Popcorn

Today I met my friend Norma and her family in Oshkosh for a Thanksgiving meal at Primo, an Italian restaurant.  Primo's gave us a long table in front of their big southern facing window.  There's a garden out there and the remaining hardy mums shone in the sun. We didn't exactly have the traditional meal, we all ordered a wide assortment of food off the menu from salmon to pork loin.

It isn't the food that's important, it's the conversation.  We caught up on gossip, talked music and books, and remembered the old days.  Norma and I have been friends for 54 years so those days are old indeed.

Our intention was to go to the big St. Vincent de Paul store next door, but by the time we were talked out, St. Vinnie's was closed.  Instead we went to a nearby thrift shop and looked around.  I found a lovely pair of sandals. It's too late to wear them this year, but they will be perfect for summer's travels.

On the way back through Appleton, one more stop.  Evan is now a Cub Scout and the primary rule of scouting seems to be "Thou shall sell things to the public."  Girl Scouts sell cookies.  Boy Scouts sell popcorn. Evan is handicapped by small family connections.  His father was an only child.  My relatives are scattered in far away places.  His mother only had one brother.  Tisha's family is small and most of the relatives are in Montana.  It was up to this grandmother to buy popcorn.

I will be serving popcorn at my yearly Solstice party.

Black Friday

It's time for my annual seriously depressing Christmas stories. When I first suggested the idea to friends several years ago, they thought I was crazy, but they've come to love them. My thought was that people who hate the holidays or become depressed should know that not everyone has a good time on December 25.  In time, even my writing pals who love Christmas came to find the stories funny.  

Today it was my turn to furnish a story for Black Coffee Fiction  http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com

I had the story outlined but I needed some more information on Black Friday, the shopping day after Thanksgiving.

I don't think I've ever shopped on Black Friday. For one thing, I don't believe in standing in long lines. There are better things to do with my time.  For another, I've found that whatever is on sale on Black Friday will be available again the week before Christmas and usually on sale then, too, but without the crowds.  

These days, my family doesn't really give presents. At my age, I have enough of everything and Chris and his family have more than enough money to buy whatever they want.  I make a big meal at Christmas and buy a gift for Evan, usually books.

So I had no idea what happens on Black Friday.  The answer was social media.  I asked my friends on Facebook for the worst things they had seen.  Teresa had a great story about a sixty year old woman crawling past people to get to whatever treasure she wanted.  Gary remembered a woman going berserk at the Appleton Menards a couple of years ago and found a cellphone video of it on YouTube.  

Then the Georgia Walmart experienced a shopping melee when shoppers went wild over a cellphone.

It was all I needed and after I threw in a Santa Claus, my story was written.

Thanksgiving Day

Instead of having a big Thanksgiving meal at home, Chris, Tisha and Evan suggested we eat out instead.  That seemed a good idea to me.

When I was a child, Thanksgiving was a true harvest day for those of us on a farm. With the exception of the cranberry sauce, we grew everything on the table.  It was a fun day with lots of cousins and friends around.

The last few years, I've come to think it is just too much trouble, so eating out was exactly what I wanted.  The food was perfect from the turkey to the cherry pie a la mode.  The conversation was good and afterwards there were no greasy dishes, and no turkey carcass to deal with. (I usually make soup.) There was no televised football. This was so much easier.

After we ate, Chris and Tisha introduced me to a new Thanksgiving tradition.  We drove around Appleton to see the big chain stores and observe people lining up for the Black Friday sales which in some cases start tonight.  At Best Buy there were even three tents with people that had already been waiting for two days to rush in for bargains.

It was a warm day, so it probably wasn't all that bad, but Tisha told me she's seen it much worse. People line up in blizzards to save a few dollars on a toy. She and Chris always spend Black Friday morning watching the crazy people.

I'm writing a short story about Black Friday so I was mentally taking notes.

When I got home I spent the afternoon decorating the house.  I finally got the lights working on the six little Christmas trees that go on the front deck. At an end of the summer sale, we found some glass lanterns marked down 90 percent.  Gary bought two, I bought two. At a rummage sale, I bought six big red ribbons for fifty cents.  Now the lanterns are decorated and are burning tea lights in the front yard.

With Gary in Illinois, I thought, why bother?  For the last few years he has done most of the decorating. But once I began putting out lights, I remembered how much fun it is. Even if I will be alone in this house for most of the season, I love the smells, lights and music. Why not enjoy myself?

After sunset, I took a two mile walk around town looking at other houses.  With warm weather, many people started early this year.  Down at the Seymour museum, the memory trees were lit up.  Each Christmas tree was decorated as a memorial for someone.  There are probably two dozen trees down there.
I love these late night walks.

So Christmas comes.  I intend to enjoy every bit of it. 

Christmas Cards

I always start addressing Christmas cards the day before Thanksgiving, sometimes even earlier.

Years ago, my neighbor Traci and I started a competition to see who would mail our cards first. In time it only was important that we send each other a card. Traci moved away years ago, but we still carry on the tradition. I mailed her card today.

