"On the First Day of Christmas, Moss Gave to Me..."

The Twelve Birds of Christmas, Stephen Moss

There are many stories about what the "12 Days of Christmas" song means, even going as far to say it's a Christian allegory. In truth it's a forfeit song, sung during Christmas games in the 18th century as a penalty for losing a game. You also may ask "Aren't there only six birds mentioned in the song?" Yes, technically...but Moss here makes a delightful case for the song referring to a dozen birds, from the classic partridge, turtledoves, chickens (French hens), blackbirds ("calling" birds is a corruption of the original word, "colly," meaning black), geese, and swans, to the yellowhammer ("yolring" corrupted to "gold ring"), nightjars (who supposedly "milked" goats' udders), cranes (who do a courting dance), grouse (who leap as part of their courting ritual), sandpipers, and woodpeckers (both for obvious reasons).

You pretty much need to be a bird lover to really enjoy this book, but if you are, it's a delight, but also a little bit sad, since you learn about so many birds, like the black grouse and the partridges, and especially the turtledoves, who are endangered species now because of changed farming methods. You'll learn that all swans in England don't belong to the queen, how Canada geese are an invasive species, the amazing spectacle of black grouse displaying themselves in order to find a mate, the origins of the domestic chicken, and more. The chapter about the nightjars are fascinating because they are such odd-looking birds and the belief that they sucked milk from goats--in reality they were eating the insects that surrounded barn animals--was really odd!

A Thanksgiving Feast With a Side of Owl

As for many years now, Thanksgiving Day began with the Macy's parade. I still remember fondly waking up upon Thanksgiving morning and rushing to get breakfast so I could park myself before the television and watch the parades on CBS. They had the "Thanksgiving Parade Jubilee," showing parts of the J.L. Hudson parade in Detroit (Hudson's is long gone, but one of their offspring survives: Target; the parade survives as "America's Parade," I discovered this year), Gimbel's parade in Philadelphia (Gimbel's is gone, but Philly still has a parade), the pre-recorded Eaton's Santa Claus Parade (which, as I read in a book about the parade, long confused Canadian broadcasters on why the Americans wanted a Christmas parade on Thanksgiving; Eaton's is also gone, but Toronto still holds the parade), and finally the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade usually coming in last to present Santa Claus. In the real "old days" it was hosted by Captain Kangaroo from the Treasure House, later William Conrad took over the host duties from a richly-appointed men's den, drinking a toast at the very end. Later they ditched the Hudson's parade and started showing a parade from Hawaii with Jack Lord as the host (who the dickens wanted to watch flowers on Thanksgiving? I wondered), and Gimbel's got tossed in favor of a Walt Disney parade. Now CBS also has Macy's coverage and I heard the CW has the parade from Philadelphia. Probably had I known the latter I might have changed channels. Macy's has turned into, amazingly, not a big ad for Macy's, but a big ad for a bunch of young singing stars. Most of them were good, but who really cares? The announcers spend too much time yapping and promoting upcoming NBC shows.

This year, it was the commercials that were amazing. First came a four-minute epic from Xfinity, about a distant traveler who comes home for the holidays. Next came a magical visit to "The Time Shop" (I want to visit there!) with echoes of Narnia. And finally a little girl gets to ask all those pressing things a kid wants to know from the oddest of sources.

In the meantime James was in the kitchen cooking up goodies for our Friendsgiving feast, corn casserole and brown-sugar-glazed carrots, plus we had some Belgian chocolate seashells to bring along. We set the National Dog Show to recording and skipped out about one o'clock to find the feast about to begin at the Lucyshyn house. We had turkey, duck, pot roast, spiral-sliced ham, a whole passel of vegetables, Ron's mashed potatoes, a relish tray, bread, and, after all that, two kinds of pies, blondies, the chocolates, and brown bread with raisins (Oreta had to give out the recipe for the latter because it was so popular). We spent the time chatting, enjoying, and digesting.

