As far as I am concerned Christmas 2010 is now over.My oldest daughter got the flowers arranged for my mother yesterday, I paid my insurance, and all gifts for the children are present (no pun intended) and accounted for. Everyone is, again, working in emergency services this Christmas holiday so I am going to curl up into a ball and watch movies in this shed the entire day of the 25th.
Well, unless I get roped into cooking Christmas dinner for my boss.
Yesterday was a real strange day.
I took several brand new dress coats and pants to the dry cleaner back in September for my boss, and asked for alterations done and dry cleaning. I have had an awful time trying to find those dress coats and pants. So yesterday I ran around like a chicken with it's head cut off trying to locate a seamstress who no longer works for the dry cleaning business.
The fact that I have been asking for these items for 3 months doesn't seem the least unusual. The fact that no-one, neither the dry cleaner nor seamstress, phoned us didn't phase anyone. The fact that it seems the alterations are STILL not done is so frustrating. I came back without them. Of course.
Then we wonder why businesses go out of business so quickly in the land of manana.
A gun store wrote to my boss advising him that they were going out of business and he needed to pick up a $1,000 gun he had on consignment. So we had to phone around looking for that businessman.
My boss had left a new jacket at the racetrack casino. I went looking for it. It was not to be found anywhere.
From 9.30 am until 3.30 pm my truck motor was never turned off but for short periods. I drove the length and breadth of Lincoln County trying to round up missing clothes, guns, prescriptions, everything BUT a partridge in a pear tree.
By 3.30 pm I was so exhausted and in so much pain I could barely drag the bags of fertilizer I purchased for the golf putting green out of my truck, and I thanked God that the weather was so gorgeous.
I suspect that millions of people are giving thanks that once again Christmas - such an overwhelming time during a recession - has been conquered one way or another. But just as many are in jeopardy of losing their homes, losing their jobs, walking on thin ice fearing that the whole lot is going to give way under their feet. I have two daughters who are walking that path. Barely making it, the fear of losing everything precariously close.
So this year I feel blessed, relieved, that Christmas is over. Now I have to face the new year and get that trailer house and barn finished. I just can't handle yet another winter homeless and I pray that doesn't sound too selfish.
Christmas, my child, is love in action." ~ Dale Evans
