>Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Amigo ran Security for him in the local holiday parade in a very special cycle built for two. The other (the one who steered) was his adaptive physical education teacher. It was a little cold, but they kept warm by pedaling. Amigo was hoarse from shouting, “Happy Holidays!”
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>Martha Stewart doesn’t live here. Let’s make that clear right off the bat. Once in a while I do something crafty, but that’s as far as it goes.
That said, Christmas is a tough time for someone who teaches environmental science and wants to walk the talk.
Take wrapping paper — please. It can’t be recycled, it can’t be burned in the fireplace, it doesn’t compost. The only reasonably “green” option is re-use. Skip it? Not unless I want “Scrooge” to be my middle name. Well, my family gets all over me about re-using wrapping paper.
“Mom, just rip it open! Hurry up! Why are you folding the paper? You don’t have to be so careful with the tape. Mom, it wasn’t expensive. Geez.”
I drive them crazy.
But this tendency to reduce, re-use, and recycle can come in handy. I take good care with the wrapping paper we do buy, re-using gift bags until they fall apart, saving the bows every year, and refusing to throw away the small pieces of wrap that seem useless. I said SEEM useless.
As I said before, I’m not Martha. No one would come into my house and think she lives here. But I am rather proud of these two presents. Using a strip of green shiny foil (too small for a box) and a batch of plain brown packaging paper that came with a cookbook, I made these two gifts look pretty. Pretty good, even. The tags are made from last year’s Christmas cards.
(haha, Petite one, the smaller package is for you!)
>Keeping track of numbers must not be too important in my life — I missed the chance to “celebrate” my sesquicentennial post on Compost Happens. Maybe it hasn’t been 150 years — but today’s post is number 153, so any real anniversary discussion would have taken place three posts ago. I must have been too busy preparing Thanksgiving dinner, cleaning up after it, contemplating (but not actively participating in) Black Friday, ringing a bell for the Salvation Army, and the daily chores of life. Come to think of it, all of those things were more interesting to do (and to blog about) than the simple number of 150, anyway.
With Thanksgiving over with, I can start to work on (drumroll, please) Birthdays! Hahaha, you thought I was going to say Christmas, didn’t you?! In our home, the Christmas season is also the birthday season. Mine is in November (ahem, today), Husband’s is in mid-December, La Petite’s is the day after that, and then we can put up the tree. After the New Year’s ball drops and the Christmas tree comes down, we have about two weeks until Amigo’s birthday. That’s just the immediate family; there are other birthdays in and around this time in our extended family as well. I wrote up my “Holiday Gift Inventory Notebook” today to make sure I don’t overshop or inadvertantly miss someone.
I am taking some advice from an article in today’s paper and wrapping presents as I buy them. I have almost everything I need for my Secret Santa project at work, so I will wrap these and hide them in my classroom’s locked closet, in the space that was filled with test booklets a week ago.
Now that I have reclaimed the kitchen at home (stored leftovers, threw away what was left of the turkey carcass, prepared soup stock for freezer), I can focus on real life again. Real life, coffee mugs, lesson plans, and the works. We have a saying in my workplace when things get frantic: “Never a dull moment.” Life, such as it is, isn’t dull. Not at all. Not even at Post #153.