make a giant pot of split pea soup. i know what you're saying...eww...but when i said i had a big ham bone what i meant to say was a huge giant ham bone. i hated to waste it and hated even more to hog up freezer space so the soup is on. no one in this house will eat it except the german and he's a dog so i don't know if that counts. i'll eat a bowl, the german will get a taste as long as i don't use onions to cook it with and then the rest goes to the numberoneson. he has been eating pea soup since he was a child. i suppose it's comfort food. my comfort food these days is apricot brandy! i forgot how much i love it's sweet syrupy taste and the warm sensation after a swallow. this was all made possible by my decision to make fruitcake this year for the mom for christmas. family tradition dictates that apricot brandy is a requirement and i think i drank more than i used to brush on the fruitcake. ah well it's my holiday too and i must've needed comfort. the holidays this year seem surreal.
they came too quickly and they are going too fast. i meant to put my tree up last weekend while the little guy was here but he and the guy got all involved playing wii sports and i couldn't find the damn tree so i moved on to to other things. how do you lose a six and a half foot pre lit chirstmas tree anyway? i lost it for a week until i looked down instead of up and found it in a big white box with a full color photograph of a six and a half foot prelit christmas tree. sometimes i wonder if i am not losing my mind. the tree has been installed on the end table in the living room next to the fireplace and the big wreath is over the mantle and the mantle and the tree are all lit up in little white lites. the candy canes are in a vase on the mantle so miss husky cannot help herself and it is cozy and warm and i am so glad i took the time to put the three pieces of the tree together and stand it on a table covered with a lace table cloth. wow could i have put forth any less effort?
probably not but ever since the real tree i bought fell over two times and i had to decorate it three times and then undecorate it all by myself i have lost a lot of interest in the project. the older i get the more grinch like i become but this year i came up with an idea i thought might revive my lacking holiday spirit. i gave the little guy forty bucks and set him loose in marshalls dept store to choose gifts for his family. he was beside himself with glee at the idea. he gushed. he proclaimed. he announced to everyone who gave him a glance that he was buying gifts for his family. he sniffed, he touched, he held things up to the light, he made me model some until he chose the perfect gift for each person on his list...his mom, his dad, his sister, his pap and me. we decided upon five dollars a gift and went over on only one...because he wanted a specific gift for his sister and we rounded up to five ninety nine in most cases because after all it was still in the five dollar range.
buying a gift for me was tricky. it was his idea to include me which makes it more special and together we arrived at the plan that i would choose several pair of knee socks in the five dollar and ninety nine cent range because i love knee socks he he wanted me to have what i really wanted. then i hid behind a rack of bras while he made the final selection and hid it in the cart under the other gifts. i swear i didn't peek. when we got in line he pushing his cart and clutching his two twenty dollar bills tightly in his fist while loudly and enthusiastically exclaiming... "thank you soooo much for letting me do this! i never got to buy gifts for my family before! my mom and dad never get a gift and do you and pap get any gifts or will this be your only one? i'm gonna make tags and write everyones name on them and put them under the tree. i like getting gifts a lot but now i like giving them too. i feel so...i don't know what i feel...i feel like i did a good thing. i feel proud." everyone within earshot was smiling ear to ear, the checkout girl was grinning as she quickly and secretively placed my gift in the bag while i sat not looking in the chairs on the side where the men wait for the shopping to be over. he paid his bill and carried his goods out to the truck.
i have to say i thought i was giving a gift to him and to his family...the one who got the biggest gift was me. he got the message. he got it! he got the message that giving can be better than receiving. he got the message that christmas is a time for sharing not just getting presents from santa...although it is that as well. not since i had a similar experience with his sister a few years back when we stood in line at gabriel brothers with a sack full of quarters and dimes and nickles that she had saved up to buy gifts for her family was i so full of the holiday spirit...it snowed today so we're in for a white christmas. later...love g
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