Give Me Your Arm, Old Toad

My Old Hell Freezes Over Friend used to joke about turning into old ladies who read religious pamphlets on the bus.

Yes, please.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010
CHANGE
I envision and prepare for new beginnings.
As winter makes its arrival, I notice changes on display in nature--leaves gone from the trees, birds flying south and the temperature turning cold. As we leave one season of our lives and transition to another, we may feel a sense of loss. Yet just as the trees use winter to prepare internally for eventual springtime, I know that a quiet time of reflection allows me to envision and prepare for new beginnings in my life.

I cannot hold on to the life that was, but I can fully live the life that is, right now. By embracing the present moment, I find peace in the midst of change. I find hope remembering that in due time, in the right season, my own spring--my rebirth--will burst forth.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. --Ecclesiastes 3:1
http://www.dailyword.com/

Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town

After 10 years or more in storage in different places, the boxes of Christmas ornaments have been reunited, and it feels so good. There are eleven of them, hopefully including the one with the ornaments made by Grandma Pure and Grandpa, their first Christmas in Puerto Rico.

Had It with the Relentless Christmas Cheer? How 'Bout a Can of Fascist Dictatorship of Religion?

I have to make, and set up, and light, 83 luminarias for Christmas Eve, or pretend I'm a Jew and/or be kicked out of the neighborhood. Everyone lights luminarias here on Christmas eve (to guide the Christ Child in for a landing, apparently), and everyone else in the city comes to the neighborhood, which is blocked off by the police so that there is no entrance or exit by residents, and inches along in their cars looking at the luminarias.

Seriously, you can't leave the neighborhood on Christmas Eve, between 5:30 and 9.

Such is the Hispanic death grip on Macondo.

Seventy-three to go.