What A Gyp

I learned tonight that there's no Midnight Mass anymore, instead it's at 9:00 PM which was actually all right because then I got home before 11:00.  See my knitting friend AP invited me to go with her on Christmas Eve which is tonight so I did.  It didn't occur to me before the Mass began but the Bishop celebrated it.  He looks like a nice man, he has a nice smile, and his sermon wasn't too long.  Check, check, and check.  And as always, I cried through Silent Night.  I don't know why that carol wrings me out but it does.  I can't remember when I could listen to it or sing it without crying.  I like the song; I'd like to be able to sing it instead of choke it out.  Not very melodic.  Also the sniffling is distracting.  On the plus side my clothes smell like incense.

This morning when I plugged in the tree the whole top of the tree was unlit.  Once again I got out the LightKeeper Pro, clicked, and mercifully a few, maybe half of the lights on the mid-top lit.  The lights at the tippy-top didn't light and the ones in the middle are all burned out too so it's got a very bedraggled, un-sparkle-y look.  I think I'll end up taking it down tomorrow night or Wednesday morning because I'm uncomfortable with it blowing bulbs so frequently.  I suspect a short in the wires.  Before I de-ornament it I intend to mark the lit bulbs so that I can harvest them and use them to replace the bulbs in the exact replica tree I have downstairs in reserve.



 

Steve from Camera Corner called this morning to say that he had 44 of the video tapes copied onto DVDs ready to be picked up so I went down and picked them up.  I spent most of the afternoon writing the contents onto the DVDs because they were just rubber banded to the tapes and then watched three or four of them.  Man, I was young.  It was fun to see the kids at ages four and seven and a little older at Christmas with Mom and Dad still there.  Mostly Durwood's voice was on them because he was always the cameraman but a few times he let me take the video of him and the kids.  It was money well-spent.  Oh, and today's toss was the 44 video tapes--once I made sure that the DVDs played.




 


First thing this morning when I went out to pick up the paper before it got light there was the moon hanging out on its way to setting so I snapped its picture and sang a chorus of "I See the Moon..." in my head because Lala was still here and she would have thought I'm even nuttier than she probably already does.


24 December--Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Children's Afternoon at Wargemont.  Emily sewed while Lena read a book.  Penelope was too little to do either so she played between them with her doll.  It was like that every afternoon except on the very finest afternoons when Miss Pickle sent them into the garden, hatted against the sunshine, to walk the paths of the knot garden.  The white gravel of the paths reflected the sunlight so that it was almost brighter and surely hotter than if they'd been bare-headed and standing on the sun.

Okay, that's it.  It's after midnight so Merry Christmas!  And to all a good night.
--Barbara