changing extension cords, standing on one foot and invoking the Christmas fairy wish, I gave up. The tree has had a long life, it has been folded up and stuffed under the steps, in the garage and squished in the upstairs closet. I guess I was expecting a lot of those thin wires travelling from limb to limb.

Bruce and Sandy have headed out to Oakland MD to bring back a new tree. Please oh Christmas Fairy let the tree light up on first try.

Blogs

I love reading blogs! Every morning while waiting for my coffee I check my daughters blogs for news on the babes. Failing to find news, I move over to Facebook to see what is going on in my little world. I realize this is a huge responsibility for the Mom's to feed my insatiable desire for more and more news. Any news is good -- has Madi moved on from Cheerios to Coco Puffs -- that is a joke. I have thought of threatening the daughters that failing to feed my need for baby love from afar I may darken their doorsteps on a more regular basis, but I am not sure that will get the desired result. How did this addiction happen? How did I go from looking forward to phone calls to this desire for regular tiny drips of news? I blame it on my IPhone.

For some reason the Moms of my oldest grandsons have escaped this responsibility. Partially it is because the oldest is on Facebook and from time to time I get to read his thoughts. I don't alway understand this thoughts, but they are alway interesting. I love his new picture! No -- now that I have said that don't take it down! The next two guys provide less input. Perhaps because my addiction started after they reached puberty and beyond they have escaped my desire for daily updates. But a word to the Moms - you should consider starting a blog. I miss my news.

Is there a quid pro quo required? That is a weighty question. Just how much news do I have to share that would interest my off-spring and their partners? My neighbor - albeit 10 years younger and a hunting kind of guy - is aggressively working his bucket list. He was off hunting in Russia last month and is in training for a major hike/hunting trip to Alberta after the first of the year. Now that is news. My news has a much lower wow factor. The bushes are all trimmed, the house is decorated for Halloween. The pumpkin head man has been stuffed and is sitting on the porch. Note to Peter - he is still wearing your cast off pants, flannel shirt and holding his bloody hand. The candy is purchased and hidden from view to protect it from the big people. No trips to the pumpkin patch but I did bring home some mums to put in the cauldrons on the porch. Now it is time to start thinking about Thanksgiving.

Question for discussion -- is it worth the trouble to make the turkey stock for the dressing and gravy or should I take the easy way out and use boxed chicken stock?

Thank you

In September, Mike moved down from Virginia while job hunting. It was a huge change to leave the area he has lived in for the past 25+ years. And to tell the truth, we had some trepidations having a son move in without a clear plan for moving out. But I have to say thank you to Mike for everything he has done to make the transition easy and to help us while waiting for one of the jobs to come through.

In the last few weeks, he has trimmed all the shrubs - a major task at our house. Cleaned the garage, built shelves and put stuff where it belonged. He moved the lawn stuff out of the garage and under the deck so Bruce could get in the garage and eliminate the car shuffling in the driveway. This week he tackled the project of fixing the gate under the sun porch. It is a really wide wooden swinging gate that sagged, cut into the drain pipe (leaving a hole) and could not clear the grass without gouging it. It was one of those projects that nagged at me. So he took it off, cut it down and built a new frame to protect the drain pipe and lock the gate. Then he moved the 12+ 2foot square concrete slate pavers that we saved when we had a new sidewalk installed in the front and put down a floor. I now have relatively dry storage under the sun porch. And to finish off the week he pressure washed the deck eliminating 4 years of grunge.

Now I know this won't keep up, that he is burning off energy and some frustration waiting for one of the jobs to come through, and when he goes back to work these all day labor intensive projects will seem a little less interesting. But WOW - I plan to aggressively priortize my wish list of projects too small to hire someone and too hard for me to do and leave it laying around in the kitchen, maybe stuck under a magnet on the refrigerator door.