WALKIN', WRITIN', WIT & WHIMSY

On the inside looking out today. It sure doesn’t take much to slicken up the roads and sidewalks does it? More than a few tenacious snowflakes mingled with a little freezing drizzle … add to the mix the fact that it is Monday. I’m grateful for my work-at-home gig as I endured over three decades of the weather wreaking havoc with the bus schedule making for frayed nerves and a fractious start or finish to the work day nearly every time. Hope you all had or will have a safe commute today.

Back in the day, if you were really mischievous, you might have whispered your gift wishes into Santa’s ear. Otherwise, if you were not screamin’ bloody murder during the whole ordeal, you might have plunked down on Santa’s lap and politely informed him what you’d like for Christmas. That tête-à-tête with Santa was a follow-up to the sincere letter you wrote the Jolly Old Elf in your own hand and then deposited it in the special “Letters to Santa” mailbox. Well, I guess that worked in the “olden days”, but would be considered old-fashioned now.

I had an interesting walk this morning. I left later and thus interacted with a few more people – close encounters of the nice kind.

Enroute to the Park I came upon a pair of tykes who burst out the front door of the house dressed in their Christmas finery. The girl’s knee-length coat was wide open and I could see she was wearing a red velvet dress with a satin sash. The boy complemented her attire in dark pants, a red-plaid vest and a little red bow tie. They were about to climb into a car which was warming up in the driveway as I approached them. “We’re going to see Santa” the girl said and the boy chimed in “and we’re going to get our picture taken for our Christmas card too” … I almost asked “which mall?” before I stopped myself – best not to divulge to a child that Santa Claus is at every mall, and at Fantasyland, too. Well, I caught myself in time and instead asked the kids if they sent their letter to Santa already. The boy said “yup, me and Emily e-mailed him last week” … (hmmmm, I didn’t know Santa had access to e-mail at the North Pole; next thing they would probably tell me they “friended” him on Facebook). I asked the pair if Santa wrote them back and Emily told me very sagely that Santa was too busy right now to write back, but she understood. “Well, I hope you get all the stuff you asked for” I said as I bade them goodbye.

I kept walking until I reached Council Point Park and there was not a single vehicle in the parking lot. It was just crazy cold and the frigid air was stinging my face. I had packed up a large bag of bread for “my mallards” and of course some peanuts for the squirrels if they dared come down from their snug nests high in the trees to put their paws on the frozen tundra.

While walking along the path that runs parallel to the Creek, I could see a thick icy glaze on top of the water. All of a sudden a snow squall started up and it was snowing sideways and the wind was shifting the snowflakes into little drifts on either side of the path. Before I reached the storm drain where I usually see and feed the ducks, I heard much more quacking than usual. I walked over to the edge and looked through the bushes. What an amazing sight! There must have been 80 to 100 mallards all clustered together, swimming and climbing aboard the many mini ice floes that were scattered in the muddy Creek water. It is a very small alcove, and it was just jam packed with male and female mallards. I next headed to the concrete precipice that juts over the sewer drain and they swam over to me right away anticipating the bread tidbits. But the ducks and I were not alone this morning. There was a trio of teenage boys just hangin’ out nearby, also watching the ducks. We kibitzed about the cold and I told them I was there to give the gang breakfast. They too bemoaned the cold weather and laughed about how quickly the ducks came over to get some food. I opened the bag and threw some of the bread morsels onto the ice and a passel of ducks waddled over to get some, their wide, webbed feet giving them traction as they walked atop the ice. Still others were snacking on the already soggy bread that had landed in the dirty, frigid water. There was a cacophony of quacks and loud noises and much splashing during this feeding frenzy as they bumped bodies or nearly tripped over one another to get a tidbit. The three boys were laughing at the mallards’ antics and were busy with their cell phones videotaping the hoopla.

There were no squirrels out except for my usual little buddy, who gleaned extra peanuts, for being present and accounted for, unlike his furry brethren. The wind was biting so I passed on a second lap on the perimeter path, but decided to walk to the post office to see if the big “Letters to Santa” mailbox was stationed outside the building. It formerly had reposed in front of the old main post office for decades at Christmastime. There was no such box outside, so I peered inside through every large plate-glass window – nothing. I even walked past the old post office where the larger-than-usual mailbox always stood and it wasn’t there either … sadly, more Christmas magic relegated to mere memories.

