Keep the Coffee Comimg

No more anticipation, the hoopla is over. Yesterday morning I opened the gifts from my sister, and yesterday afternoon I opened my stocking and gifts from my friends. Unwrapping each surprise, each wonderful gift, was great fun. There were some antique gifts: a wooden noisemaker with moving gears, an ugly Santa, old valentines like the ones we gave out as kids, and an old ladies hat perfect to wear for an afternoon tea or an evening at the theater. I wore it while I opened my other presents. The occasion seemed to lend itself to a hat.

I got the best t-shirt for Christmas. It says, “This is My Hallmark Christmas Movie Watching Shirt.” It also has a red pickup truck hauling a Christmas tree on it. I watched countless Hallmark movies this year. It didn’t matter that they had similar plots and a stable of stars reappearing in movie after movie. What matters is they all had happy endings, and that’s the best sort at Christmas time.

My plans for today are simple: hang around the house in my cozy clothes, look through my presents again and enjoy a lazy day. I’m thinking an afternoon spent reading my new book while drinking an eggnog or two might just be a perfect way to while away the day.

The afternoon is cold at 35˚, the high for the day. The winter sunshine is diffused, almost muted. It is purely for show. There is a periodic breeze, but mostly it’s a quiet day. Henry is asleep curled upon the couch.

When I was a kid, the week after Christmas, after all the excitement, was sort of boring. If we stayed inside, we’d play our new games or I’d sequester myself in my quiet bedroom to read one of my new books. If we had snow, we’d all be out sledding down the hill. If the day was warm enough, we’d use our bikes. Bedtime wasn’t defined during vacations. I went to bed when I was tired. I’d go upstairs and read myself to sleep. It was vacation so my mother never yelled up the stairs for me to turn off my light and go to sleep. I think I read forever.”

Merry Christmas,

We had fun last night constructing and decorating our gingerbread houses. My construction was not without its problems. My walls kept falling in. I’d start on the roof decorations then notice the missing wall. Finally I had to hold the walls for a while until the frosting dried. That worked. The most difficult part of the construction was not taking a bite out of the roof. The gingerbread smell was just so strong and sweet.

No papers were delivered this morning. I feel bereft. I didn’t wake up until 10 so my presents are still waiting for me under the tree. The smell of the fresh coffee is enticing me. I’m thinking a Christmas cookie is an acceptable breakfast on Christmas morning.

I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas. Thank you for staying around and being a part of Coffee all these years. Without you, I’d just be blattering.

I am still awake at 2:30. I’m not even tired. Today I made more cookies, snickerdoodles. The outsides of the cookies are brown and crisp and have a cinnamon taste. The insides are soft and taste of butter and sugar. They are wonderful cookies for Christmas time, for wintertime.

When I was a kid, my whole body shook with excitement on Christmas Eve. I wanted to go to bed when it got dark, too early my mother said. I remember sitting in my new pajamas reading A Christmas Carol in the living room by the lights of the tree. Finally I could go to bed. I didn’t fall asleep right away, but when I did fall asleep, I slept through the night into the morning, into Christmas.

I remember so many Christmas Eves when my mother and I were the only ones awake. She’d have an Irish coffee and I’d have coffee with Kahlua and Bailey’s and a bit of whipped cream on the top. Sometimes we watched a movie. I remember watching Jack Frost, a movie about a killer snowman. It was awful and sometimes oddly funny so we watched until the end. My favorite part of our Christmas Eve was when we’d open one present from each other, one perfect, special gift.

Tonight my friends and I will make our gingerbread houses. We each bought all sorts of candy to decorate our houses. I have Necco wafers, candy which looks like rocks and Lego block candy. My friend has spearmint leaves and more, but I somehow forgot what else she is bringing. Anyway, I’ll have us set up at the dining room table covered with a festive, vinyl cloth under our work spaces. They’ll be food: dips, meatballs, cheese and crackers. I love this tradition of ours.

Christmas Eve has always been the magical night. The sky is filled with stars, a blanket of stars. The air is clear and brisk. Christmas lights seem even brighter. I stay up late now.

Merry Christmas!

The day is lovely with a deep blue sky clear of any clouds. It is colder than it has been, 40˚ at best. Tonight will be in the 20’s, a winter’s night.

The cookie bake began yesterday and will continue today. The orange cookies are done. I made them last night. I’ll start with snickerdoodles today and move on to at least one more. I have a couple of choices. I’ll let you know when I’m done.