The apex of the day was just after the sun had set. A line of orange and yellow was still on the western horizon, brightening the gap between two houses behind the Lucyshyn back yard, but above it, it was beginning to get dark and a quarter moon with Venus dangling beneath it was hung in the deep blue western sky just above the orange streak. I only had my phone with me, but I thought I might try to take a picture of it. So I went outside and snapped several photos.

Clair had followed me outside and both of us heard an owl hoot several times. Clair suddenly said "There it is!" and  pointed out the tallest tree in the neighborhood, silhouetted black against the southwestern sky. There at the top of the tree was the owl—we could see it stretch out every time it hooted, showing its head and tail! And then a few minutes later a second owl flew up to the same tree, different branch, and they hooted back and forth at each other for a few minutes, sketched against the sky like an Arthur Rackham illustration. Magical!

We drove home after admiring yet again the neighborhood overachievers nearby (the house at the very entrance of the development across from Alex and Pat's development) who had the front of their house covered with lighted Christmas trees, a manger scene, Snoopy on his doghouse, light spheres hanging from the trees, and so much more. (As a friend of mine might say, it looked like something had barfed up Christmas all over the place.) When I got home I went to the Cornell Ornithology website to identify the hoots, and it seemed we had two Great Horned Owls up in that tree! Clair confirmed that it was probably mating season for them, and what we saw might have been an attempt at courtship.

Turkey for dinner, owls in the night sky, and budgie song when we got home: that's what I call a Thanksgiving Day!

An Uncommon Christmas

Ever since James has been able to telework, he's been volunteering to work Christmas. In past years he has gotten holiday pay, but with the reorganization, that isn't happening anymore. So with the mandate from right before Thanksgiving still in place—with him only working 24 hours a week—it was essential that he work anyway to assure three days' pay.

So we were in bed early Christmas Eve, and James was at his desk promptly at eight. He had no calls, not even a person who had called the wrong number and was looking for support for his new Lenovo laptop, which would have been transferred because James works with blade servers. We basked in the Christmas lights, listened to Christmas music, I watched The House Without a Christmas Tree, and a little after noon, started cooking a turkey.

Now previously when he's teleworked at Christmas, James had ended work at five, we would have already been dressed, and we would have headed to the Butlers for Christmas dinner. But Lin had been in the hospital over Thanksgiving, so Pat and Alex volunteered to do Christmas dinner instead. They live in Lawrenceville, nearly an hour's drive away. By the time we had gotten out of the house and there it would have been 6:30, enough time to gobble and run so James could be ready to work the next day. What use was going all that way to have to stuff your face quickly and not get to spend any time relaxing and chatting.

So we had already planned our dinner: we would buy turkey thighs, have them with potatoes. I found a package of huge thighs that would provide us with Christmas dinner and even enough leftovers to make a sandwich or two later on. This changed when we took a trip to Sam's Club and found an 11.5 pound turkey I dubbed "Clifton" (after Clifton Road where CDC headquarters is located). Okay, so James would monitor the phones and I would get my first turkey-cooking lesson.

Anyway, back up a few days. We went to Hair Day, and found out that Mel and Phyllis were not going to Christmas dinner either; they are in their 70s and driving that far in the dark was daunting. Mel was wondering if we wanted to go out somewhere to eat with them on Christmas evening. So impulsively I invited them to Christmas dinner and we changed the time to evening.

Yes, we had our Jewish friends over for Christmas.

It was very informal. We completely forgot to cook the carrots we added to the menu. I started the turkey early because even being in the refrigerator for three days it was still frozen. I started it uncovered and had to tent the wings after just an hour and the breast after two hours. It was basted and rebasted in wine. However, the oven came through again and the bird was thoroughly cooked and ready by the time our guests arrived. We ate on paper plates and had Christmas music on softly in the background, and were talking about the old days when we were in school. Tucker mooched food, and Snowy sang happily in the background.

