Back into the closet...

I've been putting away the Christmas decorations, a little bit at a time, every day. Except on most days, "a little bit" turns into everything on the second floor, or everything in the dining room or living room or breakfast room, etc. And the question which always comes to mind during these days--- "Do you really need all of these Santa figurines?"

Well, yes I do... especially after seeing a picture on Pinterest the other day of a high staircase with a Santa in the corner of each step. Hmmm.... we have such a staircase, and the steps are certainly wide enough to have a Santa on each riser, giving us plenty of room to navigate the stairs without having to rush to the Emergency Room at the local hospital. ("And what have we here?"  -- "Oh, just a broken ankle... I tripped over a Santa on the main staircase, but it's fine... the Santa didn't get damaged.")

Our cold weather has gone elsewhere and now we have cloudy and not-so-cold, but it's still damp and the sun has also gone elsewhere. Those days and days of high 70s with lots of sun seem like a distant memory now. I want them back!

I went to the post office this morning to mail books that had sold on Half.com... and I brought Savannah with me. She likes to go for rides in the car now (always thinking she's going to the dog park) and I take her every chance I get, when it's practical and safe for her to wait in the car for me. Savannah is such a quiet dog in the car, watching everything and everyone but not barking at all. Gone are the days when we practically had to lift her up into the car because she was afraid to get into it.

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve.... another quiet holiday here. Years and years ago, we used to drive into Houston for the New Year's Eve Symphony, followed by ballroom dancing on the stage.... all dressed up and someplace to go.  Then the Symphony Powers That Be stopped those celebrations.... and so we hosted a few New Year's Eve parties at our house in Clear Lake. When we didn't have an at-home party on New Year's, we would get a group of friends together and go to our favorite Italian restaurant in Friendswood... late dinner, party favors, special dinners and dessert... but even if we still lived in Clear Lake now, that particular restaurant isn't there anymore. Oh well.

Decades ago, I'd watch Guy Lombardo's Orchestra celebrating New Year's at NY's Waldorf Astoria Hotel... everyone all dressed up, ballgowns and diamonds and pearls for the ladies, tuxedos for the men.... and beautiful music for dancing. So many years ago, but I can see those television images as if it were yesterday. I repeat: Oh well.                                                                                                

On this New Year's Eve, we will be home watching Dick Clark's New Year's Eve without Dick Clark. We will watch the glittering ball dropping in NY's Time Square (at 11:00 Texas time) and then call it a night. Midnight on New Year's Eve in NYC is about as authentic a New Year's celebration as one can get. I don't even know what they do in downtown Houston now on New Year's Eve... and I know for certain that no one does anything at all for New Year's Eve in the downtown area of our little Hill Country town here.

I also know for certain that I get way too sappy on all the days between our big Christmas Party and New Year's Eve. I need to get away from this computer and go put more Christmas decorations back into the boxes and then bring them to the storage closet. Just who in the world put all these Christmas decorations all over this house in the first place?

Christmas morning...

Nearly 5:30 as I type... and I woke up early because Savannah was barking... Mickey was howling at a stray cat out in the yard. And lucky me... not one stray cat out there this morning, but two. Just what we need on Christmas morning, or any other morning. I am determined not to be feeding any more stray cats.

We went driving around looking at Christmas lights last night... we took Savannah with us, just as we did the night before. Savannah is getting to love the car, and gets into it quickly and easily now. I wonder if she thinks that every car-ride will end up at the dog park. We've been taking her there as often as possible, and she does love it. Especially the pool... she's getting very brave about walking into the shallow ends of that swimming pool and it's only a matter of time before she'll be swimming from one end of the pool to the other.

The house has seemed too quiet and too empty since our young friend Corey went home the other day. She was here for three days and we had an early Christmas with her. So hard to believe that I've known that child since she was in the second grade... and she's not a child anymore, but a very special 24-yr-old whose sense of playfulness and wonder is still as sharp and as contagious as ever.

I realized the other day that I never did put out my dad's Nativity set this year. I usually take that set out of the storage closet first, before the other Christmas boxes, but it just made me sad this year to think about that Nativity so I left it in the closet, planning to set up the pieces after everything else was done.  I went in there to get that Nativity at least twice, and each time, I just looked at the manger sitting up on the closet shelf next to the box with the figures of the people and the animals, and I just couldn't get myself to take it out of that closet and set it up in the living room.

