Wireless routers, pepperoncini, and other things I learned about during my Christmas vacation

I don’t know about the rest of you mugs (shout out to Betsy), but I cannot seem to put Christmas back in its box yet. We are still watching Christmas movies (which goes totally against my principles) and every night I sit down at the piano and play Christmas songs (poorly I might add) for about an hour, and no one is complaining and one time Emily even requested a song. And while I’ve gathered most of my Christmas Junk (aptly named for most of my stuff) into my back bedroom for further sorting and stashing, I cannot bring myself to take down the tree. It’s just too soon, if you know what I mean.

Of course, if you could see my tree, you might wonder why I’m so attached to it. It’s one of those artificial numbers, because a few years ago two-thirds of my family decided we were allergic to real trees which makes me sad just thinking about it. But anyway, this artificial thing could probably be quite nice if any of us would take the time to splay out those branch things. But we can’t be bothered with that. The good news is that if you view the tree from a distance, preferably at night with just the tree lights on, and if you squint, it can appear quite lovely as Christmas trees go. But in the cold light of day, it has serious and obvious deficiencies. (The same could be said about ME, but that’s a whole different blog post!)

Anyhoo, so you may wonder why I can’t bring myself to take the poor tree down. And the answer is because of the ornaments of course. I’ve collected them for many years, from vacation spots far and wide, and from friends and family. And I adore them....and I like looking at them...a lot. I can tell you a story about each and every one of them, which is probably why my kids avoid decorating the tree with me. Like there’s the angel bell that my piano teacher let me choose from her tree when I was nine years old. And these felt and sequined clowns which most people find creepy, but I love them because my grandmother made them by hand. Then there’s the Canadian Mountie I bought in Niagra Falls on my honeymoon (which is broken, but I hang it every year anyway). I mean, can you blame me for not wanting to pack all this great stuff away?

And speaking of Christmas, I guess a report on the holidays would be in order. First off, that blizzard that was forecast did not materialize so my family made it to my doorstep without incident. And my nephew (Luke) brought me a thoughtful gift, which he asked me to open before Christmas because it was none other than a WIRELESS ROUTER. I couldn’t honestly say it was something I’d always wanted, but hey, a gift is a gift. And he did admit sheepishly that it was as much for him as it was for me. Because he likes to play scrabble on some handheld gadget of his, via the internet, and with the wireless router he could do this from any room in the house. Of course, he was playing against his cousin Ben, who was also at my house and most of the time in the same room with him, so I’m not sure why they couldn’t have just pulled out the real Scrabble game. But then he wouldn’t have had the fun of installing the router. Which involved only one call to our internet provider’s customer service when he inadvertently disconnected us from the internet altogether. But he probably would prefer that I not go into all that, since he’s a computer engineer and all.

Luke also brought with him a Rwandan college student named Bart. Luke and his wife have "adopted" Bart for holidays while he is in school in America, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the guy. Here he was spending his first Christmas in America at my house where things are chaotic at best, and to make things worse, he had never seen snow so he arrived with all this excitement about the blizzard, and then it didn’t happen. But in the end, I decided I couldn’t worry about Bart, because I had more important things to do while he was here, like play cards and bake so-so pies. And I did make cotton candy for him, which is kind of a poor substitute for seeing snow and making snowmen and having snowball fights and going sledding. But he seemed to enjoy it anyway.

And I will have to continue this saga another day, because I have some urgent legal matters to attend to.

But before I go, I had chicken noodle soup and two clementines for lunch. The soup can had a 2007 date on it, which was a tad worrisome, but it’s been a couple of hours since I ate and I’m feeling fine.