Merry Christmas! (A Long, Rambling Post)

To all of my beloved internet friends:

I have been so fortunate to come in contact with so many incredible people via my blog this year. I feel thrilled and privileged to know each and every one of you. Please know that you are forever in my heart and in my thoughts, especially during this holiday season.

I wish for each and every one of you to have a wonderful, beautiful Christmas day, surrounded by family and friends, rejoicing in one another’s company and glad for one brief period of time together, as you never know when it may be the last that you see of one another.

Having opened our gifts last night under our beautifully lit Christmas tree decorated solely with hand-made ornaments, those given as gifts and even ones that I made as a child, I was fortunate to receive many delightful gifts. However, the two that meant the most to me are the ones from my recently departed grandfather. For those of you who didn’t know him (and that would be just about everyone reading this blog), my grandpap was a very talented commercial artist who worked even during his retirement. He made me many wonderful things as I was growing up, including a wooden basket which sits behind me as I type this, painted and decorated with my and Terry’s names on it, in my favorite color, purple. He also made banners and posters for me when I excelled at various music competitions during my high school years. He took me in and always treated me as his very own granddaughter, even though he never met me until I was 14 years old and my mother was remarried to the man I now affectionately and proudly refer to as my dad. He and my grandmother have always been very involved in my life since the time they entered it and I took great pride in and motivation from my grandfather’s talents. He did everything from dressing windows in a department store many, many decades ago to painting go-carts at a local amusement spot to painting all of the signage (large and small, including the large one that still stands atop a tall post to mark my dad’s first hardware store) for my dad’s stores to painting murals on the hallway walls of the local shopping mall. He did it all, with great talent and panache.

I know this seems like an odd trip down memory lane; however, the point to all of this is that he had an immense studio in the basement of their home which my dad and uncle have been faced with the task of trying to clean out. I was nearly in tears last night when I saw two presents for me tagged as being from my grandfather. My dad picked out, packed up and wrapped a wonderful set of colored pencils, most of which were never even sharpened, plus a set of heavy weight cards and envelopes which were intended for use with watercolors, but I could even use with my rubber stamping. I will treasure them always and fondly remember my grandfather every time I use them.

I regret that I never took the opportunity to tell Pap how much he meant to me, but I hope that somehow he knows. And to make sure I never make that mistake again, I wrote Gram a note several weeks ago, letting her know exactly what I would want her and Pap to know about how important a part of my life they have been and how grateful I am to have and have had them in my life for over half of my existence now.

On a less macabre note, I received some wonderful Christmas gifts, including finishing off my collection of currently available paperbacks from the Monica Ferris needlecraft mysteries series, a Lorri Birmingham stumpwork scissors fob kit, three Shepherd’s Bush scissors fob kits complete with matching scissors, a Daylite uplight for working with dark fabrics and a portable, handheld Sudoko game player. I also received my special daughter gift from Dad. Each year, he hand picks a sweater for each of his daughters. I have not yet decided if I will wear this year’s sweater today or wear last year’s. He always picks such lovely, feminine pieces for me. Perhaps he sees something buried deep within me that I don’t see or acknowledge normally? Being a female in the male-dominated field of computer science tends to diminish one’s sense of self and femininity. 😉

For those of you who were wondering, the Fairy Violets box was a big hit, as everyone expected. I was also able to surprise Terry with many gifts this year. It’s a good thing he followed his instinct not to buy me any video games or we would have ended up with numerous duplicates. That’s always a good sign, right? 🙂 Though I made him promise to stop buying himself things much earlier in the year this coming year so that he can build a proper wishlist. This is the second year in a row where I totally had to make up things off of the top of my head to buy for him and it’s very exhausting work.

Well, time for me to go. I’m fighting a nasty headache from doing FAR too many things yesterday, but the good news is that the turkey is nearly ready to go into the oven, as is the lamb, I have the entire cooking process mapped out as to what time which things needs to happen (this is for Terry’s benefit since he’ll do most of the cooking; I’ve spent the past two days baking and cleaning, so I get a little bit of a break), the table is already set, with swan napkins folded by Terry last night, and in about 5 hours, we’ll be sitting down to a dinner of turkey, lamb, garlic mashed potatoes, broccoli casserole, stuffing balls, dinner rolls, cranberry jelly and a selection of pickles and olives.

In the meantime, my mom has promised to teach me to knit while she’s here, so sometime today I will be starting my scarf! Woohoo!

Again, Merry Christmas to you, everyone! I hope you have/had a fabulous day and are stuffed with food and happinesss. I know that I will be! And to my friends who are Jewish, I will try to post a special Happy Hanukkah message to you tomorrow as you begin the festival of lights. Shalom! Love and hugs to all!