Keep the Coffee Comimg

When I first opened my eyes, I looked out the window and saw flurries. I fell back to sleep, or would that be drifted back to sleep? Well, I’m leaning toward drifted with the snow and all, but regardless, I went back to sleep. When next I woke up and looked, the snow was heavier. I stayed in bed warm and comfy until Henry got restless knowing I was awake and pretending not to be so I decided to get up and get on with the day. The snow had stopped.

The kids here have a snow day or rather a wind day. The wind last night was heavy and loud and brought fears of downed lines, but it blew itself out. The trees are calm this morning. The only snow left is ugly, pock marked, after a day of rain. The streets and walkways are clean. My neighbor across the street shoveled. The rest of us let the rain do the clearing.

Where I lived when I was a kid got lots of snow in yesterday’s storm, maybe even a foot. The no school announcements were on TV early, for some, as early as the night before, running at the bottom of the screen during the news. When I was a kid, it was an alarm from the fire station which announced no school. Even an inch or two had us hopeful, had us listening for that blast of the alarm. When it didn’t happen, we groused in disappointment. When it did, we wanted out right away to play in the snow, to sled down the hill and to throw snowballs. We couldn’t go to school, but we could play in the snow all day.

Boxes arrive every day. My dining room is disappearing, hidden under piles of empty boxes. Yesterday it was three of them, all filled with Christmas presents from my family. Just now two more were delivered. Henry was crazed, and I was afraid he’d go out the door. He scared the FedEx lady so much she dropped the packages on the steps and took off. I don’t blame her. Henry was scary.

I have no need to be out today. I have plenty of food, drink and even a bit of dessert. I treat myself well during my self-imposed quarantine. Tonight for dinner I’m having steak quesadilla.

Yesterday I got everything ready for the car and UPS, but just as I carried out the first boxes, it started to rain. I had to make two more trips to the car in the rain. I got wet. I was unhappy. When I got to UPS, there was a line. I grabbed my folded grocery cart, put two of the bags in and took my place at the end of the line. In about five minutes I was in the middle of the line. I ran to the car and got more bags. I also dropped my glasses which I had taken off in the rain. I stepped on them. They now sit askew on my face, but if I lean my head, I can see straight. I just have to remember not to nod because the glasses fall off when I do. I have an appointment at my eye doctor’s office today as I am being driven crazy by these glasses.

The gifts are wending their way to the north, the south and the west. Last night my tree was lit in the living room. The Merry Christmas sign is on the front door. It’s time for the official start of my Christmas season.

We are under a major storm warning, that would be a major snow storm warning. They are predicting 8-12 inches. It will start late tomorrow night. I have to go out anyway today so I’ll do bit of last minute storm shopping but not for bread or milk. I’m thinking a dip or two, some chips, ice cream, which is snubbing my nose at the cold and snow, and more eggnog.

When I was a kid, Christmas was a process in time. The windows and outside bushes got lights first. I was so excited to help my father. I remember standing outside holding the strands while my father wound the lights through the front bushes. I also remember running in and out of the front door so I could get a good look at the lights. The outside bulbs were big, colored lights. The windows had orange bulbs, a universally favored color. Nobody had white lights or even white candles in the windows. My childhood Christmases were filled with lights and bright colors. I still put colored lights outside, and this year the bulbs are huge from two new sets of LED lights. My Christmas trees always have a combination of lights. In the middle are the white lights like stars shining through the tree. The rest of the lights, the colored bulb sets, are wound around the outside and the inside of the tree. I always love to walk in the living room and be surprised by my tree, a bit like being a kid and running out the front door to look at the lights and the bushes. Christmas is still wonder.

Yesterday stayed warm. I stayed busy and finished wrapping and organizing. Today is UPS day, the day the packages will be sent hither and yon.

The morning is cold and damp. The world is grey. It is already down to the 30’s and will get into the 20’s tonight. Rain is predicted.

Yesterday I organized and cleared a couple of rooms, straightened and pulled the wire branches of my scrub pine tree and decorated a bit. I had found a small box with two strands of thick string. Each strand had twelve thin Santa clothespins. I thought they were kind of neat looking. While trying to figure what to hang from the Santas, I remembered I had bought several picture Christmas cards years back. I had trouble finding the cards, but I did, after taking down and dusting with my sleeve several wrong cigar boxes. I looked through the cards and was amazed at what I found: several of the cards were from different years of one family, a family from Denver. There was even the adoption notice of their daughter. The Christmas cards dated from the early 1950’s through the 60’s. They had a son older than their daughter. The two kids, their parents and the family dog appeared in all sorts of Christmas poses. They were the faces of reindeer, the family walking out of church, ornaments on a tree and a few regular family pictures. The son was in uniform one year then wasn’t in the family picture the next year. He was missing for the first time. I hoped nothing had happened to him. The next year his picture was added to the rest of the family pictures, to the faces on the ends of Christmas tree branches. Beside his picture, it said, “From Vietnam. “The next year he was home. I saw him in the family picture.