In my mind's eye, I can see my dad taking that Nativity out of the storage box in our old house when I was a kid... he would set up the manger, my mother would set out each individual piece... and my dad would let me play with the sheep until the Nativity display was done... and then I'd set out the sheep around the manger, most of them next to the shepherd and just one or two inside the manger itself. And from then until Christmas I would play with those little sheep, taking them from underneath the tree and bringing them into the living room and the kitchen, and then up to my playroom on the third floor of that big old house we had.

And here I am today, in my own big old house in the middle of these Texas country hills. Instead of a playroom on the third floor, I have a library up there filled with books. My dad would have loved this century-old house. He wouldn't have complained about the night-time wildlife that's all around this property every night. I can hear him now: "They're more afraid of you than you are of them... just leave them alone and stay out of their way."

Nearly six o'clock now... I imagine that thousands upon thousands of kids are waking up right this minute and running down the stairs to see what Santa has left for them by the Christmas tree. Every child should believe in the magic of Santa. Then as you grow up, you come to realize that if you want that same sense of Christmas magic, then you've got to be Santa yourself and make Christmas special for other people, not just yourself.

This time of the year always makes me sad. Too many people aren't here anymore to enjoy Christmas, either because they have passed away or because they choose to stay away.

My dad would not be pleased to know that his Nativity set is still up on that shelf in the storage closet. I think I'm going to take the set out later on today and bring it up to the third-floor library. I will set it up there and leave it on display all year long. The library is my favorite room in this house, and if my dad were still alive, I know he'd be up there sitting in my grandfather's chair and looking through one book after the other, and he'd be saying "Look at this, Larrie... come here and just look at this book..."

I miss hearing my father's voice. I miss my aunts and uncles who have passed away, and I miss my grandparents whose courage to leave Italy and cross the Atlantic gave everyone in our family the life we have today.

I have a very good life in a very old and beautiful house whose quirks sometimes (most of the time) test my patience. But I still miss my dad's voice. I miss my dad.

Merry Christmas.

Happy Festivus.

Festivus... for the rest of us! You've got to love those old 'Seinfeld' shows.

Our friend Corey has been visiting us for the past couple of days, so we've had an early Christmas this year. This afternoon, we went to some of the local shops and Corey found a little tree that she decorated with red ornaments and Crayola crayons... it will be a surprise gift for a little girl that she knows. I love that she 'rescued' a sad little tree from the thrift store and brought it back to life with inexpensive ornaments and crayons and red ribbons. Gone is that sad little tree and in its place is a happy celebration of childhood.

Corey and I also went shopping for dishes and flatware for the kitchen in her cozy little rental house... we found some beautiful mix-and-match plates from "The Pioneer Woman" designs, along with a classic-looking flatware set that she could also use with other styles as she finds them. Corey's previous 'flatware' was a box filled with plastic forks, spoons, and knives... totally inappropriate for her first Christmas dinner in her little house.

My husband and I were hoping that Savannah would make friends with Corey quicker than she has done with our neighbors up here... but that didn't happen. Savannah, at eight months old now, is still extremely cautious of strangers and very protective of me. Savannah made sure to give Corey her most ferocious of barks when she got too close to me, and whenever she walked out of the house to go to the guest cottage and then came back into the house. Every time Corey walked into the back door, it was like the first time, and Savannah let her have it with the full blast of her barking ability.

I'm getting worried that Savannah will never let anyone other than my husband and myself take care of her. How will anyone be able to pet-sit for us if Savannah won't let them get near her? I've never seen such a scared and cautious puppy, and we've been doing all we can to teach her to have trust and confidence in herself and our friends... but it's been a slow progress.

We thought that trips to the local dog park would help Savannah's confidence, and so far it has--- but just with other dogs. She will run up to and play with all the dogs in that park, but she won't get near their owners. Other than myself and my husband, only three other people have been able to pet her. Totally un-puppy-like behavior.