After they left James put up the rest of the carcass and only then did we exchange gifts. Because money was short this year we only bought one thing for each other, and knew what we were getting. I bought James an organizer for his modeling desk. It's specially made for modelers and has a ruled workspace and places to put paintbrushes and other accessories. He gave me a Cricut lightbox (which, thankfully, was on sale at Michael's on Black Friday). I've been wanting a lightbox for some time now.

And so we wandered off to bed at the usual time, full of Christmas and friendship and lots of turkey.

Seeking Autumn...

Alas, summer's claws are still painfully entrenched...but there is hope, even after a dreadful few weeks when the weather decided it had not yet given us enough of stifling, appallingly heavy air pulled like thick lint into the lungs and sizzling rays that touched skin with tongues of fire, and laid upon us temperatures in the 90s to torture us further. Now storms are drifting in from the south, flattening temperatures into the tedious 80s and adding humidity to the mix.

Sadly, the only two singular things about this summer have been that I discovered a traditional "Scotch thistle" plant, with its unique purple head, blooming at the side of the main road, and that I have seen more butterflies this year than I have seen in this neighborhood in ages: big yellow butterflies that skirt the tops of cars as they dash by, saffron daredevils with gossamer wings; medium-sized brown butterflies with their upper wings tipped in white as if they have been skimming cream from the tops of unpasteurized milk bottles; and small black butterflies who dart in and out of backyards and around heads, and zoom by the nose of an uncurious terrier. Indeed, Tucker is not into botany or entomology, as evidenced when I noted a virtual exodus of caterpillars from flanking rows of overgrown cedar bushes alongside a neighbor's driveway, determined black creatures with fetching red "racing stripes" setting off down the sidewalk as if on a mission, and he studiously ignored them to pee on a weed.

Still, a few weeks ago, while once again walking the dog, I was astonished to see fallen leaves out under one of the trees at the front of our subdivision. Tall chocolate-trunked trees with small elliptic leaves and peeling bark had left a carpet of crunching brown and green-flicked-with-yellow scattered upon the concrete sidewalk, banking up against the compact bushes at the foot of the trees, caught between their shiny, waxy green leaves. I picked up one leaf that was ruddy-speckled and practically breathed "autumn" to me, despite the constant drone of the cicadas. Checking overhead I could see that the two spindly oak trees out front were already showing signs of browning leaves and on the opposite side of the entrance, insect-speckled maple leaves dotted the ground under their tree trunks.

And suddenly, within a day of the appearance of the leaves, the constant rising-and-falling sough of the cicadas went silent. I trod early in the morning on my long walk to avoid the heat, skirting the sun as a vampire does, but they did not return, leaving the morning sounds to the intermittent songs of the birds and, more constantly, the fiddling of the crickets. There seem to be two kinds of crickets, one group that sings the regulation, rhythmic song of individual chirps that can be counted, the others with a sweeter, higher-pitched hum that make a constant song like a lullaby. One longs to open the window and doze to their siren sound, but it's still too smothery, too sticky, too summer.

Now I can't turn to the right or left without spying some sign of an autumn valiantly trying to arrive, like the trio of trees up at the corner that have already lost their leaves, as if they are declaring, "Look, it's time we got some sleep. I don't care what temperature the sun has made it!" Or an entire empty lot scattered broadside with tossing gilded heads of goldenrod bobbing in the backwash of car exhaust. The view out the dining room windows that shows new yellow leaves popping out every day on the tulip trees. The slim leaves of the dogwood trees turning rusty as if they were left out too long in the rain. The heady scent of mulching leaves slowly accumulating under the trees trying to outdo the odor of broiling asphalt at midday.

It's so close, it's so close I can almost taste it: gingerbread, hot chocolate, apple cider. Almost feel it: soft sweatshirts, cold breezers, wind that makes you feel alive. Almost see it: leaves of gold and tangerine and bronze and scarlet, bare branches of trees, bright blue sky that hurts the eyes.