Tonight when I logged onto my computer to write this post, I Googled “e-mail Santa Claus” and sure enough, there are several websites where you may e-mail Santa. I also discovered that ol’ Santa is a fellow blogger. Sometime when you are noodling around on the Internet, be sure to see: http://emailsanta.com/santa-claus-xmas-blog/.

Well, of course, that prompted me to check Facebook to see if Santa Claus was one of the Facebook faithful and sure enough he has a profile. This is no Santa wannabe, however. His profile info is a little bizarre: D/O/B is December 6, 1800. He is a monk and asks that you do not send requests for presents. He looks like Santa Claus with white hair and a full beard and he is wearing bright-red duds. He has 156 thousand plus “Likes”, but no photos of the Missus or the reindeer. If you’re so inclined, he also has a Twitter handle.

P.S. – Santa, the myth and the magic, and even life, was oh so simple when this picture with the big guy was taken. It was my first Christmas and I was just eight months old.

Well … it was sunny and bright outside when I left for my walk, so that was a plus, but the temps and wind-chill factor were just brutal. It was once and done on the perimeter path as the ferocity of the winds travelling across the open spaces was not making for a pleasant walk. I ensured my Park pals got their treats I took for them and then I soon skedaddled to walk in some residential neighborhoods where there was some protection from the wind. At least it was dry, but as I walked I could not help but think about the homeless people who, if they are not fortunate enough to bed down in a shelter, must sleep on the concrete sidewalk, or perhaps beneath an expressway. Plus, they must spend the entire day out in the elements with just the clothes on their back. I feel for their plight. I heard the WJR meteorologist say that the weather in Fairbanks, Alaska was milder than in the “D” – and that’s not just Detroit … he was also talking about Dallas!

I walked in different neighborhoods for some variety this morning and noticed not very many people had decorated yet, and I’m not talking about the electric extravaganzas either … many homes I passed didn’t even have a wreath on their door and nary a bow or glittery holiday decoration was to be found sometimes for several houses in a row.

I saw a few people bringing home their Christmas tree atop their vehicle. I wonder if they cut their own or just went to a tree lot to pick this year’s tree? Years ago I worked with a couple of sisters and the first Saturday in December the entire family travelled to a huge tree farm to get their respective family trees. The annual trek for the Christmas tree had been a tradition in their family growing up and they continued with their own families. They made a day of it … bundling up, driving many miles into the country, then going deep into the woods to find the perfect tree. They even had to bring along their own axe to fell the tree then trundle it back to the car. They took Thermos bottles of coffee and hot chocolate and stopped enroute for fresh donuts to take out with them to the woods for a makeshift picnic amongst the conifers. I was envious of their tree tradition every year when they spoke about the fun they had.

We had a real tree when I was a toddler, then silver aluminum trees became all the rage and my parents opted for that “look” instead of a real tree. I thought the aluminum tree was gaudy looking with its blue bulbs and matching revolving blue floodlight. If you lived in that garish silver-tree era, you either had the blue combo (which looked like a Kmart Blue-Light Special) or a red or green bulb/floodlight combo. Some people went all out with multi-colored bulbs with a multi-color revolving floodlight. Well, in the dark they were stunning anyway. It had some drawbacks in the assembly as well. When you put the tree together, it had very straight branches and they did not bend and handling those silver stick-like branches left your hands all black and it was hard to scrub them clean. The stick branches had to be put in the exact holes per the guide or the tree would not be shaped correctly. But the manufacturers probably made a killing on them and everyone I knew had silver trees at their house in the early 60s.

I only walked four miles today, but it was four miles more than if I had stayed home, and once I had a couple of sips of steaming hot coffee and the furnace kicked on a few times, I felt as cozy and warm as if I had stayed home in my polar-fleece PJs.

Brrr is the word all right – there seems to be no happy medium with this weather, but we could have the dastardly conditions plaguing so much of the U.S., so I’m grateful we are spared thus far. I’m not enthused about any snowy scenarios. I donned my heavy storm coat to stave off the wind which tunnels through the vast empty spaces of the soccer field as I am looping around the one portion of the Park perimeter. What happened to that mild weather from a mere 48 hours ago? I thought our Indian Summer had finally arrived, albeit late, … so, balmy temps … what was your hurry to leave?

