I Take Down the Tree . . .

It is done. Or undone, as the case is. And I am the one who undone it. Because, hey, who else is there? Or here?

Let me just say. No easy task.

I seek no pity, only your attention for a moment while I tell you the hardest part was sawing the top couple of feet off the tree. I went out to the garage, got the saw, and said to myself, "This is going to take a while," since the saw is old and dull. Did I say dull? Double it. It did take a long time, and I hurt my hands, and I'm still sick, and so on and so forth.

But I done it. Yes, I know, did it.

The Santas and snowmen and angels and snow globes are out of sight. And the nativity is boxed up, the one my friend Joyce made for me in 1979.

I remember . . . it was Christmas Eve and we were at Grandpa & Grandma Schiess's house when they lived on Larch in Caldwell. There was a knock on the door, and I went and opened it to Joyce holding a big box. It was for me, she said. She wouldn't come in, Christmas Eve after all. I think I may have cried as I opened it and unwrapped each figure, so carefully smoothed and rubbed with brown stain. You don't get the picture, I'm sure, unless you have seen them. I was a bit stunned by it. Such a gift.

I made a cloth to set the figures on. I would display it on my cedar chest when we lived at 722. Here I most often set it out on the piano. It is beautiful. Of course, I put it out every year.

I have gone off on this tangent for two reasons:

1. As I put it away today, wrapping each piece so carefully, I realized for the first time--that's 31 years ago she made it for me--for the very first time that she must have loved me a lot.
   
2. Her life is changing and I do not know how joyful the changes are.

Summary of the morning's activities:
All things Christmas that adorned my house are put away. Except the mistletoe, but I'll stand on a stool and get it down. The poinsettia, which I'll keep until I kill it somehow. The wreath, which I always leave up for a few months, just in case the finches come back.

We like to get our houses in order, put away the festive things.

But this year especially I hope we do not put away the love we have felt for one another and for our Savior.

That's what I hope

After-Christmas Bullets

Random.

• Alyce and Ben, whose flight to Philadelphia was cancelled Sunday, got to go Monday. They are home.
  

• Paul and Tasha, whose Sunday flight to NYC was cancelled, went Monday--to Atlanta. Tuesday, I assume, to Puerto Rico. Yes, Peter and Caroline too.
  

• One of my daughters-in-law said she found a recipe for spaghetti tacos, made them, and they were good. Okay. So, really, what do I know? Still . . .
  

• Rain for two days straight. I had begun to wonder if we would ever have relief. We have it today . . . in the form of snow. Oh joy.

• Sick. Fever. Ache all over. That's me. Might be the flu. But yesterday was the worst day. This morning I actually cleaned three toilets, all mine. So I look to tomorrow. Then maybe I'll feel like untrimming my house.

• I absolutely loved Christmas this year.
  

• I wonder, truly, if we'll all be together some time. Tasha is trying to stir interest in having a Schiess family get-together next summer. I'm for it.
  

Addendum to Left Over

Addenda, maybe, because I actually have two things.

1. Today's Wiki How To is How to Make Spaghetti Tacos. Just what I want, tortillas with noodles inside. Would have to have a terrific marinara sauce, don't you think? And meatballs. Still, I can't want any. Wiki doesn't call them leftovers, but I do, and I just have to say that my friend's spaghetti sandwiches predate this idea.
   
2. Ann tells of a family she knows who, every Sunday, open the fridge, take everything left over from the week, put it together in a pot, cook it up, add ketchup and barbecue sauce, and eat it for Sunday dinner.

Come on, I said, that can't be true. Ann says it is.

Stranger things have happened, I guess. Just ask Superman.

Moonstruck . . . ish

Not that the moon needed me to, but I stayed up until nearly 2 a.m. to keep an eye on it, watch its total eclipse.

At 11:15 p.m., Boise, I stepped out onto my deck and found the sky nearly light as day and a bright white moon directly above my house. Five more times, until 1:45, I went out and saw the sky darken as the moon's bright white changed to an eventual coppery red.

I mean, like the moon turned to blood. Look it up in the scriptures--Joel 2:30-31 and Acts 2:20-21. Perhaps that is why I stayed awake, to see if any other parts of those prophecies might be fulfilled. Or perhaps simply to see it happen. I like that kind of stuff.

Besides, this lunar eclipse was a rare one. It coincided with the winter solstice.

Here's more information about that from NASA, just for you:

This lunar eclipse falls on the date of the northern winter solstice. How rare is that? Total lunar eclipses in northern winter are fairly common. There have been three of them in the past ten years alone. A lunar eclipse smack-dab on the date of the solstice, however, is unusual. Geoff Chester of the US Naval Observatory inspected a list of eclipses going back 2000 years. "Since Year 1, I can only find one previous instance of an eclipse matching the same calendar date as the solstice, and that is 1638 DEC 21," says Chester. "Fortunately we won't have to wait 372 years for the next one...that will be on 2094 DEC 21."

