It's Christmas Eve and the house smells strongly of carpet cleaner. I'm trying to cook dinner (our traditional meal of pasta and french bread) but everything is so highly redolent of chemicals that I can't work up any enthusiasm for the task. The cats seem kind of dazed by the experience, but it's all Natasha's fault that we have to go in for industrial-strength cleaning frenzies before anyone comes over so I'm unrepentant. Also, the back door is open; if it's as bad as all that they could leave.
The church next door had an all day churchathon of Christmas service, children's service, wailing would-be lounge singers service, and three piece band service. Really, we can barely distinguish between the God-oriented stuff and the wedding receptions. I think it was mostly religious today, but I distinctly heard the children (miked, because all their musical services are miked) singing a boisterous song about Little Lord Jesus set to the theme from the Beverly Hillbillies. It seemed an odd choice but remember, this is the same church that once had a special Sunday service featuring the Filipino Elvis. Man, church was never this fun when I was a kid.
I'm feeling markedly better at last. I've caved in and taken some Robitussin to help me deal with a truly nasty cough, but I haven't needed to have Kleenex boxes stationed in every room today so I'm declaring myself practically well. The weather was beautiful and I spent some time on my back porch enjoying the warm sunshine as I looked over the various pots and trays of spring bulbs. Every one of them is showing signs of growth which makes me glad I didn't give in to my impulse to dig a couple of them up in order to plant new bulbs. The freesia are going great guns, four containers of daffodils and iris are showing about an inch of leaves, the early blooming daffs are well over six inches tall already, and something remarkably like carrots is pushing through the earth where I swear I planted tulips. Apparently not, though. I've once again been careless about marking what I planted where, preferring the excitement of wondering what the hell this or that thing is. The carrotish plants must be one of my experimental bulbs, perhaps the anenome or the ranunculas. What did I do with the purple tulips, I wonder? And where are the chionodoxa luciliae?
In a few minutes John and I are going to open a couple of presents. We have conflicting family traditions: his always opened their gifts on Christmas Eve, and we always opened ours after Santa brought them overnight and came down the chimney to leave them in the living room just like all the stories. You don't hear of Santa arriving in the middle of dinner, do you? Opening them Christmas Eve is wrong and bad. However, compromise keeps a marriage strong and since we secretly want to rip open the presents as soon as we can, we open the gifts from other people on Christmas Eve. We open our stockings and the gifts to each other on Christmas morning. It's twice the fun!
Merry Christmas to all who follow the Christian tradition, and happy holidays to the rest.
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Border graphic by Jade Leaves Designs in memory of Ginkgo