Before I suited up, I readied the critter treats to tote with me. I packed up extra peanuts and crumbled eight pieces of bread into bite-sized pieces. I suited up, eager to hit the road. I walked along with my head hunched down and my gloved hands thrust into my coat’s cargo pockets where they shared space with the Ziploc bag of peanuts. A Meijer plastic bag hung off the crook of my arm, swinging against my hip each time I took a step. As I walked, hands deep in my pockets, I felt something round and fingered it through the lining. I kept twirling it ‘round and ‘round and figured it was a long-lost tube of lipstick. Curiosity got the better of me and I opened my coat and accessed the “secret compartment” where I retrieved the treasure. Well … ho-hum, it was just a tube of regular ChapStick. Who knows how long it was in that secret pocket? I uncapped it and that same old waxy smell that’s been around for years and years assailed my nostrils. Some smells never seem to change – ChapStick and those Vicks Inhalers, which turned you inside out if you inhaled too deeply. Did your mom ever put some Vicks VapoRub under your nose, or worse – smear it all over your chest, if you had a bad cold? The metholatum fumes were worse than the actual cold. But wait … there was something else languishing in the corner of the pocket. It felt like a key and I pulled it out and it was a shiny, silver-colored small key. What does it unlock? I’m not missing any keys at home, so it must have been from work … well, the key shall remain one of life’s mysteries, I guess.

As I walked along the pathway and neared the spot where I usually see my peanut pal, I was scanning the landscape up ahead for him. He must have seen my pom-pommed hat bopping along or perhaps he heard my lanyard jingling under my coat which interrupted his squirrel dreams, thus rousting him from his nest. He soon scrambled at the speed of sound down the tree. Like a cowboy, slowly moving his firing hand over to his gun holster to draw his gun out, I slid my gloved hand back into the huge cargo pocket of my coat to grab my Ziploc bag of peanuts. He came bounding over with his usual, predictable Pavlovian response – the begging on his haunches, a little eye contact, then down on all fours and venturing closer to my feet. While I think he is cute, I am still mindful that this is a wild animal and who knows if it is healthy or not and thus I take no chances on sudden movements which might scare him and he’d turn on me. I scattered some peanuts on the path and he happily scurried to eat them. I moved along, head down to thwart the wind which tried its best to attack that gap of bare skin between my chin and where my turtleneck ends. It is just the beginning of a week in the deep freeze and I came home feeling quite like a gigantic popsicle.

Today was just another wacky weather day here in Michigan, with the wind gusting at 30 mph while I sipped coffee, ate my oatmeal and contemplated my morning, I had intended to take a leisurely stroll but the blustery weather didn’t sound so conducive for walking. A few errands had accumulated and I needed some groceries, so I settled on getting ‘er done in one fell swoop before this funky sleet/snow mix settles in this coming Sunday … then I’ll want to stay hunkered down in the house.

So I forsook foot power today and set out to tool around town on four wheels instead. Though my vehicle is not equipped with runners, or hauled by reindeer, nor is it candy apple red like Santa’s sleigh, it did enable me to dash to and fro in record time in an effort to make merry at every place that I stopped.

Merry Christmas to the City. The tax bill arrived in yesterday’s mail, so I went to pay it. I stood in line waiting with everyone else as we queued up, snaking through the Treasurer’s office and down the hall. It is the giving season after all, and, like me, so many people were there to part with their money this close to the holidays. You would have thought it was a grand sale going on. So, my bank balance is lighter but I gave a much-needed uplift to the City coffers.

Next, a trip to the Good Will box to donate some brand-new shoes. These feet, which have trod so many miles this year, have not shrunk a half-size, or even better a whole size to comfortably fit in those loafers again. Nope, it hasn’t happened yet and won’t happen down the road. But, perhaps someone will make better use of them than I do having them repose in the shoe pockets in my closet for more years than I care to count.

Next, I drove to church to light my December and Christmas candles to remember family members I have lost and to offer them Christmas blessings in this upcoming holiday season. I was all alone and the church was very still and dark as I walked up the wide aisle to where the two sets of votive candle stands were. The large and small candles, with their wavering lights, flickered and cast shadows on the nearby alter. The peacefulness was suddenly broken as I heard a child’s laugh in the church school and then murmuring, perhaps a prayer, or reciting poetry? As I was walking back down the aisle to leave the church I heard singing … probably a Christmas song, young voices guided by one of the Sisters with a pitch pipe and alot of patience.