Where was I going with all of that? Well, I chose 12 of those picture cards and clipped them with the Santa clothespins then I draped the strand on the mantle. The second strand I loaded with Christmas cards from the 1950’s. That strand is hanging in the dining room. My ugly tree was in place yesterday and lit last night. My house is beginning to look a bit like Christmas, a sort of weird and vintage Christmas, but I’m just fine with that.

The day is warm with sunlight and a blue sky with scattered white clouds. I am a happy woman as my house is less cluttered from unwrapped Christmas gifts and wrapping paper as I move from room to room. In my bedroom, only empty bins are left to be put in the eaves when everything is finished. The living room is filled with bags overflowing with wrapped gifts. I have been in a frenzy, and everything is ready for UPS tomorrow. I just need to staple the tops of the bags, print labels and load the car.

My house is still bare of Christmas except for some poinsettias and a few table top decorations I bought at the florist. Once all the gifts are sent, I’ll bring up some decorations. I’ve ordered Christmas dinner for pickup on Christmas Eve. I’ve sent out my Christmas cards. My tree is still in the middle of the living room because I have to straighten branches and rehang the ornaments which fell during transport from the cellar, but it should be ready today. I’m also putting the cow and the donkey out front. My yard needs whimsy.

When I was a kid, I loved when it was time for decorating the tree and putting lights outside on the bushes and inside on the window sills. The bulbs on the outside lights were huge and always got hot. They were colored lights. That’s all anyone used back then. Last year my friends gave me a five bulb window decoration called a chandelier candle lamp. I did not know that it had its own name. One just like it was always in our picture window and always with orange bulbs. I put my new old one in the kitchen window which can be seen from the road. It is a connection to all those Christmases on Washington Ave when I raced to turn the bulbs on, to be the first. The big coup was turning on all five bulbs.

Yesterday was a good day. I wrapped gifts until I ran out of tape and I put more boxes and bags into the car for my dump run today. I need an empty car for the trip to UPS on Monday. I’m about half way through my wrapping.

The morning is foggy and hazy. It is warm and will get warmer, to the low 50’s. Everything is still in the thick air. Even the smallest branch just hangs. Rain is a possibility for later.

Sometimes Henry sits right beside, and if I don’t pat him, he gently taps the top of my leg with his paw. He follows me into the kitchen then leans on me for attention. I pat him, and I sometimes give him a treat.

Henry didn’t let me pat him for a long time when he first came to live here. I didn’t push it though I longed to pat him, to show him some love. Henry took time, but I was always patient. We started slowly with a pat or a scratch here and there, and finally, here we are nearly two plus years later, and Henry pats my leg.

The lights I put on the fence to replace the dead ones are LED’s. I swear they are so bright you can probably see them from space, or at least from a low flying airplane or better yet a helicopter just above the trees. One of the light sets I took off the fence still works. It was probably attached to the dead strand. I’ll use it on the mantle.

Cocoa has been my go to drink on the really cold nights. I fill my huge mug with milk and put it in the microwave to heat. The cocoa is an organic, dark hot cocoa mix. I smack my lips after every sip. It is that delicious.

When I was a kid, the milkman always left one bottle of chocolate milk with the bottles of white milk. I never thought of it as anything but ordinary. The house rule was we had to mix the chocolate with the white milk so the chocolate would go further, would last longer. Mostly we drank it at supper though it went well with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Actually, it went well with anything. Chocolate is like that.

This morning is one of my favorite sort of mornings. When I let Henry out for the first time, I went on the deck. It is chilly, but the sort of chill which doesn’t hang around. I can feel a warmer day coming. I can feel the sun.

My wrapping began in earnest yesterday. I finished two adults and three children and managed to clutter two more rooms. Here in the den is wrapping central. On my table are my tools: scissors, a pen, heavy string and small pieces of wrapping leftover from the bigger presents and a tube of the paper of the moment. In the living room, the couch holds the wrapped present bags. The dining room has two tubs of wrapping paper and a couple of empty boxes to be filled for mailing. I hate clutter. I’ll work quickly.