But we're working on it... and hopefully, Savannah will learn to trust more people as she gets out of this puppy stage. I also hope she'll sleep better at night... as I type, it's nearly 3:30 in the morning. Night-time train whistles, plus the howling of the coyotes, plus the screeching and howling of our two outside cats because a stray cat came into the yard... all of that woke up Savannah and set her to barking, which woke me up two hours ago.

It's been a long night... and by the time the sun comes up, I'll be too tired to celebrate Festivus or anything else.

Well... finally...

... a restaurant in town that's worth the drive into town.  About a year ago, a new Chinese restaurant opened up near the main highway going through our town.  There already was a restaurant in town that served Chinese food, but people who knew that my husband and I were from New York told us not to bother going there. "You've had Chinese food up north... so the Chinese food in that place is not going to please you."  After hearing that review, we never went to that restaurant.

When we wanted Chinese food, we would drive into College Station to a small restaurant there near the Medical Center Complex... excellent service and delicious Chinese food. We would order something to eat there and something to bring home.

A couple of weeks ago, we decided to try the Chinese place here in town... we went for lunch, thinking "It's only one meal... what have we got to lose?"  They have an on-going buffet as well as a menu for specific ordering. Well... pardon our hesitation and doubtfulness.

Delicious to the max... especially the pork fried rice, which is my husband's all-time favorite item on a Chinese menu. As soon as that plate was put down on our table, my first thought was that it looked just like the pork fried rice from the NY Chinese restaurants. My husband took one bite of that pork fried rice and called the waitress over to tell her that it was the best he'd tasted since leaving NY. "Better than the place in College Station?" I asked.... "Much better, it's just like NY." said my husband.

I was thrilled to hear that, because I liked the selections on the buffet... I like to get a little of this and a little of that, rather than ordering a plate of just one thing from the menu.  The restaurant itself is new and clean, spotless floors, absolutely sparkling buffet tables, and they don't pile up the hot-trays on the buffet... they make small amounts of each item and replenish the trays as needed.

Wonder of wonders... we have a really good restaurant in this town that doesn't have BBQ-d meat and frozen fish on their menu. Will country-wonders never cease?

To the professor's house...

We had lunch today with three of my husband's best students... they rented a car and drove up here from Houston.  I'd heard about these particular students for quite some time because they had signed up over and over again for my husband's classes so it was nice for me to meet them in person.

All three students are very good friends, working and studying together, and they hope to be working with one another in the future. They all graduate this term and my husband will see them again at the graduation ceremonies this weekend.

But today was lunch... here at our home in our dining room which is covered in Christmas from one corner to another. The students seemed to be in awe of the holiday decorations and everything seemed new to me just by seeing it all through their eyes. What was also very nice was their enthusiasm for learning, which showed quite openly as they talked about their classes with my husband. Even before they walked into the dining room for lunch, they were 'calling' their seats so they could seat next to 'the professor.'  When they got into the dining room, they were happily surprised to see by the place cards that I had indeed seated them near their professor.

Today's weather was glorious, perfect for their two-hour drive from Houston to our corner of the Hill Country. I think the students expected to make friends with our puppy Savannah, but she is still very shy with strangers and she stayed in her bed in the breakfast room during their visit.

We told the students that they were welcome to come up for a visit any time, to just give us some notice so we'd be home... which they did for today's visit. They left Houston early enough this morning so they wouldn't get stuck in traffic, and their trip took a bit less than two hours. We suggested that they pay attention to the local speed limits because the deputies up here don't take excuses for speeding.  The students' reply was "No excuses, only results!" -- which is one of my husband's mantras for all of his classes.

Tacky Sweater Christmas Party

Last night was our annual Christmas party... and it was also my husband's birthday as well as one of the wettest, rainiest nights we've had in years and years. Friends from Clear Lake drove up here for the party to enjoy the night with our friends and neighbors right here. At one point before the party started, the one-road coming into our community was a bit under water from the creek that rises when we have such heavy rains. But everyone made it here with their 'creatively tacky or uniquely ugly' Christmas sweaters.

I had a prize for the man with the best sweater, and for the woman with the best sweater... my husband and I picked out the top three in each category and then everyone else got to vote on their favorites. The winners loved their prizes (a cowboy nutcracker for the men and a bright red twig and crystal tree for the ladies)... and now I'll have to come up with two great prizes for next year's Crazy Christmas Sweater Party because I think we'll be doing this theme again.