Go away, summer. You've had your miserable stinking sizzle. Let us have our joy back. Please?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We think of it here as Willow's birthday*, so there isn't much "wearin' o' the green," especially since James is mostly Scottish and I'm Italian. :-) Been watching clips of St. Paddy's Day parades this morning, and reading Facebook posts, including nostalgic photos from the Providence Journal.

I've never been much on St. Patrick's Day as an adult, though, due to the emphasis on drinking to excess, but do remember with much nostalgia the programs at school, where we danced Irish jigs and cut out shamrocks to decorate the classroom, and, in junior high school, bought and wore green carnations. And, of course, you always wore green, even if it was just a pin or an armband. Surprisingly, the Atlanta PBS stations, which were overflowing with Irish specials last year, are devoid of anything similar this year except for an upteenth Celtic Thunder rerun and a series on Catholicism. (Yo! When do we get series two of Call the Midwife?)

Kinda blank in here since Epiphany, but frankly I haven't felt much like celebrating. Been going through an emotionally difficult time at work due to the reorganization, and, tiresomely, caught the flu over Valentine's Day week, so no celebration, no decorations, and no Valentine posts. Sleeping late seems to be the chief amusement desired here.

* We actually don't know when Willow was whelped. We got her on the last week of May, and they told us she was ten weeks old, so I counted back to a date I could remember. :-)  Schuyler has the same deal: she was just a new baby when I bought her on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, so I counted back a month and picked out another date I could remember (April 23, St. George's Day and Shakespeare's birthday).

Fall Creeps in On Little Cat Feet

Unfortunately for me, my favorite season arrives just as our busiest season at work is winding down. Sometimes it seems that there's little time for me to lift my eyes from my monitor or from the myriad of things I must do on weekends to note the seasons slowly shifting gear.

We could hardly credit it, but it seems Tropical Storm Lee, for all the damage it did other places, here "broke the back" of summer. We'd had 89 days of sizzling 90s during the summer (one more did turn up to break the record) and there seemed no end of it until Lee flipped the switch. Oh, this didn't mean it automatically made it cool. Temps are still, on average, hovering in the low 80s, which is common here in September. However, there have been odd days where the clouds have triumphed and it's been in the 70s, with a nice cool breeze coming from the north or northeast, and one golden day where it never got out of the high 60s.

In the end, the body knows when you need to slow down and it's given me a bit of a whack today: stuffed nose, lightheadedness, feeling as if I didn't sleep even when I did. So instead of at a desk, I am wrapped in a blanket on the sofa, heeding the brake imposed upon me.

Outside I can see what's been happening while my mind's been elsewhere: one of the trees in the yard is dotted with yellow leaves. There are other, crackled brown, strayed on the deck, and some bright red leaves on a tree in the yard next door. When we went shopping on Sunday, I marveled at how the trees lining the parking lot had changed: the tips of the maple leaves—indeed some of the whole leaves—have turned scarlet. Everywhere the dogwoods, which are the last to bloom and the first to turn, sport reddish leaves. In the parking lot at work, the roof of my car has been regularly thumped with falling acorns, which lie brown (and occasionally squashed) in clusters on the tarmac.

The last of the baby birds have fledged and gone their way, except for one young cardinal who sits on the feeder (and even occasionally feeds) and clings to his childhood, begging his mother or father to feed him (they oblige, with resignation it appears). Very soon the bluebirds will return to provide a piece of the sky on earth.

And, oh, the sky!—after a summer of insipid pale blue overlaid with a thin yellowish coating of smog and pollen, the sky is once again bright blue, painted with a feathery brush of ghost-white cirrus clouds. It's a preview of cool autumn days to come.

Fall Pads in on Wet Feet

Two weeks...two weeks I keep intending to sit down and talk about how fall has inched its way in day by day...and the wet days soaking everything down, and the sudden hot spell that put an end to open windows for a week, and some more rain...and noticing little things.

