Boxing Day

So...Christmas, although tinged with sadness, was perfect this year. After a surfeit of family around my sister's final illness, the funeral, the visit from my son, Thanksgiving, etc., it was wonderful to have a quiet Christmas just the two of us.

We went nowhere.

Christmas Eve we joined a hopeful neighbor in a little caroling, and then came home and had tasty beef stew, indifferent wine, some brandy, and Too.Many.Cookies.

Christmas morning we tore through the wrappings on our loot and then had fruitcake oatmeal with brandy. Note to self: there's a reason you don't add the brandy till the end. Next time wait till the end and you won't have curdled milk and something that boils over in a double boiler because the alcohol has lowered the boiling temperature. Dumb. Happily, it tasted just fine in the end.

For lunch we had leftover stew, a few high quality chocolates from Shane Confectionery, and Too.Many.Cookies.

Dinner was a ham slice with orange raisin sauce, butternut squash, broccoli, and Too.Many.Cookies.

If I keep this up I will be big as a house by New Year's. We decided we'd send all the remaining cookies home with the kids on Thursday, or else toss them out back for the wildlife.

Things I'll want to remember later:

• There was enough Mystery Evergreen out back that, when pruned, it decked just about all the halls I'd want to deck. Well, that and four lower branches from the Christmas tree.
  
  
• My son is feeling the loss of family, too. He called me this morning, having been out yesterday. He has decked the halls of his office with a tree that's decorated with embroidered ornaments I made for him when he was a boy and living with his father in California, plus all the snowflakes I've made and sent to him since. He is looking on advice on the proper way to clean embroidered felt ornaments. Wash gently in cold water with dishwashing liquid is my guess and that was the best Teh Google had to offer.He has one that's unutterably filthy. I told him to take it to work, scan it on the flatbed and send me the image -- then wash. If it comes apart or is otherwise nasty, I'll reproduce using the same color scheme. He also mentioned that he felt some regret at not knowing much of his family on either side. I want to make notes on my thoughts about the transfer of family memory. Instead, I've made a few more notes on memories to be transferred.
  
  
• My memories of my family members are so damned one-dimensional. I see them as mother, father, sister, brother, but don't have the sense of them as people in their own right that I wish I had. Sigh.
  
  
• I've started the Hippeastrum year -- I brought in the big pot of Class of 2009 (stripey NOID* x 'Apple Blossom') and my two fancy-schmancy bulbs, 'Exotica' and 'Gervase.' They all look healthy and interested in growing again, so I gave them serious drinks and put them in warm, well-lighted places in the living room. Next up will be the big pot of stripey NOID and 'Apple Blossom,' and then the Class of 2006, which needs to be separated in to keepers and treyf.
  
  
• I picked out the 2012 snowflake pattern, I think. I like it but it's complicated. I'll try making one, block it, and fall back to a simpler one if it seems like too much work.

Next up: finishing the wrist warmers I made for my daughter in law. They're knitted and blocked, just need to be seamed and the ends woven in. I sure hope they fit.

I had some proposal writing on my to do list for today but as it's a holiday I think I'll let it slide till tomorrow. There's this turkey I need to roast today so I'll have broth and gravy for Thursday.

*What's a NOID, you may ask? And I did once. It means "No ID," in other words, that you don't know what the variety is.