We also had a grab-bag... baskets of gifts for the ladies and the men... picking by numbers, stealing gifts or trying (unsuccessfully) to hide gifts so they wouldn't get stolen.  Last year was our first Christmas party with the grab-bag, and this year more people were stealing gifts rather than picking gifts, which added to the fun. I'll be looking around the shops for more gifts for the next Christmas party..... actually, I've already found a few for next year and I've got some leftover gifts from this year. Sooner or later, they'll all get picked.

The rain last night was relentless, at times coming down in sheets and buckets... everyone got wet, there was no way around that and even umbrellas didn't seem to help much.  This afternoon, the sky looks like it's clearing up some, and I hope that means that the rain has moved on.

This morning, we went up to J & J's house for breakfast... our little group on this road had French toast and fruit, and then we baked and decorated sugar cookies.... even the guys got into the decorating. We all kept the prettiest one and ate the 'happy accidents.'  By the time the cookies were all done and wrapped up to take home, the sky had cleared and the rain had quit.

During the party, Savannah was very good and extremely quiet... friends came to the doorway of the breakfast room to day hello to her, but she just looked at everyone from the safety of her bed. She has always been very quiet when we've had company in the house, and between the Halloween Party and the Christmas Party, and our weekly tea parties, Savannah has had a lot of occasions to act up, but she remains docile and quiet to the point of mute. I don't think she has ever barked once when we've had a group of people in the house. I noticed that Savannah is getting more and more relaxed when we have a lot of company... I don't see that she's stressed out from too many people... she's just getting comfortable with the company.

As I type, I could easily shut my eyes and go to sleep... it was a busy few days just before the party, and then I cleaned up after everyone went home last night, and first thing this morning I washed all the hand towels and tablecloths.... and then we went up the road for the breakfast and cookie decorating this morning.

Sometimes there's just not enough hours in the day... and right now, there's not that many days before Christmas.

Busy days...

Now is about the time that I usually say I need more hours in every day.... November and December goes by in a heart-beat, and I say that every year as well.

Having an eight-month-old puppy in the house adds to the work, and I sometimes stop and ask myself what I was doing before Savannah came into our lives. I was reading more, for one thing... at least one or two books a week. Now I'm lucky to be reading one book every two weeks. My to-read shelf of books is waiting, waiting, waiting. Oh well... those books will be there when I'm ready for them. Right now, we're still on puppy time in this house, but as Savannah gets older, her schedule will be less demanding, which will make my own schedule more 'my own.'

Our big Christmas party is this weekend, so I've been getting ready for that. Not much to do now... I will set up the tables tomorrow so all I will have to do on Saturday is get the food ready and then polish my nails. That's another thing that has gone by the wayside during puppy-time.... my nails aren't always polished these days, unless you count a clear-coat, which doesn't count as 'polish' to me.

I spent half of yesterday afternoon and most of this morning putting up Christmas lights outside. My husband usually does the outside lighting but he's been busy with dental appointments and work, and he never even mentioned the Christmas lights. So I got out the boxes of lights (more of them than I thought we had) and the step-stool came out, and there I was outside, stringing lights around the gazebo and along the porch railings. If I do say so myself, it looks very nice, considering that I really don't like doing those lights, but I thought it would be a nice surprise for my husband when he gets home tonight. (He surprised me with Manilow tickets, I'm surprising him with Christmas lights. Not exactly an even trade.)

With all the Christmas sales going on now, I've been finding more gifts for the Christmas Grab-Bag... so those are wrapped up already and in a box marked for next year's Christmas party. (Never too early to start planning next year's party.)

Our only department store in town has been sending out sales coupons and I was in there today looking at shoes... summer shoes are already out on the shelves, or maybe they're last summer's leftovers. All I do know is that they had really nice ones on sale, and then you got another 30% off with the coupon. I bought a nice pair of summer walking shoes and when I got home the little security tag was still on one of them... which means I have to go back there to have the tag taken off. Just what I didn't want to do... be in that department store next week when it will really be busy.

