Almost Christmas and Rosemary's Birthday

Cards are all sent, both trees are aglow, all the decorations I plan to put up are up, but the pies still aren’t made. I cannot find the pumpkin pulp in either freezer. I know it is there, but we had so many left-overs from Thanksgiving that somehow I have covered up the pumpkin. I may have to buy canned pumpkin when I go to town tomorrow. I did make one pan full of bar cookies today—the first cookies I have made since I made some for the Women’s Club at the first of the month.

Erin had flown down to Georgia this weekend to help her dad and Geri Ann in a softball camp, and she and Geri Ann drove up last night in Geri Ann’s car. (Erin’s car and dog Sadie were here at the farm.) It was almost 2 a.m. when they arrived here this morning, so we were glad to find them sleeping here when we woke up this morning. Erin had to go to work, so she and Sadie were off fairly early although she did delay a bit after Gerald told her he wanted to wash the salt off her car when he used the high-pressure washer on his truck.

Geri Ann had a well-deserved opportunity to sleep in before she took off to have lunch with her friend C.C. and to go to her cousin Drew’s away game tonight and then on to Crainville to spend the night with Erin at Erin’s house.

When I sat down to blog awhile ago before midnight, I realized as I had early this morning that today is my sister’s birthday and I had not phoned her yet! I knew her card would not have reached her yet in far-off Amarillo, because when I got ready to send it last week, I could not find it. I had bought a special card weeks ago, and it has been on top of the dining room buffet waiting.

Alas, it had disappeared when I was ready to mail it. (I found it today when I put up the last of the Christmas cards off the dining room table. It has been covered up so well that even though I looked there, I did not see it.) So I sent her a substitute non-birthday card I had saved for her in the distant past because of the roses on the front. (Her name is Rosemary, and we usually call her Rose or Rosie.) The envelope for this substitute card was missing, but I found a substitute envelope that worked even though not perfectly. But this was a few days after I intended to mail her card. Since I still haven’t mailed her little birthday gift, I will just enclose the real birthday card with that.

With all this forgetfulness going on, I did not want to also neglect the usual birthday phone call. Fortunately, Rose and her husband Phil are night owls and don’t go to bed until 1 a.m. or so. So I am just not back to blogging after a good birthday talk with my sister.

I learned all the latest news of their very large and complicated extended family created by their adopting four daughters long ago. Philip Todd is still in Iraq (again—many times), and his wife Jennifer and son Philip Ray had come down from Colorado Springs for a pre-Christmas visit in Amarillo before she goes back to spend Christmas Eve with her mother. They were at Rosie and Phil’s most recent weekly Friday night supper for all the gang who wants to come. Shiloh had brought his date and introduced her to the family that night. Katelynn, Ty’s daughter by his first marriage, was in town to visit with her Gpa Herman and Gloria, so she was there with them. And on and on.

It is always fun to hear about all their great grandkids who love to play together at Phil and Rosie’s—just as their parents used to do. Rosemary said today she had practiced saying, “I am 85,” but it still seemed unreal to her. It is unreal to me too since she goes to Tai Chi twice a week, teaches at an after-school Good News Club once a week, plays the organ every Sunday and Wednesday at church, and on and on.

Rosie has always been my mentor and inspiration, and she continues to set a standard I will never live up to. She was eight when I was born, so she loved lugging me around, our mother told me. When I was in grade school, she was off to college, but came home on the weekends and led our children’s group at church on Sunday nights, and she was always giving us parties at our house. When I was in high school, she was still my confidant and gave me good advice. Sometimes in my journals, I have called her my mother-sister because she has always been there for me.

I am glad Phil cooked her a special breakfast this morning of two strips of bacon and egg, toast, apple butter and coffee—all prepared just the way she likes them. She needed that substantial breakfast for energy to enjoy all the cards, visits, and phone calls that kept her busy all day continuing through my near-midnight call.

Clearing Out to Start Afresh

It is that time of year. Looking back and looking forward. Although I had taken down the door wreaths and the many table top accessories and small items lining the books on one book case, both trees were still up yesterday morning when the phone call from Mary Ellen came. Her family was sleeping while she was driving, and she was getting sleepy too. So she phoned to get her dad to talk to her, so she’d stay awake. They were trying to make it home to Lake Saint Louis from their holiday trip to Florida since the kids had friends to meet and things to do (of course) and so did the adults. Gerald suggested they meet at Cracker Barrel for breakfast, but a later phone call pleaded to just come crash here at the farm. Of course that was fine with us. All the beds were empty.


While they slept, I turned on the trees for the last time thinking they could still feel a bit of holiday spirit when they woke up—which wasn’t until noon. They were ready to head out the door, but I’d already doubled our left-over pot of chili from the night before, so they were persuaded to have a bowl of chili first, so we could hear about their trip to Disney World and their visit with Brian’s mother.


This afternoon the decorations quickly came off the upstairs tree and it is ready to be stuffed into its box in the morning and crammed back in the closet.. The guest room bed is covered with its ornaments and earlier removed accessories that still must be boxed. I climbed onto a step stool and took down the angel looking down on us from the cabinets in the dining room.


Just to get started, I even took a few ornaments off the downstairs tree, which has the accumulation of keepsake items from 52 years of marriage. There are some pretty plaid bows Jean Harrison gave me on a gift many years ago (20 or 30 years?) and a bright red and yellow bow from a flower arrangement that Hua-ling Hu brought to us at Woodsong once. There is an adorable white miniature plastic cowboy boot with attached tag promoting Kathie DeNosky’s first romance. She gave it to us when she spoke to Writers Guild, and I loved it and knew the tree was the perfect place for it.


