Christmas

Well we're here. I know I haven't kept you very well updated, but losing job, getting job, finding house and moving in a month tends to cut down one's ability to communicate. You are very lucky to be getting this card and letter at all. The whole general delivery post office thing has about driven me round the bend. I am promised a p.o. box "as soon as one comes open." This is said in a such a way as to confer a great blessing upon me. I'm still not sure what it means. How I did take house to house mail pick up and delivery for granted.

Anyway we are here and it is Christmas. If one more person asks me if I am ready for Christmas I am going to spit on their shoe. All my shoes are lost. Why would I want to dig out Christmas crap? Even if I could find it? By the by, Mark says he is beginning to enjoy living in a warehouse. If I had a forklift I'd spit him. He puts on his suit and waltzes off to a secretary who can locate her pencils and leaves me here to sort out this mess. I am real irritated at him. And it's Christmas.

What is this obsession with Christmas? Why do I feel like a failure as a woman if I don't put up a tree and litter the house with red and green detritus. Without women there would not be Christmas as we know it. Can you see the average man baking Santa cookies at three a.m.? Not on your candle holder. And yet. If I don't put up a tree, where will we put our presents? On the sixteen boxes marked 'kitchen'? FYI do not let five churchwomen giddy on spiced cider pack up your kitchen. Sixteen boxes only labeled 'kitchen' are of very little practical help when looking for the coffee maker. We have been enjoying boiled coffee for the past two weeks as I did happen upon all the camping dishes. They were all in a blue tub marked "camping dishes." Mark says the grounds give the coffee character. Want a well used husband? I'll send you one for Christmas.

Okay back to my Christmas rant. I am dog tired. A dog who has worn the same outfit for a month because all her clothes are in boxes marked, now hold for it, "clothes." Can I do Christmas without my red and black vest? Mark's clothes were in wardrobes marked, "suits, sport coats, slacks, casual." I take great pleasure in telling you he can't find his shoes either. We did come across a pair of black patent leather heels and a stethoscope. Mark allowed that in another time and place this find would have interested him mightily but just now he needed his wingtips. And it's Christmas.

I am holding my own weight wise. Am not losing any more but am also not gaining. I guess that is victory of a sort. They are Christmas crazy here and the great feed has begun. Cookies and hot chocolate free in all the stores. Free. All the empty places in my recently relocated heart cried out for those free cookies. I ate some. And you know what, I felt better. I hate it when that happens. This year I will be glad when Christmas is over and I can continue to look for my shoes. Sorry this is so unholidayish but Christmas in another woman's house is just wrong. I don't even know how the stove works. How am I to cook Christmas dinner? (Hoards of relations coming don't you know.) Maybe I will start a fire in the front yard and cook there. I have the pans for it.

Well Ethel I have to go. Mark wants to go get a tree. He just found the popcorn popper and some red napkin rings. Says he will make the tree decorations this year! Hey it's Christmas. We'll put the tree on the box marked "odds and ends." More later.

Love Beula