Judy's Christmas Letter

Greetings one and all!
Let's see.., where to begin...
I put off writing my Christmas letter until the 21st, just to see if the writing of one would still be necessary.  As it turns out, I'm still here and I hope you are too.
To get into the spirit of things, let me set the stage.  I'm in the living room, looking out onto the small amount of snow we received overnight.  There are four small Christmas trees with white lights on them casting a lovely glow around the room.  Well, except for the tree I'm facing.  The extension cord for that one fell behind a heavy music cabinet and will most likely stay there as cabinet moving isn't high on my list of things to do today.
To stop him from whining, I let Zeke into the room with me.  He is presently munching on the fruit loops that are spread around the floor following a craft project the little boys and I did yesterday.  Zeke brings an interesting aroma not unlike what a stable smells like.  Even Zeke adds to the Christmas ambiance.
There is no fire in the fireplace, but the wind is rattling, causing it to sound a bit like Jacob Marley's ghost and those chains he forged.
Since this blog pretty much sums up my life, I can't see how it would be necessary to recap the year.  If you find yourself to be someone who is interested in the life of a stay at home grandma with an extreme case of  obsessive compulsive thrift store shopping disorder, a bizarre case of agoraphobia, and the inability to stop taking pictures of adorable grand kids, why then I invite you to use that little button on the left to peruse my archives to see this all play out for yourself (eight years worth for the truly bored).
Of course there are things that didn't make it to a blog post.  But those of you who need to know about those things already do.
Here I will publicly confess that this year I have not accomplished many of the things I had hoped to.  That is mostly fine with me.  Decorating for Christmas is a highlight for me.  I did less of that this year.  But what I did do I am enjoying.  The living room, dining room, and kitchen were spruced up before I even went into the basement to look through the Christmas room.  Of all the bins and shelves in there, I only opened one.  It's hardly been a problem as seeing the joyful faces of real children mean more to me than that ceramic family whose mother lost her tiny thumb in the mishap of 2006.
In the past I've enjoyed the baking of Christmas cookies and the making of Christmas candy.  This is not a good thing for an overweight diabetic to do.  Daughter will be making the frosted cut-out cookies this year.  Oldest Son will be making a homemade ice cream treat.  I'll be making quiches and cooking meats.  Truth be told, all I want for Christmas is a new blood sugar meter.  Thankfully I have a wonderful imagination and have been pinning recipes I can never partake of to various Pinterest boards.  This isn't really a very fulfilling thing to do, but I've never claimed to be the brightest crayon in the box.
For years now I have stacked a pile of Christmas reading by my side of the bed every December.  I do trip over it a lot, last night being one of those nights.  I startled a sleeping THGGM awake as I slid on a shiny old Home Companion Christmas Magazine from days of yore, bumped into the tower of chamber pots which is too dangerous to have in the living room presently, and got my foot tangled in a misplaced ball of yarn which rolled across the room in the ensuing confusion.  The ball of yarn was supposed to be a scarf by now. I don't see that happening before Christmas.
Even my Christmas reading has been somewhat curtailed.  This year I've read "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" which is one of my favorite Christmas reads.  Although this year I got to see Jonge and Famke in their first Christmas pageant ever, so anything I'm reading about those just cannot quite measure up to the real thing.  As for reading there is still time.  I've got until Epiphany to lay in bed at night with my reading light on enjoying the thoughts and memories of people more creative than I.  Maybe it's not a good thing to mention, but when I tire of reading yet cannot fall asleep, a reading light and a colander make for great shadow-show entertainment in the wee hours of the night.  How problematic is it, I wonder, to have never actually grown up?
It seems to me that for many people the buying of gifts is the biggest problem every Christmas season.  In our family we seem to have solved this issue as best we can.  We draw names.  I do find it sad that I don't get to buy presents for each one of our children so I  remind myself frequently that they are all adults now and are not lacking in gifts.  Last Saturday found THGGM and I out Christmas shopping in the toy department at Target.  It was 5:00 PM.  The store was not busy at all.  Not even as busy as a usual Saturday at that time.  We quickly and without pain found the two gifts we still needed to purchase for the grand kids.  Then we went home and ordered the rest on Amazon.  This means that the seven gifts we needed to purchase by Christmas day are all safely in the basement waiting to be wrapped.  Nothing crazy about that.  And not at all budget-breaking either.  Sadly, THGGM's wallet went missing at the end of November with all of the money we had to spend on gifts in it.  This has been trying, but we've managed.  There are REAL problems in this world and I'm thankful that we are able to understand the difference between a crisis and an inconvenience.
Each year I enjoy watching Christmas movies.  So far this year THGGM and I have watched "It's a Wonderful Life" at the same time but not together.  He watched it in the basement while putting lights on the tree, I watched it upstairs while surfing Pinterest, apparently looking for more ideas for things I won't be doing. Then last weekend we watched "The Holiday" together.  There is still time for us to watch a few more.  Since there were sick grandchildren around for much of December I've seen many of the children's Christmas classics an inordinate amount of times.  I do believe that Kado and I have watched "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" dozens of times.  DOZENS, I tell you!  The music from that one is the background music playing in my head right now (Why am I such a misfit...).
The wind and snow are picking up outside my window.  I don't have any grandchildren to play with today.  I don't have anywhere to go.  What I do need to do is what I have to do (yet often don't) everyday which is clean up this house of mine.  It's what trips me up every time a holiday rolls around.  I had a good talking-to with myself at the end of October.  Keep up on things, I told myself.  Myself answered affirmatively.  Yet, here I sit with a kitchen that needs a good scrubbing, a bathroom that harbors mildew, a dog that badly needs aroma therapy treatments, and a closet that will need emptying before it can hold all the coats that will arrive on the 25th.
So this is Christmas.  Nothing really changes from year to year, yet everything changes from year to year.  Still the real story of Christmas remains the same.  God incarnate.  A helpless baby.
Over the din of noise, even drowning out the tunes from Rudolph, I hear only one Bible verse playing over and over in my mind, "Rachel, weeping for her children..."  This year, I do believe that we have all joined in with her.
Let us remember that although it often feels as if it is, life is not hopeless.
Merry Christmas.