Life – Page 8 – New England's Narrow Road

A Fake Christmas Tree is Good Enough

cat in the christmas tree — My Cat Loves Christmas!

It is December 8th and we don’t have the fake tree up yet. I’m sure the cat is looking forward to the commotion of setting up the tree. As you can see from the picture, Skittle was such a help while we put the tree together in 2011. It’s an indoor jungle gym for her. I don’t think we will even add decorations this year as she knocked them off one by one last year. Maybe we’ll add just a few unbreakable ones.

This rainy, cold, Saturday would be a good time to do the deed, but my desire is lacking. My teenage son doesn’t want to do much to help, but he likes the atmosphere of Christmas, of course. He says we should have a real tree, but he wants it to magically appear in the house all ready for the presents – those of which will also magically appear Christmas morning. In other words, he gets no joy out of picking out a tree or cutting a tree. Like most kids, he wants the gifts. So I say fake is the way we’ll go, as we have for the past few years.

All the years we lived in Florida we set up real, costly Christmas trees that were mostly dried out from the time we bought them. Continue reading “A Fake Christmas Tree is Good Enough”

Dreary November

I usually begin a post with one of my personal pictures, but this time of year never gives me much reason to take any. This leafless tree is the closest I can come.

This is the brown, dead, cold season. No snow to cover the ugliness. The dead leaves from the entire neighborhood seem to keep blowing down into my yard, but at least they cover the non-grassy lawn I have.
The sun seems to barely come up and doesn’t make it above the treeline the entire day. It’s gone by around 4:30 now so the days are quite short.

I haven’t started my wood stove yet just because I’ve been too lazy. I am not the one who is cold and I like to save the wood for emergencies like ice storms, but I will be burning as soon as the temps drop more than they have.

In fact this weekend and into next week we will get a warm up. I hear we will have 50’s! So on drags the gloomy month of November and probably December will bring some snow to at least give us something pretty to look at.

Why Not Be Alone on Thanksgiving?

Right now I know a handful of people who will be home, all alone, on Thanksgiving. And not one of them is sad about that!

For the past couple of weeks everywhere I’ve been strangers have asked what I am doing for the holidays. Grocery clerks, nurses at the doctor’s office, bank tellers, you name it. When the nurse asked me what my plans were and I said “I don’t have any”, she looked at me like I had come from another planet. “Oh, are you cooking a turkey?” I said no, that I don’t do that any more. I wish I had added that I drink a bottle of wine now instead. Ha!

But the looks you get when you don’t seem to give a flyin flip about this holiday are quite amusing. My sister says that you can’t say that – that you will be alone and doing nothing. She says that she makes something up because otherwise people think you are pathetic.

The truth is that I don’t have much family. Only 2 of my kids are near me and I have one sister. My daughter nearly always goes to her boyfriend’s family’s house and my son visits his dad who has a big family. And although being invited into someone elses home to spend the holiday with their family seems like a nice thing to do, it is not appealing to me. I don’t want to spend time watching another family spend time together.

Thanksgiving is a family holiday and if you don’t have family, there is no sense in celebrating it. We don’t all have parents, grandparents, cousins, etc. and those of us who don’t prefer to be alone. Some people do have big families and just want to steer clear of all the drama of being together.

So leave us alone if we decide to be alone on Thanksgiving. Enjoy your turkey and crowded roadways and I’ll enjoy a peaceful, quiet day, drinking my wine.

The Sun is Setting …. on America

All I am tonight is sad. For business owners who had held onto hope. For those of us who wanted to feel proud again. For a comeback that will never happen. For a good and decent, God-fearing, intelligent man who will never have his chance. I am sad for what we could have seen happen, and now never will. The sun is setting, and it’s setting for good I am afraid.