I’m feeling on top of things concerning the holidays. I wrote and printed our Christmas letter several weeks ago, which felt idiotic because usually it’s a rundown of the things that have happened in the past year, and like everyone else, NOTHING happened in the past year, because everything that was planned got canceled, and we’ve only been at home. I sat and wrote out my short list of Christmas cards during the AWC Zoom meeting the last week of November and got them in the mail last week.
I only send printed cards to people who reciprocate so the list gets shorter every year. Soon, I should be down to just a few family members and friends but I suspect some people feel obligated to send me one every time they get one from me, so the cycle perpetuates…I guess if I just stopped sending, most of them would, too. But it’s NICE to get a card in the mail that someone took at least the minimum of time to sign and address.
Most of my shopping is done, too, and Martin’s birthday was yesterday and a success because, with the help of my sister, we were able to give him the Doc Marten shoes he wanted that were sold out everywhere, including their own website. When I was lamenting to her that I couldn’t find them anywhere, she promised to look the next day as she was going shopping, and lo and behold they had them…in North Carolina. So she bought them and mailed them to my mom, and my mom had a mask-wearing, socially-distanced birthday lunch with Martin yesterday and gave them to him. He was thrilled and so was I, to be have been able to fulfill a wish and for something he actually needed.
As a result of most of the shopping being done online, we’ve been getting a steady stream of parcels and packages, and have to head to the local postal drop nearly every day to pick something up. Karin’s soccer team is selling Christmas trees, and they are being cut this week, so they’ll be fresh. She and Anders are going to pick one out as soon as they are on sale, so we’ll hopefully be able to have the tree up and decorated this weekend.
Last Friday, I participated in a woolly wreathmaking workshop over Zoom, organized by one of the other board members of the AWC. It replaced our usual wreathmaking workshop, which I’ve already lamented in a previous post. The woman holding the workshop lives a few hours north of London and is a personal friend of our organizer, though they’ve apparently not seen each other in person for 16 years. She did a fantastic job of leading the workshop online and showing us how to make the wreaths and I was extremely pleased with the result.
She does workshops with those huge chunky link blankets that you knit with your arms, and I’m considering signing up if our organizer sets up a workshop for us in the spring. She said it takes about 2 hours, but you can’t use your arms for anything else while you’re doing it, and the cost might be prohibitive. The wreath was pretty expensive, considering the shipping costs and workshop fee, plus materials.
I’m only working this week and 4 days next week and then I have almost 3 weeks of vacation…unless I hear from my mom that her house has sold, in which case I need to figure out if I can/should go to Michigan for a couple of weeks to help her. I really, really want to do so, but the timing will have to be just right as the first quarter of the year is crazy at work (…although when are we NOT crazy at work? This week so far, is the only NON-crazy week we’ve had all year). Fingers crossed all around please, that everything works out for the best.
I still need to bake cookies, and then some more cookies, and check my wrapping paper stash, and count stocking stuffers, but otherwise, I’m feeling pretty good about where I’m at, in holiday prep terms. Anyway, it’s beginning to look like Christmas, and even if it looks like a weird, isolated, ungathering one, there are still plenty of things to be thankful for and grateful for and ready for. Bring it on, Christmas!