Letters From Home

It is always hard to believe that another year has gone by.  I suppose if we each took time to pay attention to every passing minute it might be different, but who can manage that?

I got some things accomplished this year that I had wanted to, and left other things un-done.  Those will give me something to work toward in the next year.  I’ve certainly got enough materials on hand to do what I want to do.

Life has been relatively good, financially, but could definitely be better.  I’ve got materials on hand to work on that, too.  After all, I’m going to Egypt when I’m 60 and I want to have plenty of money to spend there.  That’s about the best incentive there is!

My family members seem to be happy.  There have been some major changes in their lives this year, but everything, no matter how stressful, has been for the good.  That’s always encouraging.  A Mom worries, after all.

I didn’t always learn something new every day, but I learned a lot.  I have new skills.  I have done new things.  F’zer and I got a vacation all to ourselves where we didn’t go visit relatives.

2006 was a good year.  Onward and upward for 2007.

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I watch the broadcast of the Christmas Midnight Mass from Rome every year even though I am not a Christian and we celebrate Christmas as a purely secular holiday.

I got started doing that when my son was a baby and it was a nice peaceful way to end what was usually a busy and frazzling day.  As time went by, life got less frazzly, but it has remained a peaceful way to end the day.

I must admit it was odd last year not to see the poor old failing Pope still hanging in there.  No way to know how long the current one will last, or what direction the church will go when it comes time to pick his successor.

I read a book not long ago that claimed that there are documents that prove that the man we’ve come to know as Jesus survived the crucifixion and lived many years afterwards.  I have a feeling that if such documents exist, there are just too many people with too many good reasons to keep them under wraps.  But what would happen if it turned out that the story that’s been told for thousands of years isn’t true after all?

I suspect most Christians would continue to believe it anyway; that’s the nature of faith.

I don’t believe the story, but I still enjoy watching the pageantry from Rome.  I suspect that won’t change for me, either.  So in a few hours I’ll settle back and spend a “calm and bright” hour to end a peaceful day.

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Even with Trackback Validator activated, I keep getting spam trackbacks.

This definitely warrants further investigation.

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F’zer has a beloved old cardigan sweater that’s all full of holes.  I’m not quite sure of the history of the thing, but I do know that he adamantly refuses to get rid of it, despite the fact that it is totally unwearable.  In fact, I don’t think I have ever seen him wear it.

When I saw an ad for a yarn sale at Michaels, it occurred to me that I might try fixing that sweater, if I can find yarn that comes close to the color.  The torn-out elbows are a lost cause, but I can either cover those up with prefab leather patches (assuming the fabric store still carries such a thing) or I could make elbow patches out of Ultrasuede.  It wouldn’t take more than a quarter yard for the two patches.

I’m going to bundle up the sweater and take it with me to the store tomorrow or the next day and see what I can find.  I’m pretty sure this sweater is wool.  I don’t think the moths would have done quite such a job on acrylic.  I have a book called Mend It! that gives clear instructions for darning knits, so if I can come up with wool yarn that’s reasonably close in color and texture I’ll be all set.

Of course, no guarantees F’zer will want to wear the sweater even after it’s mended, but I think it’s still worth a try.

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When I was in the 6th grade, I coveted a clear red Duncan yo-yo that was being sold at Pearson’s Drug Store (the only store that was within any kind of reasonable distance of our house, and it was far enough away that special parental permission had to be obtained before we went there).  I don’t know how much they cost in those days.  Memory says it was a dollar, but I’m not entirely sure I remember it correctly.  In any case, it was more money than I generally had on hand, and scraping up the required coins took me quite a while.

But I did eventually get my clear red Duncan yo-yo.  I was never very good at actually playing with it, but I loved the color and since it had taken me quite a while to manage to buy it, it was one of my prized possessions.

Alas, I got stupid one day and took it to school.  I kept it in my pocket, but every now and again I’d take it out just to look at it.  My teacher, Miss Wilmoth, told me in no uncertain terms that I was not to play with it during school time.  No problem.  I, foolish kid that I was, figured that while we were standing in line in the hall during our mid-morning bathroom break was not “school time,” and just looking at it was not “playing” with it, so I took the yo-yo out of my pocket to look at it.

Miss Wilmoth promptly took it away from me and put it in her desk drawer.

And she never gave it back.

And that was that.  I didn’t have enough money to buy another one, and I knew if I told my parents that Miss Wilmoth had taken it away from me, they wouldn’t understand.  The clear red Duncan yo-yo became yet another on the list of lost objects of my childhood.  Duncan quit making the clear red yo-yos after that time, or at least they weren’t commonly available where I could see them.

Until today, when Vengeant and I were out shopping for a present for F’zer, and I spotted a display of yo-yos in the store, among which was…  oh my…  a clear red Imperial model from their Classic series.

I picked it up to look at it, and Vengeant kindly offered to buy it for me.  I’m still not particularly good at actually playing with a yo-yo, but that’s OK.  It’s sitting on my desk right now, where I can admire that glorious clear red color.  Ahhhhh.

So, Miss Wilmoth, wherever you are, thbft, thbft, thbft.  I got my yo-yo back.

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We seldom have a lot of money to spend on holiday presents, but that’s never really been a problem.  Because of course the idea is not to spend money, but to find gifts that the recipient will really like.

When my brothers and I were kids, every Christmas our dad would give us $1 per gift per sibling.  And we had to think hard about what kind of nice gift we could get for that amount of money.  Granted, in the 50s and 60s a dollar went a lot farther than it does now, but even when I was in my final year of college the per-sibling spending limit had only risen to $5, and there were still plenty of neat things to be had at that price.

Of course, finding a gift on a tight budget requires the gift giver to think.  Maybe that’s why I spend a lot more time mulling things over than doing the actual shopping.  Once I’ve made up my mind, it usually doesn’t take long to acquire whatever-it-is and wrap it up.

My family almost always gets me neat things, but I must admit there are several items I’ve been given over the years that I’m still scratching my head over.  I won’t go into detail; let’s just say that the thought really does count and leave it at that.

This year, I almost took the plunge and bought an item of clothing for my daughter, but I wasn’t quite that brave. 

Title of the message?  Something that came to me one holiday season years ago when I was holding our big fat silvery-grey lump o’cat.

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