Christmas Day, plus one.

And so goes another Christmas. We had a very nice Christmas Eve and Day... just the two of us for the Eve, and two friends for Christmas dinner (another friend got sick with a bad cold and still another had car problems and couldn't drive up from Houston)... so dinner for six turned into dinner for four.

The live (dead) tree in the dining room is no longer taking in water, but it hasn't started dropping needles and (luckily) hasn't been letting go of the ornaments.  We had the tree lit all day and night yesterday... its Swan Song of this Christmas season.

I started decorating the inside of the house for Christmas on November 2nd, the day after I took down the Halloween decorations.  The angels are still smiling, the Santas and elves look happy, the reindeer are still marching in their own parade. None of them know that little by little each day, they will be going back into their boxes and then back into the storage closet.

Because of the head cold I had the week before Christmas, I didn't take time to watch "It's A Wonderful Life," which is my favorite Christmas movie. No matter, though... I know the film by heart, along with most of the dialogue.... and I can see the characters in my mind, whether it's Christmas or not.  Marvelous lesson in that movie... everyone's life means something to someone else... without you being you, other people's lives would not be what they are. A powerful lesson, no matter what time of the year it happens to be.

I've recently un-earthed an interest in Pinterest.... I started browsing through a friend's page when I was trying to relax and do nothing while I was coughing and sneezing. (Doing nothing is the hardest accomplishment for me.) The more I looked through the boards on J's page, the more I wanted a Pinterest page of my own. And so it went.... cough, sneeze, Pin, repeat.... cough, sneeze, Pin, repeat.

So now, along with my five Blogs, I have a Pinterest page. And I'm considering asking my husband to help me post my picture on both my blog-site and my Pinterest page.  After all, I've got a lot of words, posts, stories, essays, opinions, and now Pins out there.... and there are days when I get tired of looking at a face-less picture on my blog page. Plus, now I have the standard red/white Pin staring up at me after all the searching I've done to add to my Pinterest boards.  So a photo may be forthcoming, as long as I can find one that I really like in the hundreds and hundreds of photos that my husband has stored in his computer.

I'm sure all of the malls and stores are crowded today, just as crowded as they were on the day before Christmas. I was never a Christmas-Eve shopper, and I never wanted to be a Day-After-Christmas shopper, either.  I tend to shop all year long for holiday and birthday gifts, and I've already bought gifts for next Christmas.  In my opinion, Christmas Eve is a day of anticipation for The Day, and the day after is like sitting on a cloud and sighing with satisfaction over another beautiful Christmas come and gone.