When I was a kid, my mother rationed the Christmas cookies so they’d be some left for Christmas. Mostly they were sugar cookies. We would have eaten them for breakfast if she’d have let us. Our defense? Anything goes at Christmas.

My sister greeted me this morning with, “Happy Christmas Eve Eve.” We only use that distinction for the 23rd. If not, we’d have an endless number of Happy Eve Eves.

Under my tree are wrapped Christmas presents from my sister and my friends Bill and Peg. If I were a kid again, I’d be sitting by the tree shaking each present to try and figure out what it is. Without squeezing the gifts, I know a couple. One is Starbuck’s coffee as I get some every year. They’ll also be a book and a calendar and some neat old stuff from Armadillo, a huge store with tables and tables of antiques. Moe finds the best stuff. She’s like my mother that way.

I don’t remember how old I was when clothes were welcomed as Christmas presents. When I was young, the only clothes were the new pajamas for Christmas Eve. All the rest were toys, games and books and in the big years maybe a sled or a bike. I do remember the outfit I mentioned earlier and one other as being Christmas favorites. The first, the skirt et al, was maybe when I was eleven or twelve. My second favorite outfit was when I was in high school. It was perfect. I got a pink Angora sweater and ski pants, which were slacks with loops on the bottoms to put over your feet so your pants wouldn’t ride up your legs from your boots. They were quite the fashion that year.

Now I am in my comfy clothes, perfect attire for cookie making and sipping eggnog dashed with Kahlua.

The rain is gone for now, but the grey sky threatens more. It will be warm again today, but tonight the temperature will plunge as low as 30˚, not fit weather for man nor beast, or rather Henry and me, woman and dog.

I haven’t yet begun baking. I can’t even find my cookie sheets. Some of my lesser used pans are in a container outside as I had run out of cabinet space. That’s where I thought the cookie sheets were. I was wrong. Luckily, though, I did buy two new cookie sheets. They were in the outside bin.

Today I am watching syfy. I’m taking a break from Hallmark, Lifetime, Ion and Up where every story has a happy ending. Right now I’m watching Snowmageddon. It’s Christmas time in Alaska. A snow globe has a miniature of the town inside. When something happens, like an earthquake which splits the ground, it happens in the snow globe first. The dog barks. He knows.

We have family traditions, some newer than others. Piñatas are now into the second generation. My niece, the aunt, and my nephew, the uncle, fill the piñatas for each other’s kids because I, the aunt, started it all. They also get new pajamas just as my sister’s kids did from me every Christmas Eve. My sisters make peanut butter balls just as my mother had. One of the great surprises was when, some time long after Christmas, my mother would pull peanut butter balls from the freezer. We all remember. My orange cookies were my mother’s favorite. My friend loves them too so I make them every year. My sisters and I all have live trees. Nothing beats a pine tree at Christmas. I remember walking down the stairs Christmas morning and smelling the tree before I saw it. I have some of her decorations. My mother loved Christmas. We all do because of her. We are carriers of the Christmas bug.

A rainstorm before Christmas is just wrong. Today is dark and miserable. I wanted sun on the shortest day of the year. On the plus side, though, my tree is shining in the darkness.

The morning is unseasonably warm, in the high 50’s. I did all my errands yesterday so today I’ll start my cookies. I’ll do at least one batch and maybe a second. First will be my world famous orange cookies. The butter is already on the counter.

When I was a kid, the countdown to Christmas began a week away from the big day, but first, we had to get through Christmas Eve, the longest day of the year to any kid. On that big day, bedtime never seemed to come unlike all the other days of the year when bedtime always seemed to be early. I remember being so excited we’d talk from one bedroom to the other across the hall. My mother would yell up the stairs for us to quiet down and get to sleep. That took forever.

My parents went to midnight mass. I was too young so my brother and I went to church Christmas morning. My sisters were too young for even the morning so they stayed home. I envied them.

When I was really little, we had a turkey at Christmas dinner. When I was older, we had a roast beef of some sort. We always had mashed potatoes. I have a fondness for mashed potatoes. The other vegetables varied though creamed onions were often on the menu. As we got older, the vegetables got fresher except for my dad’s can of asparagus.

We always got dressed up on Christmas Day. Sometimes I’d wear the new clothes I had opened that morning. One year it was a new skirt, a fluffy white sweater and a necklace with a gold pendant.

A heavy wind is blowing now. The rain has stopped for the meantime. I find nothing about this weather inviting.

