Wolvererine Sings and Dances Right Well
Mamacita says: This has long been one of my favorite Christmas songs, and when Hugh Jackman and friends sing it, well, be still my heart. What else can anyone say? Musical men are so blazingly sexy. Dear heaven above, so BLAZINGLY SEXY.
A Different Kind of Christmas
Mamacita says: More than any other event or day, Christmas ought to be full of tradition and memories, and 
fraught with a kind of “sameness” that tells each generation that “Christmas is here.” I know I am the yellow M&M here, but the thought of Christmas on a cruise ship or in a mountain cabin or in Hawaii or any other place other than where it’s always been, is horrifying to me, because Christmas belongs at home, surrounded by familiar things brought out only in December, and later at the home of the grandparents, where we are all surrounded by THEIR things brought out only in December. I still believe that Christmas calls people “home.” Or ought to.
This year, we are celebrating Christmas Eve with my MIL, as always. We will celebrate Christmas Morning at home, as always. But instead of heading out to Grandmother’s house for Christmas afternoon, we are all heading north to my Other Sister’s house. Nobody minds doing this because there is an excellent reason for it this year: we’ll have a brand-new precious grandchild/cousin/niece//great-niece/great-grandchild, far too new to travel, to coo over, and this makes having Christmas Afternoon in a different place okay this year.
I’m all for trying new things in almost any context, except for holidays. But I’m also fully able to appreciate the need for change once in a while, and a brand-new teeny-tiny member of the family is totally worth pulling up holiday roots for. Besides, I’ve only seen my Other Sister’s Christmas tree twice, and both times it was beautiful to behold. Her home is lovely, and I know she’s looking forward to hosting our family Christmas this year. We’re looking forward to it, too. It’s good for people to do familiar things differently sometimes; it just hurts a bit to be pulled up by the roots.
If ever I win a Christmas Cruise, I’ll give it away; the very idea of a “vacation Christmas” is abhorrent. I wouldn’t mind a New Year’s Cruise, or a Fourth of July Cruise, or perhaps a September weekend in Hawaii, but having Christmas Day where we’ve never had it before? I admit it: I’m torn. Please, family, cut me some slack, while I try really hard to enjoy the day and not be a drag for anybody else. I really and truly am looking forward to seeing everyone for Christmas, wherever it might be. And a new baby is always worth changing one’s stagnant ways for!
I also hope everyone in the family takes some time to come down and visit our mother and admire her Tree; she puts all that holiday stuff up for us, mainly (although her Red Hats and 49ers will get to see it, too!) and it would make her really happy if all her kids stopped by before the season ends and she has to take it all down again without all of us having seen it and sat amongst it for at least a little while.
Now, family dear, let’s all watch ourselves closely! If anybody with even the SNIFFLES dares to lean over that new baby, Aunt Jane someone will have something to say about it! Nobody who is accompanied by sneezes, coughs, or mucus in any form should be near a new baby! Cover that dirty shirt! Support her head! Don’t give her that! Are you sure she ought to be wearing that? Shouldn’t you cover her feet? Where do you keep her receiving blankets? A little bit won’t hurt her! Why would you put SHOES on a new baby? Don’t you know how to hold a baby? You’ve got to be kidding me! Should you be letting her do that? (I’m practicing. New mothers love advice, right?) 🙂
The excitement of a new baby due any moment is getting to me. It’s a wonderful contented frustration.
Also? I call dibs on holding her. Back off.
Quotation Saturday
Mamacita says: It seems that there is yet another category in which I am a rare bird: I love to wrap presents for people! In this day and age of stuffing things into gift bags at the last minute, I love to savor the wrapping of a gift. I love to look over my stash of pretty wrapping paper and choose just the right one for each person. I love to dig through my THREE BOXES of ribbons and all kinds of misc. items so I can decorate each wrapped gift JUST RIGHT. I even love to choose each tag carefully; I don’t care all that much about the tag matching the paper, but I like to match each tag to the PERSON it’s going to aim the package towards. I know, I know. . . . crazy. Go ahead and laugh. I’m used to it. There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with gift bags, and if you like them, that’s great. I like gift bags, but I LOVE a wrapped gift. I love to give people gifts, and part of the gift is the presentation of it. That’s just me. Whatevah.
