This has been a morning. First off I finished all the puzzles in the paper. That should have been a warning. In the jumble, I usually don’t get the final jumble if it is one word, but not today. I got it. I also got the cryptoquip, and I finished the crossword puzzle, a banner day. My next task was one which took nearly an hour and a half. I called about a medication. I needed one refilled and had several questions about others. I talked to two places and finally got answers I needed. The parade with bands and banners took a while.

We are still in the cold zone. It is only 27° and cloudy. Tonight we’ll go down to the teens. I have no reason to leave the house for which I am grateful. I am cozy and warm.

When I was a kid, my mother always dressed us in layers on the coldest days. She’d add a hat and mittens. I hated the hat. I liked that the mittens kept my fingers warm stuck together as they were, but mittens made my hands just about useless. I could hold my lunch box but wouldn’t have been able to open it, too delicate a task in mittens. What’s funny now is I still wear mittens though I do have a couple of pairs of gloves. I don’t wear hats, but I have a few. The only one I’d wear is 62 years old. It is a pink knit hat with a pompon. A friend’s grandmother made it for me when she saw I didn’t wear one. It is actually still fashionable.

My mother played Christmas records on her hifi. The favorite was always Bing Crosby’s Merry Christmas album, the one with a cover of him wearing a Santa hat and a holly bow. We always sang along. The other album we played was my album, Guy Lombard and the Royal Canadians Sing the Songs of Christmas with a Chorus of Children’s Voices. It was released in 1960. I am one of those children’s voices. I also had a solo, a one note solo which I consider my debut. I came in one note early on Winter Wonderland, and, because we had sung several takes, they kept it. We were there, in the town hall, all day. Kenny Gardner led us through the songs. The orchestra was in the pit under the stage. We only saw Guy Lombardo at the beginning and at the end when he thanked us. We got Hoodsies.

I still have the original album but the cover is in tough shape. All the lyrics were listed on the inside of the album jacket. It was, after all, a song-a long. My sisters loved to play that album so it got a lot of use. One year I hunted down copies of the album and gave each of my sisters a copy for one of their Christmas presents. I didn’t know if they had record players. It didn’t matter. I was giving them a memory.

The day is relatively warm at 42°. A bright sun is here but is sharing the sky with clouds. I can see a few hanging brown oak leaves swaying a bit. All in all, it is a pretty day.

Henry is doing better. He longer scratches his ear though he still shakes his head but hardly as often. Now I’m worried about Nala. She has been sick twice this morning. I hope it is a two on and done, perhaps an upset stomach as Henry blew my vet budget, nearly $400.00, and the vet is pay as you go. I’m keeping a close eye on Miss Nala.

My mother gave each of us a box of ornaments. They were some of the ornaments which hung on the Christmas tree every year when we were kids. They are colored glass, and each has a decoration etched in white. I always put them on my tree. They are memories.

The other day I saw a house with a picture window covered in white stenciled decorations. My memory draws flew open, and I remembered the picture window in our house when I was a kid. We’d tape on the stencils, dab them with a white sort of removable paint and carefully peel them off after everything had dried. The window was covered in Santa Claus, a bell, a tree, a snowflake and a candy cane. They seemed to shine in the sunlight. At night, the window and the stencils were highlighted in orange from the bulbs on the candelabra on the window sill below.

I remember the cardboard Santas and the cardboard trees. We’d tape them on walls or on other windows. Before taping, we’d peel off the yellow tape from years before. It came off easily but left permanent outlines on the back. They were like tree rings. We knew how many years we’d used those cardboard decorations.

Our tree stood in the corner between two windows. That was a good thing. I remember when the tree fell. My brother and I grabbed it and stopped it from falling completely to the floor. Our parents were out so we were forced to make-do. We each took turns holding up the tree until our parents got home. Then it was my father to the rescue!! He grabbed heavy duty string and wound it around the trunk while we held up the tree. He then attached the ends of the strings to each of the windows. The tree was safe, secure. Many, many years later my dog Shauna, my first boxer, pulled down my tree a couple of times. I knew the solution. I wound heavy duty string around the trunk and attached one end of the string to a window and the other end to a nail on the bottom of the fireplace mantle. My father had taught me well.