There are many ornaments made by our children and grandchildren—including some made from toilet tissue tubes to slip over branches. There are some made by Texas relatives and Wyoming relatives and some made by my sister-in-law Ginger before her stroke. There is a red poppy bought on the street one Memorial Day from an American Legion member. I put it on the tree in remembrance of all the fun my friend Lynn and I had selling poppies in Anna for her grandparents’ veterans group.. (They treated us to lunch at a restaurant, which was a big deal to me. Lunch came with vegetables served in cute little white bowls beside your plate.) Leukemia claimed Lynn’s life a year ago right before Christmas, so I lingered over that poppy. There are so many many ornaments and memories to be mulled.


That tree will take more time than the more stylized tree upstairs did, which didn’t have that many ornaments. (The upstairs tree has always been decorated with artificial roses and blue and silver ornaments.)


I am eager to finish up Christmas tomorrow, although I will probably still be sending a few belated cards and thank you notes next week. On Christmas Eve I had to follow my usual tradition of realizing that some cards would have to go out late. I started in early December with cards to shut-ins first, then the cards I carry to Sunday School rooms to pass out at church to save postage. ( I do this in honor of our late friend Helen Beasley who had her little G.A. girls do this so we could give more to our mission offering. I conscientiously added that postage saving to my mission check.) Then I addressed cards to all the relatives—except some whose addresses had been misplaced. Finally this year, I started on our lists of friends. Then suddenly it was Christmas Eve and time to celebrate whether the cards were finished or not. I always think I will do better the next year and get cards out earlier, but so far I never have.


I love the plainness of January after the richness of December. The house bared of decorations pleases my eye and refreshes my spirit just as much as the color and brightness did when the decorations went up. I cooked white beans and corn bread for New Year’s Day, and that menu has tasted good also after the richer holiday fare.


With the holidays behind us, I look forward to a reestablishing a daily routine. And I want to use the cold wintry days ahead to go through some closets and chests and see if I cannot buy some storage space by eliminating unused items. Most of all, I want to unclutter my office, but that may never happen. Papers, pamphlets, and books accumulate almost as quickly as I can sort and throw out. We will have to wait and see what is accomplished in 2009. I am looking forward to it, but grieving the violence plaguing the planet. I wish we could throw out hatred and misunderstanding and start afresh.

Welcome Maddux Mark Archibald

I haven’t really changed my blogging date to Thursday. We have just been focused on all the excitement of our second great grandchild born Tuesday afternoon, December 9, at Aurora to our oldest grandchild, Tara Archibald and her husband Bryan.

We’ve been busy checking out email photos of Maddux and his big brother Aidan, who will be three in May. I saw more adorable photos tonight posted by Bryan on Facebook. Gerald has taken copies over to his other great grandmother, Gma Shirley. We found out Shirley had her first great granddaughter a week or so ago. We knew Tara’s cousin Jeremy and his wife were expecting at the same time as Tara, but we didn’t know their little girl had arrived. I am sure Shirley has already shown the photos of Maddux and Aidan to great great grandmother Imogene, who lives beside Shirley.

In all this excitement and the busyness of the season, I somehow lost a day. I was actually hurrying earlier this afternoon so I could go to the Wednesday night monthly business meeting at our village church. Obviously, I am a little late.

This morning I took our decades-old Christmas tree and its huge string of lights to the Household Give-Away that the Ministerial Alliance operates. It is only open on Thursday mornings, so I should have known tonight was not Wednesday. But it is easy to get mixed up during this season. I had rushed there because I overslept, but I did get there. They welcomed our tree since they had just given away their last one. Afterwards Gerald and I met at Menards, where he was Christmas shopping and I had seen an ad for pre-lit trees. After our shopping, we had lunch together at Fazoil’s and were pleased to run into Joe and Janet Walker, who live in Marion, but are from our home community, and we had a nice visit.

I’d decided as a concession to my age that I would buy a pre-lit tree this year for the family room. I may have made a mistake. For one thing, it is heavier than the old tree; and if Gerald had not put it together and figured out how to hook the lights together, I am not sure I could have. The multi-colored lights are so very pretty that I almost hate to add all the boxes of ornaments I use on this tree that I consider the family tree where gifts will accumulate. Maybe I will get those ornaments on tomorrow. Gerald got down the lights that the wind had blown up on the house and added some more before it turns cold again.

The upstairs tree is shining out the living room window. It is almost finished. I still have a few more ornaments to put on as I needed some more of the little hooks, which were downstairs. I’ll take them up in a minute and put the last ornaments on before I ready the coffee for Gerald’s breakfast.

I haven’t decided whether or not to add the beautiful silver icicles that Katherine and Mary Ellen and I had so much fun buying years ago at a sale in Nashville, Tennessee. I used them last year, but I may skip putting them on this year. I would just add a few from the silver box every time I passed the tree, and eventually the tree was covered with the old-fashioned icicles.

This tree also needs to be replaced. It has shed from the moment I brought it home over a decade ago, and now some of the limbs have fallen off. A big reason I went to an artificial tree was I was wanting to avoid fallen needles. I want to have those needles vacuumed up before I place the old wine shower curtain beneath it as a tree skirt to match the wine in the couches there.

I received a special Christmas call this afternoon from my cousin Doug in California, and I caught up news on him and Vera and their three boys. Josh is still in the military and he and his wife presented Doug and Vera with a first grandson Josiah Ray. David is teaching math and Chris is teaching piano. David has already started on his doctorate.

We are getting Christmas cards daily in the mail, and I am thinking about ours. I bought some Christmas stamps but still need to buy cards and make copies of the annual Christmas letter. Usually I buy the cheapest cards I can find now that daughter Jeannie no longer makes cards. Hers were works of art that I was proud of sending and some folks framed. I figured these I send now get thrown away and that is okay. The point is to stay in touch and honor the friendships of the past.