Finally, I landed at Meijer, the one place I avoided for nearly two weeks as I didn’t want to get caught up in the pre-Thanksgiving or post-Thanksgiving crush. However, it was my misfortune that today was part two of a two-day sale and the store was jam-packed. I parked my cart and ambled around the store, perusing the walnuts for my squirrel buddy but deciding they don’t sell loose walnuts and I was not going to buy him walnut meats, no matter what an endearing little fella he is. I did, however, buy two more bags of peanuts. In the bread aisle, I picked two unusually long loaves of bread to store in the fridge. As I piled my feathered friends’ bread stash next to my meager own, I thought to myself that although I may not be wealthy, what I have may surely be shared with God’s creatures.

This day started out rather dreary – a touch of fog and misty, but it was so balmy when I went out to walk that I ended up shucking my coat and hat before I got home. I didn’t stray far as it looked as if it would pour again any minute. I cannot believe a week ago we were suffering with the brutal and blustery weather and the overnight snow that put a kibosh on my Thanksgiving morning pilgrimage to the Park.

Tonight I have been writing letters to tuck into Christmas cards. The letters I’ve been penning are to my mom’s friends who do not own or use a computer. You never realize how long it takes to convey your thoughts when you put pen to paper as opposed to just zipping along as you type on your computer. In this age of social media, it is so easy to click “reply” or “compose” to e-mail and keep current with our friends. Facebook makes it so easy to chat and share past and present pictures, so who wants to go back to that old snail mail and make it harder on ourselves? We certainly are a spoiled bunch aren’t we? Now we know why the U.S. Postal Service is in big trouble.

I started to just type these two letters, then decided it is my once-a-year chance to practice my penmanship since birthday cards just get a note on the blank part opposite the verse. My mom did not use e-mail and wrote very few letters as she kept up with most of her friends via the telephone. But the exception to that rule was always the annual lengthy letters to her Canadian friends. She had pretty handwriting and it was especially evident when she wrote out the Christmas cards with her fountain pen. As a youngster I remember watching my mom filling her fountain pen, a present she received when she completed business school. It was a whole process before the actual letter-writing began. She stood at the kitchen counter, where several layers of paper towels and tissues were laid down to protect the cream-colored Formica. On top would be the pen, a pump and the ink well and she’d fill it full of cobalt-blue ink, being very careful not to spill a drop of it. After capping the bottle, she had a soft flannel cloth to catch the drips from the nib before tipping the pen down and gliding it across the paper. On each envelope, she’d add a little flourish in the corner, like a sprig of holly and the other corner got a Christmas Seal. Years later, while walking through Michaels craft store, recalling how nice the lettering on the addresses looked by using the fountain pen, on a whim I bought a calligraphy set with a how-to book, intending this to be a “Winter project”. The package still sits in the basement – perhaps a project for when I am retired. I think the art of writing a letter longhand is long gone. I have several boxes of stationery that have been around the house for decades. Every Christmas, a paper vendor at the first law firm I worked gave boxed stationery to each support staff as a year-end thank you. But, most of the time I grab a plain sheet of paper from the printer. I just use a Bic Stic pen, so nothing ornate about my writing utensil, nor my penmanship. When I started working at the diner I had fairly nice handwriting. My boss suggested I try to commit the orders to memory, rather than writing them down, since I could take more orders instead of improving my penmanship. He suggested that customers, after all, only had so long for their lunch hour. I smile now thinking about him telling me this, since it was said tongue-in-cheek and was certainly not hurtful. I thought the world of Erdie who was more like a grandfather to me than a boss. So, from that moment on, I remembered each customer’s order without aid of pen nor pad, and called it out to the cook immediately. I only wrote out the items they ordered on the bill if they were not “regulars”, otherwise I’d just put the total on the bill. I certainly wasn’t extraordinary in my memorization skills – most customers ordered the exact same meal every visit to Carter’s. For years after I left the diner I’d see a customer at the mall and could recall with great specificity what their favorite diner items were and I’d rattle off their order to them: “Coke-no ice, two cheeseburgers with and a side of fries” … which, while certainly is not too notable on a résumé, it sure brought a smile to their face.