There was a time when I sent about 75 cards a year. I moved around so much before we lit in Seymour that I had friends and neighbors all over the United States, and we kept in touch once a year by Christmas cards. Over the years I pared that down to about forty because of the advent of the Internet.  No need for yearly messages, I was writing e-mails to friends all the time.

Then Gary moved in bringing his family and friends.  Suddenly I was back to almost 60.  We pared a bit.  Last year there were 54 on our joint list.  Then Gary decided to send cards to all the friends we met during our camping trips.

I've ordered photos to enclose and will probably write the dreaded Christmas letter because I can't possibly hand write that many letters.

Add to this decorating and baking, at the same time I am working through the third draft of my novel and writing a short story.

It's way too much to cram in a day.

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Keep going to Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com
Wade has a short short story this week, so it won't take much time to read.
Next week I begin my yearly seriously depressing Christmas stories for people who really don't like the holidays.  Believe it or not, they are usually humorous.

It's Upon Us

Two days ago the Christmas cactus I bought at Don's Quality Market two years ago burst into bloom.

It has thrived ever since I brought it home, blooming every year in November and hanging on almost to Christmas. I enjoy it so much I may buy another.

But then it hit me that Thanksgiving is Thursday. How did we get here so quickly? It seems like we were just sunning ourselves at a summer beach. How did we swoop past Halloween into the holiday season?

It isn't even Thanksgiving, it's that I am not ready for Christmas. Gary is the one that usually puts up the Christmas tree and the exterior lights.  He goes absolutely crazy with decorating, works on it for a week, then says "Bah, Humbug."  But Gary is in Illinois taking care of his aunt, so it's up to me.

All the Christmas decorations are in a cubbyhole over the garage. There are no lights in there, so I have to crawl in with a flashlight to find things. With Gary's aunt in mind, I take the cellphone in there with me in case I get trapped under boxes.

Then it's a matter of figuring out what works and what doesn't.  The wheel on the little fiber optic tree here in the office is not turning.  I don't want a fire so for now, I can't turn it on. Gary thinks he can fix it when he comes home. The tree in the bedroom does work but I'm not sure about that big Christmas tree that goes in the living room. I've never assembled it before. 

I still haven't found the wreath for out at the cemetery, the one that goes on my parents' graves. Perhaps when I get to the bottom of all those boxes, the ones Gary put in there.

I am decorating one room at a time so I should be done in another four days.

Two Years and One Month

October 19, 2010 and I was in a Fox Valley Technical College workshop on blogging, taught by Nikki Kallio.  I don't remember exactly why I took that class. I hadn't had much experience with blogs except for an article I wrote about them for a young adult financial magazine, back in the days when the word "blog" was still new.

I started the blog the first day of class and never looked back.  With five exceptions, I've posted every day since.  In the beginning I had two followers, Nikki and another student in the class.  I was writing for myself, not the world.  It was a journal.

But over the years, I've gained followers. These days, I average about 225 "hits" a week.

Some time during this night, I will reach another milestone, 25,000 "hits" from around the world.  I wonder who it will be.

I joined another piece of social media a week ago:  Twitter.  I already have six followers who followed me from Facebook. I'm not sure why anyone would be interested in brief messages only 140 characters long, but here I go again. So far I've "tweeted" seventeen times.

All of it is part of publicizing the short stories Wade and I write at Black Coffee Fiction.  I now spend an hour on PR each morning, no more no less.  I set my oven timer and go of to the world of social media. We can't sell books unless people hear about them.

So who will be my 25,000th visitor?

Dental Skyping

When I met Gary's Aunt Shirley, one of the first things she did was ask to see my teeth.  She was proud that she still had her own teeth.  She had always taken good care of them and showed me her front teeth which had no fillings at all. I had to tell her about my dental work, too. I got a kick out of that.

Shirley is in the hospital this week.  She remembers falling in the kitchen and crawling into the living room.  She said the next thing she knew she was in the hospital but thought it was only a couple of hours later.  She is happy enough to be there.  In a few days, she'll be in a nursing home as she gets her strength back, but she still thinks she will be going home eventually.

Gary says if she is to go home (he has doubts), someone will have to live with her and it could be him until they find someone else. I wait and wonder what our future will be. He's talked about us moving down to Dixon to take care of things for a year or two before.  I don't like the sound of that. It's hardly a good place for a Democrat like me!

For the time being, I'm on my own. There is nothing to do but go on with things. Tomorrow I'll start getting Christmas decorations out and put the exterior lights on the house and shrubs while the temperatures are still warm. I am still debating about having a Christmas tree.

This afternoon, I got a Skype call from Gary, down in Illinois. He was at the hospital and said there was someone who wanted to talk to me and there was old Shirley on my computer screen. She was amazed. She knows next to nothing about computers. She has an old telephone and one television that barely works in her old farmhouse.

She was mostly interested in how she looked.  She said her nose looked awfully big. The nurses had wrestled her into a tub and given her a good washing. It looked like someone gave her a hair cut, too.

She wanted to know about this room. Behind me was the bulletin board, covered with papers. \What were all those things?

Then she started to look at my face on the screen....and asked to look at my teeth.