However.... that's just a little blip in the universe, which is what I'm saying about mostly everything these days. One of my Chicago cousins is undergoing extensive physical therapy so he can learn how to walk and talk and move around at will.... the side-effects of a massive stroke.  So every little hiccup in my day gets compared to what Paulie is going through... and of course there is no comparison.

All the things we do every day that we take for granted... going from one room to another, making a phone call, walking the dog, being able to pick up a fork and eat eggs for breakfast... simple little things that we all do without so much as a teeny thought. All of that, and more, was taken away from my cousin. In a split second, his life (and his wife's) was forever changed.

We all need to count our blessings. Especially at this time of the year.

Manilow... One Last Time

OMG!

Our old pet-sitter from Clear Lake sent me an eMail a couple of weeks ago, telling me that he had seen an ad for a Barry Manilow concert in Houston... Manilow's Last Concert, as he has been in the process of retiring from the mega-touring that he has done throughout the years of his career.

The most popular venues for Manilow are having a One Last Time concert, and Houston is among those cities that Barry will visit for (sigh) one last time.

I told my husband about the upcoming concert in February and we looked on-line for tickets. Outrageously expensive for front center seats... and how can you go to a Manilow concert and not want to sit within the first ten rows?  Did I want to spend that much money on two tickets? Not really. So I told my husband to forget about the concert... that sooner or later it would come out on DVD and I could just buy that and watch it over and over at home.

I have seen Manilow in concert before.... at Radio City Music Hall in NYC, at Jones Beach Theatre on Long Island, at the Houston Rodeo, at the Woodlands Pavilion, at two venues in downtown Houston, and in Las Vegas. For most of those concerts we had front row seats.... and Barry held my hand up at the Woodlands concert, and he danced three steps with me in Vegas. (OMG! OMG!)

So... it wasn't like we hadn't seen Manilow before... and I couldn't justify spending that amount of money for the two up-front tickets for this One Last Time Concert. Plus, that concert night is one of my husband's teaching nights.  So we both agreed to not attend February's concert.

Yesterday when I opened up my lap-top, there on the keyboard sat two tickets (OMG!) to Manilow's concert (OMG!) in the 7th row center (OMG!) which would put us right in front of Barry's piano again (OMG!)

"But what about your teaching that night?"  I will get someone to cover it for me, said my husband.
"But what about all that money for the tickets?"  It's only money... this is Barry's last time in Houston.

O! M! G!

My husband said that he had just one request of me. He told me to send our old pet-sitter an eMail and tell him that he's the most expensive pet-sitter on the planet.

The Big Tree

We have Christmas trees all over our house... small table-top artificial trees in every room that I've decorated over the years and they are small enough to put into the storage closet fully decorated. Some of the rooms have two and three trees instead of just one, depending on the size of the room. It's so easy with those little trees... just take them from the closet shelves and place them around the house. And voila! It's Christmas. And those table-top trees always looks beautiful.

Not so easy with the big tree, which we get right after Thanksgiving... a real tree that reaches to the ceiling of our dining room. Translation: we spend good money on a dead tree that was once living and after it's put into the tree stand, we keep our fingers crossed that it remains life-like and green till Christmas Day, or at least until our big Christmas Party, which is always in mid-December.

This year's tree branches are already drooping in places, but at least it's all still green. When you buy these real trees from a Christmas tree lot, you have no idea how long ago it was standing in the forest, with its roots still reaching down into the earth. Was this tree cut three days before it found itself in the parking lot of Home Depot? Or did they cut this tree before Halloween and it's been in cold storage for two months? No blessed idea.

Our big tree this year is very pretty, with its gold star (once belonging to Roy Rogers) right at the very tip of the tree. Roy wouldn't be pleased to see that his star is now pointing down towards the dining room table instead of being able to hold itself perfectly upright. The very tip of this tree is bending, which I guess can be fixed by cutting off part of the tree-top, which of course will make the tree a little bit shorter.

I just looked in the water pan at the base of the tree stand, and not much water has been taken in by this tree since yesterday. With a healthier tree, I should be re-filling at least half of the water in that pan every morning. This tree doesn't seem to be very thirsty... which means it isn't drinking up that water... which means that by Christmas Day the ornaments will be shifting a bit and I'll be hearing that pathetic sliding sound as the ornaments droop a little bit as each day passes.

