January 7, 1994
Dear Everyone:
Welcome to 1994.
But first, a few things to clean up from 1993.
1) For the last few weeks of the
year, I kept forgetting to report that, for Thanksgiving Dinner
“Jeannie” made the gravy. It
was excellent. Not a lump
insight.
2) In my last letter, I
talked briefly about commas. “Jeannie”
immediately spotted the fact that a parenthetical comma was
missing and proudly pointed it
out to me. (17 December 1993,
paragraph 3.) I told her that I'd
done it on purpose, as a test. She
bought it, hook, line and sinker.
Now, on to Christmas, which went
very well. Mother and Dad
arrived the Tuesday before Christmas. Knowing
that there would be people in and out all of the time, I had taken the
precaution of investing in a
Honey-Baked Ham® and a roast beef, so that we would have plenty of
food around for impromptu meals. Not
to be outdone, the folks brought with them:
·
a pork roast
·
a 5 pound chunk of halibut
·
some sea bass
all frozen and packed into a bag and checked through at the airport.
Since the cargo area of a jet
liner is never heated, at 30,000 feet, the food stayed frozen until we
saw fit to defrost it for meals.
As usual, Christmas is the only time of the year that my refrigerator is
packed with food. It was probably
having an identity crisis. There
is still a bag of potatoes in there. I
have no idea where they came from.
“Alice” and “Kelly” arrived bright and early (3:00 a.m.) on Thursday and
“Marshall” joined us Christmas Eve.
With so many people around, it was just like the good, old days when we
were growing up. The coffee maker
was nearly always on. “Marshall”
and Dad found coffee mugs I never knew I had.
Wine glasses kept finding their
way into and out of the dishwasher (not a normal occurrence) which ran
almost daily (also not a normal occurrence).
It usually takes me a week to
fill the dishwasher; and another week to get around to clearing it.
There were drinking glasses everywhere, which made it hard to remember
which one was mine. So I started
using a Star Wars® glass because I knew there was only one
Lando Calrissian in the household (that I knew of, anyway).
My carriage clock kept everyone on their toes.
Every quarter-hour, it would
chime and someone would sing out, "Answer the door!"
At 10:00 each night, we would
banish it to the pantry so it wouldn't bother Mother, who was sleeping
on the sofa-bed.
All of the Christmas traditions were observed.
The tree, leaning hopefully
towards the sun, which it seemed to think was in the dining room.
The stockings hung by the…well, I
don't have a chimney, so we hung them around the door to the furnace.
Close enough.
Whole walnuts and tangerines to make the stockings look like
they're full. Everyone got a
gumball machine (not appropriate for children under the age of three) as
a stocking stuffer. “Marshall”
found that Christmas candy that all sticks together when you put it into
a bowl. Of course, we all agreed,
it's not really Christmas-y
unless it has a red fuzz stuck all over it.
And then there is the traditional Christmas Tragedy.
The toy that got broken even
before it was opened. The crucial
game piece lost in the wrapping paper and inadvertently thrown in the
fireplace. The infamous year that
“Marshall” climbed the Christmas tree and it wound up in the backyard
before dinner time. (No, we never
let him forget.)
This year's tragedy seemed (to me at least) to be relatively minor.
A few days before Christmas,
“Jeannie's” tree fell over, crushing some ornaments and, unfortunately,
killing one of her prized
ceramic sea shell angels. I
happen to be there at the time, installing “Jeannie's” birthday present
(a space saver coffee maker). I
pieced the angel back together and looked at the back.
It had a date, but I didn't see a
limited-edition number, so maybe it wasn't one of the more valuable
ones. I only hope she can replace
it.
“Jeannie's” natural inclination was to blame one or more of her cats,
but as a witness, I could testify that they weren't anywhere around at
the time. The only culprit was
everyone's age-old enemy: Gravity.
As for the tree, it was such a fluffy,
round sort of little tree that
you could hardly say that it fell over. It was more like,
having drunk up all the water in the stand (which seems to be what
over-balanced it), it just sort of gave a little sigh and
rolled over onto its side.
Kind of like, "Well, I've had my drink and now I think I'd like to take
a little nap."
Which is pretty much what Mother and I did:
Stayed home most of the time,
watching movies on the VCR and taking little naps whenever we felt like
it. My kind of vacation.
Well, Christmas is over, until next year.
I have news for the
Ashland
people. However, “Jeannie” has
pointed out to me that, with all the copies of this Letter that go out
now (I'm up to 13), and not knowing how many other people are reading
them, it might not be too wise to advertise just when we are planning to
be out of town. So the Ashland
people can look for an attachment detailing the dates for the Festival.
For everyone else, it'll be
sometime this summer.
Love, as always,
Pete
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