Oh, not the dogwoods. They started to show signs of rusty leaves in August and have been rust-red and green for weeks. But the other trees have been touched, and some in such picturesque ways. Yesterday I was actually glad for a red light because it gave me a chance to gaze long and admiringly at a big maples whose dark leaves still burned deep green in the center, but whose entire side and tips of leaves on the other side were red shading to orange shading to yellow, as if it were on fire. Noticing that the trees that overhang the little bridge that spans a creek that I must cross are turning a delicate yellow, like lemonade in the pitcher.

There has been so much rain bracketing the cold spells and then the warm spells that there are more leaves on the ground than usual, some of them already turned old gold, or spotted with red and orange. Monday while coming out of Fuzziwig's I lined up a large scarlet leaf next to a smaller yellow leaf on one of the retaining walls around the shopping center trees. It seems as if the trees in our yard change every day. The ones next door, a sudden red-orange, waved a fall harbinger weeks ago, and now our own trees are following suit.

I am happy to see the birds looking so well as they chatter and quarrel over the seed in the feeder. They look shiny and plump now, feathers back in brilliant color, unlike during the summer when they were feeding their fledglings and run ragged, with no time to preen. We had one female cardinal who was bald all summer, evidently having sacrificed feathers to her nest. If birds could look desperately tired, these certainly did! Now they have time to chase each other, linger at the feeder. The occasional dove comes by, looking bewildered, but then doves always look bewildered. And with the windows open once more I can hear their little songs, even some songs I hadn't heard yet this season, and in the distance the long, lonesome cry of the train whistle. I've missed it.

"It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...Easter..."

It's already 65°F here and supposed to be 67 for the high today. Tomorrow...more horrors: low 70s, and then 60s on Saturday. Since I wasn't brought up on the Australian-Christmas-shrimp-on-the-barbie-let's-go-to-the-beach philosophy, this is about as Christmasy as cold sushi served for Christmas dinner. In sheer self-defense I have my Christmas cassettes on and plugged in my USB Christmas tree for an additional fillip of cheer.

(I have to admit I'm glad that we don't have sleet and ice like the poor sods in Massachusetts—dangerous icy conditions are only fit for child molesters and Osama bin Laden—but this is ridiculous. I should have known this would happen when it got so chilly earlier in the season. Warmish is one thing, but humid and sticky is annoying. What's really aggravating is that three hours up the road it's 37°F! I wish Florida would keep its damn warm air where it belongs.)

I am delighted to listen to the cassettes again. I have a great deal of Christmas music still left on cassette. A few I have replaced with CDs, mostly if the tape broke or became crumpled near the leaders, and a few I could replace with CDs, but why fritter the money away? What I have left play fine [cross fingers, as the tape player did eat one of my tapes last year—luckily I could get another copy if I wanted) and I have several rare ones that I bought when Oxford Books went out of business, ones of British vintage.

The temperature has certainly confused the birds! There was a loud, melodic warble outside for the longest time; it came so close that I had to get up and peek out on the deck to see if I could catch sight of the bird. It was the little Carolina wren, his song almost larger than his little plump body with the upturned tail! He sounds as if it is mating season instead of December.

"Christmas, Christmas, Wonderful Christmas!"

Had a nice sleep in yesterday courtesy of the Big Boss, but I'd really intended to go to Harry's earlier. It wasn't quite a Dickens Christmas there—

"...[t]here were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers" benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner..."

but it was crowded with folks piling their carts high with goodies for the feast. I also dropped in to Publix for some dessert goodies for tomorrow, and started next year's shopping at Michael's.

I had hardly arrived home and done laundry and vacuuming and other minimal chores when I realized I did not have enough salad dressing for the salad we were bringing to dinner tomorrow, so I nipped out to Food Depot—not as crowded as I feared—and found it, surprisingly, first try!