1. What one has to do usually can be done. –Eleanor Roosevelt
2. The environment is everything that isn’t me. –Einstein
3. The greater the igorance, the greater the dogmatism. –Sir William Osler
4. A clash of doctrines is not a disaster – it is an opportunity. –A.N. Whitehead
5. A long dispute means that both parties are wrong. –Voltaire
6. One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries. –A.A. Milne
7. If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power. –William Hazlett
8. We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well. –George McDonald
9. The true source of rights is duty. If we all discharge our duties, rights will not be so far to seek. –Gandhi
10. Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision. –Peter Drucker
11. When a man dies, he dies not just of the disease he has. He dies of his whole life. –Charles Pegury
12. A man who takes half a page to say what can be said in a sentence will be damned. –O.W. Holmes Jr.
13. The testing of good and bad is in order that the gold may boil and bring the scum to the top. –Rumi
14. There’s no accounting for tastes, as the woman said when somebody told her that her son was wanted by the police. –Franklin P. Adams
15. I have never been hurt by anything I didn’t say. –Calvin Coolidge
16. The devil knoweth his own, and is a particular bad paymaster. –Francis Marian Crawford
17. All sunshine makes a desert. –Arabic proverb
18. Never knock on Death’s door. Ring the doorbell and run. (He hates that.) — Unknown
19. A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. –Lao Tzu
20. A single thankful thought towards heaven is the most perfect of all prayers. –Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
21. A tree will not only lie as it falls, but it will fall as it leans. –Joseph John Gurney
22. Borrow trouble for yourself, if that’s your nature, but don’t lend it to your neighbors. –Rudyard Kipling
23. Truth is not exciting enough to those who depend on the characters and lives of their neighbors for all their amusement. –George Bancroft
24. Money in a fool’s hand exposes him worse than a pied coat. –Lord Halifax
25. A man must both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side. –Joseph Addison
26. I have had more trouble with myself than any other person I know. –Dwight L. Moody
27. Nothing can confound a wise man more than laughter from a dunce. –Lord Byron
28. Reporting facts is the refuge of those who have no imagination. –Marquis de Vauvenargues
29. There are no useless efforts. Sisyphus was developing his muscles. –Roger Callois
30. You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. –Mark Twain
31. He who has injured thee was stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him. If stronger, spare thyself. –Seneca
32. Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom. –Anatole France
33. A mother who is really a mother is never free. –Balzac
34. No course of life is so weak and foolish as that which is carried out according to rules and discipline. –Montaigne
35. India! What mysteries does the very mention of its name not bring to mind? (Answer: Mysteries of the Deep, Mysteries of the Arctic Wastes, the Lizzie Borden Mystery, and Sweet Mystery of Life.) –Robert Benchley
36. Never morning wore to evening, but some heart did break. –Tennyson
37. All the different religions are only so many religious dialects. –G.C. Lichtenberg
38. His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar. –MacCauley
39. Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue, to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak. –Socrates
40. No virtue looks small when it is prominently displayed. –Joseph Joubert
41. How else but through a broken heart, may Lord Christ enter in? –Oscar Wilde
42. When our integrity declines, our taste does, also. –La Rouchefoucauld
43. I don’t make you feel special; I just remind you that you are special. –Unknown
44. Maxims are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory. –Denis Diderot
45. When people bother you in any way, it is because their souls are trying to get your divine attention and your blessing. –Catherine Ponder
46. Beauty seen is never lost; God’s colors are all fast. –J. G. Whittier
47. A Christian is nothing but a sinful man who has put himself to school to christ for the honest purpose of becoming better. –H.W. Beecher
48. The worst tempered people I’ve ever met were people who knew they were wrong. –Wilson Mizner
49. If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that’s read by persons who move their lips when they’re reading to themselves. –Don Marquis
50. The fact is, nothing comes. At least, nothing good. All has to be fetched. –Charles Buxton
My oven is full of loaves of homemade bread tonight. It makes the house smell loved.
Possibly because it is.