I have outside stuff needing tending. A set of white lights on the side fence died, but I was fine with that until a second set died. Now I have to replace both. My bird feeders need filling, and I haven’t yet hung the horse’s head for the spawns. That will be first as spawns are notoriously impatient.

My scrub pine is up from the cellar. It needs to be pulled and fluffed. That’s the tree usually lighting a corner in the dining room, but this year it will be my only tree and will be in the living room. It is wonderfully ugly.

Henry is to my left on the couch. He is gnawing on his new bone which arrived from Chewy this morning. It is an actual bone, and Henry gets one every new Chewy order. I can see the marrow is already gone at one end. The wooden floor below where Henry gnaws has a peculiar pattern in the wood. It almost looks like a bird’s claw trail in the sand, but the marks are indentations from the end of Henry’s bone when it falls off the couch to the floor. Henry’s bone is a heavy bone. Jack is asleep on my other side. He leans against the arm of the couch and me. It is one of his favorite spots.

My car is dump ready so maybe I’ll go out later in the afternoon, but that’s a big maybe. I just don’t feel it today.

I am watching LlamaGeddon. The introduction was wonderful, a cartoon showing not only the llama’s flight from his home planet but also pretty much the whole plot of the movie. The llama has arrived on Earth in his animal trailer with wings. He has red eyes and is bent on death and destruction. This is labeled a comedy.

Yesterday morning was about as cold as it has been. My windshield was covered in frost. The dog’s outside water bowl had a thin layer of ice. We had snow flurries in the afternoon, and snow is still on the lawn and in the shade of the backyard, but the snow will melt today as it is already in the 40’s and will get near 50.

The morning is pretty. The sun is bright in a blue sky. An every now and then breeze blows the top branches of the pines. My wrapping odyssey begins today.

When I was a kid, I remember watching Santa Claus on a New Hampshire channel. He was on every afternoon. I remember Little Suzy Snowflake, a black and white cartoon. I can still sing her song, “Tap, tap, tapping at my windowpane to tell me she’s in town.” Watching A Christmas Carol has been a tradition for as long as I can remember. I read it first. One of my grandmother’s brothers had given me a book of Christmas stories, and A Christmas Carol was one of them. I loved the ghosts and Jacob Marley with his chains. Alastair Sim is my favorite Scrooge, but I’ll watch just about any Christmas Carol movie.

I admit I watch a few scary Santas now that I’m older. Krampus is my favorite. In the film, all the lights are out because of the snow storm. Sounds come from the chimney flue. A hook on a chain is lowered, and the lure is a gingerbread man cookie. One of the kids takes a bite, the chain circles him, and the kid is pulled screaming up the chimney. That is just the beginning of the horror.

One Christmas Eve my mother and I were still awake. We were chatting and having a drink or two and watching Christmas movies. That was the night we found Jack Frost, not the feel good Jack Frost the miracle snowman who comes back to play with his kid, but the serial killer Jack Frost who on his way to be executed is in a crash with a genetics truck. He is transformed by the genetic material into a killer snowman who goes through a murderous rampage in Snowmonton, the snowman capital of the world. My mother and I stayed up to watch the whole movie. It was dark and deadly but it was funny. If you are overloaded with the sweetness of Hallmark and the seldom changing plot of the prince faling in love with the commoner, just say Jack Frost and head on over to Prime or Tubi. You’ll know which movie to click.

Everything was wet when I woke up. It had rained while I was sleeping, and, then this morning, the rain started again, but only for a short while.

The day is cold and dark, even bleak. It is a day for staying warm at home. I have chores to do here like finish putting presents into individual bags, maybe a half hour chore, then wrapping them, an endless chore.

My friend Peg and I spoke on the phone yesterday and laughed a lot, mostly about bugs. Bill, Peg and I lived in a duplex together on school grounds in Ghana. We used to have cockroach hunts in the outside kitchen. Peg remembered knocking on the wooden kitchen door and hearing the cockroaches scurrying at the sound before we went in armed and ready . They were big. I told Peg about one of my favorite movies, the original In-Laws. Peter Falk, a CIA agent, was at the dinner table with his son’s soon to be in-laws when he talked about the six months he spent in the bush, and the giant tsetse flies which picked children up with their beaks and took them away. The flies were called the Jose Grecos de Muerte, the flamingo dancers of death. That they had beaks was questioned. Faulk swore those flies had beaks and was sorry his slides couldn’t be processed. I’m telling you now I saw giant bugs in Ghana. I’m not sure about the beaks.

Peg and I laughed again about the flour. We had to buy giant bags of it which we stored in the kitchen we didn’t use because of no gas for the stove. The bags enticed what I think were weevils because we could see them in the flour, but that was no big deal. We just sifted the flour to catch the larger bugs. The smaller ones got baked into whatever we were making and were rendered harmless.