A few snowflakes here and there were falling from the gray sky as I stepped out this morning. They were the dainty and delicate variety, alighting with an ever-so-light and feathery touch, not unlike a butterfly, on my clothes and still-warm nose. They melted on contact – my kind of snow! I wanted to stick out my tongue and catch some of those flakes as they danced in front of my face and just feel like a kid again. I’m a Winter wienie and this type of snow on Christmas Eve would be plenty to satisfy me, and then it may return to the Heavens once again. Those pretty flakes were very large and reminded me of childhood school days and making paper snowflakes in Mrs. Deakon’s first-grade class. We each got a piece of white medium-weight paper and a pair of child-proof scissors and we folded, snipped and nipped to our heart’s desire with as much painstaking preciseness as a six-year old can muster. Voila! A perfect, six-sided snowflake which we each proudly carried with both hands over to the classroom window where Mrs. Deakon helped us display our artwork by taping it onto the glass. We would admire those paper snowflakes all Winter until it was time to make construction paper cut-out flowers in the Spring. It is said that no two snowflakes are alike, just like fingerprints and people. Friends, like snowflakes, are unique and one-of-a-kind, especially my friend and next-door-neighbor Marge Aubin. Marge has been there for my mom and me many times throughout the past two decades, and, if not for Marge, I would not be sitting here writing this blog post right now. A flurry of well wishes on your birthday today Marge and may you have many, many more.

Hold up your hand if you took a turkey sandwich for lunch today? Or, have you been ultra-creative in finishing off your Thanksgiving dinner leftovers that didn’t get gobbled up on Turkey Day? Perhaps you portioned it out for your guests to take home? My mom used to like nothing better than a sandwich consisting of very thin slivers of turkey and she’d pile on a few inches of dressing. This was consumed cold, not heated up with gravy, and was something she grew up eating after big holidays so this was her favorite sandwich.

Holiday shopping lingo hopefully should be down to the dregs by 11:59 tonight and after reporting the results of online shopping tomorrow morning, supposedly the media will give the topic a rest for awhile. We’ve been bombarded with stats about Brown Thursday, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and now Cyber Monday for countless days now. Soon, the power shopping extravaganza will be in slowmo until the media resurrects it on the last shopping weekend before Christmas.

Not to sound like an old curmudgeon à la Andy Rooney, but, all that glitters is not gold. I just detest sparkles. I don’t buy sparkly cards, but the card store’s sparkly cards cannot help but transfer onto “clean” cards by people’s fingers or when loading them into the display cases. Glittery greeting cards are just a fact of life. But, over the weekend, I hung my holiday wreath on the door after carrying it from downstairs to the living room in a double bag and it has gigantic square sparkles and surely there cannot be a single sparkle left on that wreath as they are in various spots winking and twinkling at me from where the vacuum refuses to suck them up from the embedded crevices on the carpet or floor. I refuse to cast my eyes downward until I return that wreath into storage after the holidays are over.

Finally, I’m working through shin splints today, the after-effects of my extraordinarily (for me) long walk yesterday. It surprises me, since I’ve been walking almost every day and taking lengthier trips every weekend. It slowed me down a little this morning but I hope to be back to my regular walking schedule by tomorrow. I can only imagine how “real athletes” feel after pushing themselves to the limit. No big deal, since I enjoyed yesterday’s walk anyway. I subscribe to a couple of sites on Facebook for quotes and pictures and coincidentally, this was today’s quote, which I think was tailor-made for me and I must share with you:

Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken. – Neil Gaiman

Before I left the house this morning, in anticipation of a long walk, I checked off my necessities first:

Bag of peanuts – check.
Bag of duck bread (as opposed to much-tastier monkey bread) – check.
One large d’Anjou pear with a tiny worm hole – check. (I set this pear aside for my favorite Park squirrel, er – the one who follows me in search of peanuts. Okay, so I’m a sucker for a cute face.)

So, I was good to go and set off with a spring in my step on a relatively mild December day in search of reaching the mileage equivalent to a 10K walk. It was a tad gloomy, but it was dry and I had the perfect mix of clothing on – not too hot, not too cold and for me, just perfect walking weather.

The ice is still lingering on the northern branch of the Ecorse Creek, but once around the bend, the water ripples and flows just as easily as on a Summer day. Because the weather was not as frigid, the ducks were gathered in the tiny alcove and completely absent from their usual sheltered area under the sewer drain. I depleted my bread supply in minutes amidst alot of quacking and carrying on. In fact, two ducks flew down from the sky, skidding along the water in a rather ungraceful move to partake in the feast.

