Loveliest Christmas ever! First time we didn't have to cook the big dinner so we were able to enjoy a cold and sunny Christmas Day after a morning of gift giving and receiving.

Stella knows what the stockings mean!

Catnip mouse for Archie's first Christmas.

The perfect stocking stuffer.

Loving the mess.

First time we've ever been able to go for a bike ride on Dec. 25.

The mistletoe gets lots of use!

Now we head down to Atlanta for our second Christmas plus New Year's with my family.
Best Christmas ever!

Every time I hear Archie, our four-month-old kitten running up the Christmas palm tree, I am soooo glad we didn't set up a real one. Can you imagine how hard it would be to get him out of those branches?
Every time I hear Archie clamber up the palm tree -- all those bulbs clatter -- Stella comes to wherever we are, bedroom, living room, and we know she's "tattling" (she also does this when Abby jumps up on the counter and eats sausages or cookies or shrimp).I think she's afraid he's going to knock the whole palm tree over and it land on her where she's lying on the couch. Preservation of self, not of tree.
I picked seven ornaments off the floor this morning (good thing I bought a box of cheap plastic ones. I wonder if I'm going to be able to leave the tree up until Tuesday. But doesn't he look cute up there? Our furry little angel.

Dwayne keeps telling Abby and Archie that Santa is only visiting Stella and Fern this year.

Guess what I'm doing right now?
(Okay, well, what I'm supposed to be doing right now.)
I'm doing a quick edit of my manuscript because an agent wants to see it and I need to have it to her before Christmas. (She doesn't have any children and I suspect she is Jewish because she told me over the phone - more on that in a minute - that everything shuts down at Christmas time and she's going to get a lot of reading done.)
When I arrived home for lunch on Monday, an hour-long lunch, the phone was ringing as I dumped pea soup into a pot and when I saw the name and number...The agent I'd queried a month ago who'd responded to the query on the same day then later requested the book proposal. Here is the gist of why she phoned: she wanted to suss out whether I was a raw talent that was willing to work and understood the realities of publishing or if I was a raw talent that was inflexible and ignorant and just too much bother.
Thankfully, I am the former.
"You gave all the right answers," she told me just before she said she really wanted to read the manuscript.
(This is always where I do my Holy Crap! dance.)

Sooooo...instead of making my usual holiday goodies this week -- chocolate bark and shortbread cookies and taco mix -- I am editing my manuscript. Actually, it just means I'll be cramming all that stuff into two days on the weekend. Worth it, worth it, worth it. My husband doesn't each cookies anyway (yes, I know, what's wrong with him??) so I end up eating them all.
Sooooo...it's a good thing we're going away until January 2 because I won't be home obsessively checking my email. I can put all that aside and concentrate on having fun with my family.
But, c'mon, an agent called my house to talk to me!
Holy crap!

Interesting...

I'd say we had mice but with two cats, there's no way. Good thing I'm not picky about chocolates and not too proud to eat ones that have been sampled.
Since someone bought 4 boxes of chocolates (!!), I know there are three more of these to find.

Walking with the dogs, walking in snow, walking in a cold, biting wind is balm for the spirit.

See how the light always returns, how it drives back the heavy, dark clouds? Even if the biting wind continues to freeze and force us back, the light stays, strengthens, gives hope. One step at a time.

It was with profound relief that I listened to the minister close last evening's community Christmas musical by acknowledging the unimaginable tragedy that had occurred earlier in the day. It was a multi-denomination concert but it happened to be held in the United Church so it was that minister who was closing the evening in prayer for everyone in attendance.
"Perfect words," I was able to tell her afterwards but that's all I could speak. The unimaginable was also unspeakable.
Fellowship afterwards was, for me, a lovely time. A balm for my shocked spirit. I am a stranger in church but not in the community although to many, I am a name but not a face. Thankfully, enough people recognized me and said the kindest words about my writing.  How much they enjoy it; one woman even told me her favourite columns.
The minister's prayer, the conversations over tea are all connected to the tragedy in Connecticut -- the giving and receiving of kind words, of encouragement. They keep the light burning in the darkness that had swept in around us, closer than ever before.
How to go on when 26 lives have stopped?  How to go on at Christmas time when 26 lives will never be home for Christmas again?
(Who shoots children? That's been my burning question, likely never to be answered. Who shoots children? And if your illness, your challenges are so great that an act like that is what you will driven to, how badly funded/staffed/managed is the mental health system that it would allow you to reach that point?)
So it's all in the kindness to each other and to oneself. Every time this happens (and my prayer now is that this, THIS unspeakable tragedy that killed 20 children, finally will make it clear that absolutely no one needs to possess assault rifles and semi-automatic pistols), every time this happens, we have to love each other more and be kinder to each other. That is our only human defense against the darkness. The light that shines from us is the only thing that makes sense in these black days.
A time of waiting, indeed.