Right now it is 30˚. The high will be 35˚. The sky is beautiful like the icy, deep blue from a Crayola box. The wind is blowing hard enough to whip the top branches back and forth. They look like one of those sky dancers in front of a car lot. I have no errands today. I have the laundry to do, the dreaded laundry. 

When I was a kid, the only Christmas books we had were The Night Before Christmas and A Christmas Carol which I read every year when I was old enough to read it. That’s probably why I can watch all the Christmas Carol movies over and over every year. My favorite scene is when Scrooge wakes up and finds out it is still Christmas morning. He dances and sings, sort of, “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man.” One year my mother, sister and I went to Boston to see A Christmas Carol. The theater was filled. We had great seats close to the front. Just as Scrooge began his dancing the fire alarm went off. We all sort just looked around then a voice told us to go out the nearest exit. We did. There was no fire. Worse, we never did get to see the happy Scrooge and Tim with his, “God bless us everyone.”

Yesterday I got home when it was dark so I got to see my house lights in all their glory. I was amazed. I think because the houses around me are dark, mine look so much brighter. They light up the night and this whole end of the street. 

Im going to go through a few boxes of Christmas stuff. I’ll be down the cellar anyway with the laundry. I’m thinking finding Christmas treasures will make doing the laundry festive in some weird way. 

The play was good and the meal excellent. I loved the time with my two sisters. I also visited my uncle, our favorite uncle. I hadn’t seen him in a while. It was good to sit and chat. He used to call me Leeny, shortened from Kathleen.

The ride home was in torrential rain. Even the quickest setting on my wipers wasn’t enough at times. The traffic slowed in the worst of it. As I got closer to the bridge, the traffic was lighter so less backsplash. That was the best part of the ride. 

When I was a kid, snow at Christmas made for a special world. Even though the bulbs on our front bushes got covered, their colors shined through the layers of snow, and soon enough the snow on those lights would melt from the heat of the bulbs while the rest of the bush stayed covered. The house looked like a magical place. The plows never completely removed the snow off the streets. I loved to walk on the side of the road and listen to the crunch sound my footsteps used to make on the packed snow. It was almost a squeaky sound. 

One year on Christmas Eve my mother asked me to go to the store to get bread. There was no snow so I took my bike out of the cellar and pedaled to the white store. All the way there I kept thinking my mother had no idea of the importance of Christmas Eve or she wouldn’t have sent me on such a mundane errand. It was the day of all days. Every kid knew that. My mother didn’t.

The weather is dreary. I have a couple of errands and that’s it on my to do list for today, but I’ll probably wrap some more tonight. When we were adults, my mother wrapped every gift and every tag on my gifts read to Kat from Santa. My father used to help. We could easily identified his wrappings. One year my mother was behind, and I offered to help wrap. She’d hand me a box, and I’d wrap. A couple of times she told me the tag should read to Kat from Santa. I had wrapped my own gifts. She was a tricky Santa.

Gloomy, damp and dark are the adjectives for today. When I got the papers, it was even colder than I thought it would be. The sky is rain ready. 

Today is play day. My two sisters and I are going to see It’s a Wonderful Life. My mother started this tradition. She’d treat us to a Christmas event then we’d go out to dinner. We had a table at the Pops one year and saw Death of a Salesman with Brian Dennehy another year. Most times we went to the local theater, and that’s where we’re going today. We’ll have dinner afterwards. It is such a Christmas treat to have my sister Moe here from Colorado. 

Tradition is so tied up with Christmas. One year my sister’s whole family came for the holidays. My mother, my sister and I baked tremendous amounts of cookies and candy. We each made spritz cookies because my mother had made them every year when we were kids and we wanted to honor the tradition. One of the fun memories of these cookies is the year my mother added red and green food coloring to the dough to make the cookies festive. My father wouldn’t eat them. The color gave them a weird taste was his complaint. We laughed. My mother always left them plain after that. 

My tree is decorated. The only things left on my to do list are shop at the grocery store, make cookies and wrap cape gifts. Last week at this time I was in a panic. 

I have a Santa hat for Henry to wear for pictures. I also have some Christmas bandanas. What are the odds he’ll wear them long enough for a few shots? 

The B doesn’t work on my keyboard. I couldn’t get into my computer because there are B’s in the password. I got into this program through guest user. I tried resetting my password and thought I did, but no luck. I’m still a guest. As for the missing b’s, I copy and paste. 

Christmas is getting closer. It’s almost time for the countdown.