Then I was finally ready to sit down, with Schuyler's cage next to me, to her surprise and wonder, and I had lunch—yummy salad greens, milk, a bit of the demi baguette I bought myself as a treat, and pistachio nuts—and we watched The Homecoming: A Christmas Story and the 1980, 1981 (two shows), and 1982 Ask the Manager Christmas shows, from Joe receiving his spotted tie as a gift to Dan telling Dana about the "Christkindl" custom at his house for the first time. Oh, yeah, and the eggnog and Joe intoning "Rudy Cheeks, Rudy Cheeks, Rudy Rudy Cheeks." Always shed a tear now at the end of the 1980 show when the cast and crew do their "Merry Christmas" and the late Cliff Allen appears.

Oh, also got a nice late surprise in the mail: the copy of The Victorian Christmas Book that I had bought from Amazon Marketplace arrived. The Country Diary Christmas Book uses so many quotes from this book that I couldn't resist ordering it: it was 30 cents, an ex-library book, but quite intact and with an excellent cover.

By then it was time to load Christmas gifts in a Xerox box, get Schuyler back to her perch on the bookcase and clean up, and take Willow outside. To our surprise, we met James at the door—they let him out fifteen whole minutes early! Soon we were in the truck and heading to the Boulers for Christmas Eve dinner. We went the long way, through Dunleith, the neighborhood next to our old one, but they did not do luminarias for Christmas Eve this year; I don't know if they have quit or did them over the weekend.

We had a grand time at the Boulers, with the Spiveys, the Elders and the Boroses, plus Keith—noshed our way through turkey, ham, beef roast, some veggies, dessert, then did presents before the fire. Keith, as always, gives the most unique gifts: this year we received a bird feeder, a bag of birdseed, and a guide to wild birds of North America. The Boulers' dogs watched us enviously from the upstairs balcony: G'Kar, the Jack Russell, shoved himself between the banisters to stare at us.

We came home via a roundabout route to check out more lights. When we got home, I was still in gift mode, so we opened our gifts under the tree. I had bought James a new copy of Top Gun (he only had the videotape), two books about the space program and one about World War II fliers, a DVD set of WWII videos, and a 4GB jump drive. I received the book of The War, London Then and Now, a bag for my new camera, and some Japanese Cherry Blossom cologne from Bath and Body Works. We also received some cute gifts from Emma, who bought me a cute pig Webkinz. I think I will name her "Peggy" after Mike's guinea pig (I know, not the same species, but both cute!). Miss Schuyler got a nice big piece of millet from Santa, and Willow got beef and cheese treats (which she has been staring at since last night).

We then sat and relaxed and listened to Christmas music and then the Midnight Mass from the Vatican, which lasted over an hour tonight.

This morning, therefore, we slept in, despite the pinpoint power failure at 8 a.m. which turned James' C-PAP on and off again. Willow finally started to bark, at which we discovered Santa had sent Atlanta a Christmas gift: it was raining! It rained steadily for nearly two hours, then cleared, but it looks as if another bank of rain is headed this way. I'd rather have snow, but we need the rain.

While I went out searching for a newspaper, James made French toast out of the last of the challah loaf we bought last weekend. (Last year we had hit six places Christmas Day and never found a newspaper. One place even told me they didn't print a newspaper on Christmas. Nonsense! Large Metro area newspapers are like hospitals; they never take holidays.) I was successful in one try and we ate breakfast—luscious French toast made with Splenda and topped with the lovely Grade B super-maply syrup my cousin Donna bought us two years ago—and read the paper along to the end of the Walt Disney World parade and then Christmas at St. Olaf's.

Anyway, it's about time for me to go wash the salad...Merry Christmas to all, and Buon Natale, too!

[Later: I should say we had a great time at the Butlers, but that would be redundant—we always have a great Christmas dinner there, and the company is always delightful.]