I won't be here for that one. But I saw this one. Ha!

There Almost Always Are

There were lighter moments at last night's Messiah performance. I believe I should use bullets here.

• Maestro Franz welcomed us: "The few, the proud, the ones who were able to park."

• The maestro had to stop the performance and wait and finally wave in the group of five or six people who were twenty minutes late and, of course, had seats in front, about the third row. I have never seen that done before. I thought it shameful of them to be late, but the maestro was good-natured about it, and who knows what travel difficulties they may have had. I am glad I was not in that party.

• The program notes had some editorial problems. That's putting it nicely. Words and word endings--like a "the" and a final "s" and others I could only guess at--were left off here and there.
  

• But the best, which deserves its own bullet, was in the description of Handel's fervor as he wrote the score for The Messiah. He isolated himself for those 24 days, you know. Refused food, slept little, was intolerant of disruptions and was quite unpleasant with anyone who did interrupt. His behavior alarmed his concerned friends, who "thought he was loosing his mind."

I loosed my mind once. But it's all tightened up again. Thank goodness.

Philosophical Me

So maybe I get a little too deep sometimes.

Like the other morning I was giving thanks for waking up, another day, being alive, and I began to wonder just how that happens, what wakes us up?

I mean, from a sleep that may be sound and very deep we suddenly stir, open our eyes, and we're awake. What makes that happen? I know we have internal clocks, and we can set them. But there's another question behind that, don't you know.

I was telling these thoughts to a few of my friends. They may have thought what I said in the first sentence up there. "There goes Carol, getting a little too deep again."

Devan brought me right back up to the surface. She said, "It's the digestive system, Carol."

I guess I'll have to go along with that.

Me and Cars

I like cars, my own and others, and it may be that I covet cars because I’d like to have one, or more, for each day of the week. I do try not to covet, though.

• For Saturday an SUV, not huge, to take up to the mountains, in case I want to go there, and so I can see the road from up high on the way
  
• my somewhat sedate Acura TL sedan for Sunday, don’t want to raise too many eyebrows and be thought overly materialistic
  
• a BMW Roadster for Monday, whip into parking lots and watch the eyes follow me
  
• for Tuesday some kind of a Ford, any kind, because they didn't take government bail-out money and because of my mother's 1955 aqua and white hard-top convertible.
• Wednesdays get bogged down sometimes, need a pick-me-up—no, not a pick-up—in the form of something vintage, maybe a ’55 T-Bird, red. But no. That's another Ford. I'd better go Chevrolet, like my brother's ’57 Chevy convertible, white with silver trim, which I say still looks great, but the truth is I don't see myself in a convertible, so I guess the BMW Roadster is also out.
  

• Thursday wants a Lexus for luxury and looks, maybe, even though it's just a fancy Toyota.
  
• Friday, hmmm, Friday give me a Mini Cooper, just so I can try it out, but not yellow, please. Never a yellow car.
  

Fantasy is not reality. For now I drive my Acura and don’t complain. No, I don't complain. I'm mighty glad to have it.

Besides, my garage wouldn't hold more than three cars.

Okay. I write one sentence on today's weather.

We are inverted, not converted, not diverted, but inverted, which means we are experiencing an inversion, a meteorological phenomenon wherein the normal properties of the layers of air are reversed--should that be inversed?--so that cold air is trapped near the surface of the earth by a layer of warm air, and what it actually means to people is that the day is gray and you can't see much and you have to take it on faith that there's blue sky up there somewhere.

Left Over

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.
- Calvin Trillin

I love this.

It was not true of my mother. I think there were leftovers, but I think my brother got to them before she could re-serve. I am not kidding about this.

In fact, very soon after Wayne and I married--like two weeks--my brother came to our small apartment. First thing he did was open the fridge. I had leftover tuna casserole but some blood from the package of hamburger meat on the shelf above had dripped into it. No problem. He just ate it--cold--deftly forking around the blood.

(Don't get after me about this blood in the casserole thing. I was a working woman and only saw it that very day when my brother came over.)

When I had a big family, I did try to serve leftovers to them. I hated to waste food. But sometimes I left them over too long. Know what I mean? And just threw them out. Which I maybe should have done from the beginning. I mean you kind of know what you're not going to want to eat twice.

Two friends:
1. Dian never served leftovers, never used up refrigerator space with them. Whatever they--five kids, two parents--didn't eat at mealtime she threw away.

2. Margie could be "creative" with leftovers. She just was not going to waste food. So she sent them--whatever they were--as the filling in her husband's sandwich the next day. Oh yes, Chris said he had eaten more than one spaghetti sandwich.

I wonder if that was with or without mayo.