The first lap around the perimeter path I was greeted by multiple squirrels – four of them in fact and not in the same places. Each one bolted down from a tree and received three peanuts for its efforts. Each squirrel immediately cracked and ate one peanut, then scurried away with the remaining ones to squirrel away in their hidey-hole. But, I was looking for my little guy and finally spied him, or perhaps I should say he spied me, and, not shy at all, he scampered right over in front of me and sat on his haunches and begged. I told him no genuflecting or similar gestures were necessary, but he persisted. I dug in my coat pocket for the pear and placed it on the path then surrounded it by four peanuts. Well, it was like Christmas for him. His eyes followed my hands as I put the treats on the pathway, and clearly he was conflicted which yummy morsel to eat first. He decided on the pear as it wasn’t as portable as the rest of his booty. With a smile on my face, I suppressed the urge to wave goodbye, but moved on and resumed walking. The second lap of my journey, he was the only squirrel I saw and he came right over to me, stopping me in my tracks. Feisty little bugger! I identified him since he had traces of pear flesh on the sides of his cheeks and the red skins of the peanuts had attached themselves to the sticky dribbles. I wished I could have offered him a napkin. I tossed him a few more peanuts and promised “next time around” he’d get a few more, and, sure enough, by the time I got to the third lap, he was once again at the ready for this sucker to drop a few more peanuts at my feet so he could grab ‘em up.

After three laps and the mile-long return trip home, I was pooped, but elated to have reached the 10K goal. I climbed out of my walking clothes and was happy to just sit down and rest on my laurels, along with my tired tootsies. The concept of a hot soak in a tub, similar to this gingerbread fellow soaking in a cup of coffee, sounded inviting, but chores and addressing Christmas cards were on today’s agenda … and alot of sitting.

As I moseyed along toward Council Point Park on this November morn, which finally felt like a November morn, the sun was shining bright but had not yet dissolved the patches of snow and ice that lingered on the residential sidewalks. Just as Frank Sinatra crooned about crossing over to the sunny side of the street, I did likewise. Ahh, … much better. The concrete sidewalks were no longer slick and I strode with confidence and picked up the pace. Good thing as I’d still be ambling along working on that six-mile walk I put in the books for today.

I saw many a homeowner hovering on the top step of the ladder stringing up holiday lights. I especially like the icicle lights. By the time I passed a good many of the light meisters, they were already admiring their handiwork from the edge of their driveway, but the real test comes when darkness falls.

I noticed an abundance of light-up reindeer prancing about on front lawns for that added twinkling effect on those now-early dark evenings.

While I continued my walk, I saw picture windows filled with Christmas trees in various stages of enrobement. From the outside looking in, by the casual eye of a passerby, most of the trees looked either quite naked, had ornaments unevenly distributed or garland hung haphazardly since the mother lode of trimmings are found where the family can admire them from the sofa or easy chair.

I got to thinking that today should probably be the day that I do my Christmas decorating. I never decorate outside, save for a wreath adorning the front door lest I look like ol’ Scrooge himself amongst my neighbors who all decorate for the holidays. I figured I’d mull over how much effort would go into the 2013 holiday extravaganza while I was walking.

For years and years, I reserved the day after Thanksgiving for eating leftovers and putting up the Christmas decorations. This small house never has had much room for storing the regular items that must be tucked away to allow for all the holiday decorations to be displayed. Therefore, during the year, holiday paraphernalia might be stored in several boxes here and there in closets, and, in a burst of extreme organization a few years ago, red and green Rubbermaid tubs downstairs neatly preserve the remaining ornaments for safekeeping and from dust. When every Christmas item owned was displayed, it was quite the undertaking to decorate the entire house. We had amassed a huge collection of decorations with a country theme, since the house is done in colonial and country. There were my Mom’s life-like cardinals and blue jays on plates or figurines and also the resin yearly dated teddy bears which I collected through the years. So, it became an all-day affair to put out everything, including a small Christmas tree with miniature ornaments and two small ceramic trees. Then, of course, reversing the procedure on New Year’s Day to tuck stuff away for eleven months and return the regular, non-Christmas items to their places; that is, if you could remember where you put the regular items. Every year my Mom would say “make it easy on yourself and just put up the ceramic tree and be done with it” and I’d reply “really, it’s no problem, I enjoy doing this – we need to have some Christmas cheer in the house” … however, I must concede, that ever-so gradually I kept eliminating more and more from my yearly decorating regime.

By the time my walk was over, I decided to pare down my decorating to the nth degree and that one tiny plush reindeer with Scotch-plaid antlers and a jaunty bow will suffice for decorating my house for 2013. This cutie pie’s name is Marcella and she will sit on my kitchen corner cabinet in my range of vision giving me a smile whenever I glance over. Perhaps I’ll dig up a red bow for Buddy’s cage and he shall look festive as well.