Peg and I couldn’t think of a bug which scares us either there or here. The centipede was impressive, and I did let it have his way, assuming it was male for no reason.

I am not a lover of flies. I know they do have a couple of redeemable factors, but I don’t care. Chase that fly. Either whack it with a magazine or swat it with an old fashion swatter. Jack eats flies thereby earning his keep.

When I went to get the papers, I could feel the morning chill. The air was clear, the way it is sometimes on winter mornings. The sunlight was slanted across the trees and empty gardens. I stood outside for a bit. It was a lovely morning, but since then, light grey clouds have taken over. It will be cold, down to the 30’s today with maybe rain tonight. I will be safe and warm at home.

This morning my mailman dropped off two packages. He was on a package run and will deliver my mail later. He told me he had worked all day Sunday.

Yesterday I ate Sunday dinner. It had been a while since I grabbed more than cereal, hot dogs or eggs on Sundays. I baked a spatchcocked chicken, two sweet potatoes and two regular Yukon Gold potatoes. For dinner, I chose the sweet potato to go with the chicken, and I added peas as I happened to have a can of Le Sueur Sweet Peas, my favorite, in the cabinet. The chicken was baked perfectly. The sweet potato was delicious. I loved my Sunday dinner, and I get to do eat it all again tonight.

I am behind my time as Bob Cratchit was. I have organized most of the gifts into bags and the bags are in family groups. I wonder what you call a group of presents in bags. I’m thinking a parcel of presents, but that seems too cute, too contrived. It could be an array as in hedgehogs, one of my favorite little animals. Even Henry has a hedgehog. I like passel as in passel of pigs though the pig part could be an issue, but, after searching a bit, I found the best description, a parade of presents. Into my head came a vision, a parade of dancing presents wrapped in different colored paper. Some had arms, some did not. Then It came to me. I remembered a popcorn box with arms. It was intermission at the drive-in when all the food went on parade.

My friends sent me an Advent calendar with a chocolate behind every number. I am so excited. I get to eat 7 days worth today.

The predicted winds arrived last night around six. They whooshed for a while. It started to rain again. The air felt warm at 48˚. But it’s getting colder now in the darkness, down to the 30’s. Henry doesn’t stay out long. I do have a jacket I bought for him last year, but I’m thinking he won’t allow me to put it on him. The jacket is blue, and it would stave off the cold and look good at the same time. Ah well!

As soon as I walked out the door this morning, I knew it was cold and it was cloudy, but the sun has since appeared with a winter sharpness. I asked and found out it is only 36˚ but the day will get as high as 44˚. That I think 44˚ is a high means my head is in winter mode.

Today is elf day when I am finalizing the Christmas count. Everything is so slow a few packages haven’t yet come. The one my sister sent the day after Thanksgiving priority mail from outside of Boston arrived yesterday. My mailman was delivering to me when another delivery car went by him. I asked about it, and my mailman said there were so many packages they had to have carriers just delivering packages, no mail, but my guy did deliver a couple of small packages to me.

When I was a kid, the mailman delivered twice a day during the Christmas season. We’d hurry to the door to be the first to grab the mail. There were always several envelopes, Christmas cards. We hoped for a card, and sometimes we got cards from our aunts. I remember a paper Santa Claus with a wreath empty in the middle for hanging on a branch. We put it on the tree, mostly to hide an empty spot. My mother would let us take turns opening family cards. I remember strings of cards above the couch and across the living room doorway. I still like to send cards. I have some amazing cards this year. I bought my Edward Gorey, a collection of Christmas cards, and there is a set with a pig walking upright who is dressed to the nines for Christmas. It is an amusing card. I have cards from the fifties which are wonderful surprises. I buy family cards. I wrote all the cards out last night, ready for mailing tomorrow after I buy stamps.

I’m thinking I need a ride to see the lights. Some neighborhoods are known for their lights. When I was a kid, it was a Saugus neighborhood, not so far away. I knew the route well. It was the same way we always got on and off Route 1. The houses were spectacular on street after street. I think we all had huge grins the whole time we looked out the windows. The lines of cars on both sides of the street went slowly. We went through twice so we each saw all the houses both sides of the street up-close.

My fence is lit with colored lights in the front. The side has a giant white star with a trail of white lights. The ornament tree will be lit from the new spot light I bought. I’ll put it out tomorrow. I also need to bring the cow up. I fell in love with him last Christmas. My yard will be bright in the darkness.