The Service of Remembrance and Hope was lovely, for the six of us who attended, three of whom welcomed me when I arrived. (People are recognizing me now as the columnist in the newspaper.)
It was held at the United Church in Port Howe, a very pretty country church that suits being decorated for the season. (I wonder if more than six attend on any given Sundays.)
I think people avoid these "blue Christmas" services because they are afraid of touching on painful memories, some kind of suffering they keep pushing aside, because this is not the time to deal with it. Yet this is the time that can make those feelings worse. It's a service of comfort, of hope. We need those especially at this time of year.
My husband needed this service but he is in so much physical pain, by evening he hasn't the energy to do anything. For him to face his emotional pain would be too much; the service would have broken him and that would have been difficult for him in a public place, however safe a church always feels. (Near the end, a woman began weeping. She found what she needed.)
I went for him. I put carnation petals in a bowl of salt water for him. I prayed for healing for him. But I also went for myself because I need to acknowledge that Christmas is full of pain for many people; while I don't consider any of my past suffering to be very big, my adult Christmas memories are a mix of sadness and joy. To have remained unchanged by my experiences would have been impossible but it doesn't make it easy to pretend that Christmas is the perfect time of year when nothing bad touches anyone.
A friend is facing her first Christmas without her mother. (At least) Two people in our area, with children still at home, are undergoing aggressive treatment for cancer, are trying to hold on until after Christmas. I can't ignore that information. When a service is offered that addressed my ambivalence about the season, an ambivalence that is very unpopular, I need to hear the words, sing the hymns, ask for healing for someone I love.
This reading concluded the service:
"We have gathered this evening to acknowledge the grief and sadness and loss that is part of our lives, even in the midst of the world's insistence on merry-making and cheer. Acknowledging our feelings in honesty and safety, we hold fast to the hop that is in the Gospel of Christ: the good news that came to us in the unlikely form of a small baby, born to us so long ago. In that good news we find hope and a space to breathe deeply. In that good news, we find a space to consider a time in the future when grief will ease and laughter will come easily. In anticipation of that time, please receive this tulip bulb. Take it home with you; plant it; water it; and nurture it. Find a wonderful place to plant your bulb as a reminder that your coming joy will grow."

I've lost track of the days. Cold, popped disc, husband's shoulder. Everything runs together as we wait for a call, for a healing, for an easing of the suffering (his far worse than mine but the suffering of others far worse than ours). Appropriate for Advent, this time of waiting.
I feel schizophrenic, too many voices in my head.
But that's because I am too many people: I am one kind of writer when on Facebook, another kind of writer when I do the blog, and a third kind, the real me, when I am here.  But not even totally real, not the real of my journal, that no one reads.
I have a million thoughts in my head and I have none.
Wrote this in my notebook last night: "I find myself returning spiritually to Christmas this year." That's all I could write because it's not exactly what I want to say. Wrote more in a longer piece but which one of me gets to publish that? Too long for Facebook? Too personal for work blog? But too important to let languish here for just our secret club of approved (non-stalking) readers.
I'm going to a church service tonight, the kind that are sometimes called "Blue Christmas" services but what this country church is calling a service of light and hope. Which is what I wrote a lot about in my notebook last night.

If you haven't done your Christmas cards yet, here's a bit of advice:
Don't do them while sitting on the couch.
Between not stretching for two weeks because of feeling like crap, coughing too hard, and being hunched over cards while sitting cross-legged on the couch while watching TV, I've managed to pop a disc in my middle back.
New injury!
After getting an appointment for a CAT scan in January to take a look at my lower back which is developing new twinges and at my right shoulder which I injured way back while looking after Dad, I thought, "There are problems with the top of my back and the bottom of my back but at least everything in the middle is alright."
Why, oh, why did I think that??
So when you receive your card from me, know that it was worth the pain and suffering I'm now experiencing!

What's wrong with this picture?!?

Mum left this morning for Georgia. 71 years old and driving for three days. What a wonder. Car filled up with gifts (Since when did ketchup chips count as a gift? Since they don't have them in the States!). She'd parked her car in "my" garage for easier packing and when she started it up this morning at 6:45 am, it wouldn't turn over.
"Rrrrrr."
"Rrrrrr."
"Rrrrr."
Really, that's not what I wanted to hear when my mother is about to drive for three days on interstate highways in another country. Normally, I don't worry about her but now I'm expecting to head to New England tomorrow on a rescue mission. Well, that is, after we check out the Pugwash Christmas Farmers' Market and Craft Fair.
I wonder how long it will take the cats and the dogs to realize Nana is gone...for longer than a week. And we're going to have to hire someone to drive Stella to Tim Horton's every day for a timbit.

Has any other man looked more gobsmacked by his wife? I suppose some might say Dwayne must look like this a lot. The expression, that is, not the lights.
This happened in the two hours today that I felt good. Had to get the lights done this weekend, had to get some shopping done this afternoon because I spent the last two days in the house in pajamas, mostly sleeping. All this activity brought the cold is back with a vengeance so it's early to bed tonight. Brutal: lost my voice and was awake all Friday night with a sinus headache so bad, it made me sick to my stomach.
So consider this therapeutic.