Living In A Busy Time

Like all people affected by the holiday season, my life seems very busy right now. Here I sit on another Sunday night wondering where the weekend went. By the time I got home on Friday night I was wiped out. I did not have a bad work week, I just felt unusually tired and bed time couldn't come fast enough. I did have the luxury of sleeping in on Saturday morning although I crawled out of my bed after nine hours of sleep. I wanted to enjoy a morning without work and some solitude before my granddaughter arrived for an overnighter. She arrived in the early afternoon and soon afterwards became engaged in baking cookies and making candy with Grandma. After all the sugar cookies were baked and decorated, and the chocolate was melted in a double boiler to be poured into candy molds, Chloe looked at me and said, "This is a lot of work"! In order to avoid diabetic comas, my wife and I sent most of the treats home with her. Last night before going to bed we watched the Curious George and Shrek Christmas movies. Today, as is her custom, Chloe woke me up at the first sign of daylight. "Pa Paw, do you know what I would like to do after we make your coffee? No, Chloe, I don't. What would you like to do? I want you to take me outside and teach me how to catch squirrels. Well, Chloe, that's very hard to do. Squirrels are very fast. But I want to pet one"! Of course, by the time we got down the stairs, the squirrels were long forgotten and were safe from an inquisitive little granddaughter. Soon enough we were sitting side by side at the kitchen table eating our bowls of Lucky Charms.

Today I had a very enjoyable brunch with three of my siblings and my mother. Last week my mother turned 80 years old. My siblings and I took her out today to a restaurant where I had never been. The building used to be a tavern where my underage friends and I used to purchase beer illegally in our youth. Today it looks the same on the outside but the inside has been transformed into a restaurant. Everything was very nice and the food was great, especially the New Orleans style sugar coated donuts, whose proper name I cannot recall, and the bourbon flavored bread pudding we had for dessert. Two other really nice touches were the real wood fireplace and the string quartet that played Christmas carols. It was my kind of off the beaten path, one of a kind, classy restaurant.

Christmas approaches with alarming speed. By my count it will be here in twelve days. Thank God I am not using the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" as my shopping guide. As I have said before, I may look a little like Santa, especially when my beard is long, but my wife is Mrs. Claus. She makes it happen for my family and this year she has been at the top of her game.

Now I need to go back downstairs where the oven is self cleaning itself, the washing machine is swishing, the dry is humming. A man's work is never done. (smile)