There are at least 150 ornaments on this big tree (not counting the vintage bubble-lights)... one by one they went up on that tree... and one by one they will be taken down and packed away. I just hope I'm not having to un-decorate this tree till after Christmas. Every year, as I watch the branches droop on these big trees and I clean up the little needles that drop from those branches, I wish that my husband would consider an artificial tree. His answer to that suggestion (which I make every year) is that he doesn't want his vintage Christmas lights on a 'fake' tree and 'Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas without the smell of a Frazier Fir in the house.'

Well... I wonder how he feels about the smell of stagnant water in the pan of that tree stand, not to mention the unique aroma of a dying fir tree. And with all the money we've spent on real Christmas trees over the years, we could have had a spectacular artificial tree that doesn't die and doesn't drop needles and doesn't have to be standing in a frigid dining room because too much heat makes the tree droop even more.

"The pig did it."

My husband and I were on our way home with our Christmas tree hanging out of the back of the car's trunk yesterday and we saw two dogs playing in the middle of the road. On a country two-lane highway, with the speed limit at 65, most of the cars we saw were driving either at or above that posted limit. We were driving slower because of the tree so it was easy to pull over right at the spot where the two dogs were.

There is a huge ranch on that particular road, complete with fancy stone fences and mega-bucks landscaping, and that property owner has scores of deer and elk and reindeer-like animals roaming on those countless acres. (Countless to us, but I'm sure that property owner knows his acreage down to the last millimeter.)  That old song "....where the deer and the antelope play...." comes to mind when we pass that property.

The two dogs were clearly having a grand time on that road, running and jumping and nose-to-the-ground exploring. Which is fine, but not when you're in the middle of a road. My husband pulled over to the side, right in the driveway of The Ranch, and when he called the dogs over to him, both of them happily came... a black/white Border Collie and a brown/white Pit Bull.  I was very leery of the Pit Bull, but she seemed as friendly as the male Border Collie. Both dogs were wearing collars and tags, and when the Border Collie calmed down a bit (he seemed happy to have found a person) my husband was able to read the number on his tag and use the cell phone to make the call.

The phone number went to a 'help desk' which had the dogs' information... they called the owner... the owner called my husband. She had been out looking for the dogs, couldn't find them, and had gone home to wait for them to hopefully find their way back. My husband told her he would keep the dogs with us, he explained exactly where we were on that road, and she said she'd be there in ten minutes. The Border Collie kept bringing rocks and sticks to my husband, waiting for him to throw them so they could be retrieved and brought back. Watching that black/white dog and my husband, I knew he was thinking of our old dog Gracie. (Same coloring, same intensity when playing with my husband.) We had gone to the health food store and had organic sourdough bread in the car, so my husband was rewarding the dogs' good behavior with bits of bread.

When the owner got out of her car, the Border Collie ran up to her and she said "If I wasn't so happy to see y'all, I'd be really mad at both of y'all."  The dog's owner explained to us that they had a new baby in the house and she and her husband had taken the baby to the doctor's for a monthly check-up."  When they got back to their property, the gate was open and the dogs were gone. They always close the gate, but they have a pet pig who has learned how to open up the gate, and does so frequently. For whatever reason, the dogs decided to go exploring, and off they went. The pig stayed right in the yard. We suggested to the lady that she get a pig-proof lock on her gate and we all laughed. She thanked us for stopping when we saw the dogs, for calling the number on the tags, and for keeping the dogs safe and off the road till she got there. We told her that both dogs really liked organic sourdough bread.

It was amazing to me that while we were parked off the road waiting with those dogs, plenty of cars just drove on by, none of them even slowing down when one of the dogs got too close to the road. This is supposed to be a dog-loving state. Those dogs were about ten miles away from their home, and in all of those ten miles, not one car stopped to get them away from the road? They clearly were not strays... they were healthy-looking and cared for, both wearing collars with tags.

Lessons learned..... those pet ID tags really work; Pit Bulls are only mean if they're trained to be because this particular Pit Bull was whimpering for her owner while the Border Collie was playing with my husband; and pigs are smarter than you would think.