Christmas Strolls and Christmas Cookies

Yesterday I thought I'd take my annual Christmas stroll through downtown Marietta. This is not as fun as it used to be, as many of my favorite stores are gone. Willow Antiques disappeared just about the time our own Willow died, and the Christmas store apparently shut down earlier this year. I did go in the antique shop on the corner where Luke the poodle "holds court." He was there on Tuesday, a big dignified white Standard Poodle with grave eyes. I looked at the old cameras and typewriters and records with envy.

Skipped the Local Exchange because the pretzels I like now give me indigestion, and The Corner Shop (the British store) wasn't open. I did duck into the Australian Bakery Cafe, but alas, no gingerbread men. So I walked on to the old DuPre's hardware store, which is now called "Park West Antiques" (after the street). Didn't seem to be as many Christmas decorations dotted about as usual. Very few books. Saw a fancy old parrot cage that looked as if Aunt March of Little Women kept her parrot in it. The antiques just seemed to make me sad this year.

The second place I usually go is Cobb Antiques Mall, but that moved in January of last year. I had to drive all the way up to Canton Road near Piedmont Road to their new location. They are in a rather deserted strip mall behind the Cherokee Cattle Company restaurant (LOL...in the old Ryan's where I got food poisoning so long ago). It's a nicer building, but doesn't have anywhere near as many vendors as it used to, and the person who had all the books lined up behind a barrier of chairs and shelves is no longer there. I wandered about admiring the old furniture (and trying to figure out why they called an old Hoosier a "Dutch cabinet") and some electric typewriters the vintage of my original manual (1970), a lovely old Victrola, a wringer washer (glad I don't have to use that thing, and yet it was a godsend for people who had scrubbed their clothes on washboards), and other wonderful old things. Got a little thoughtful when I found a dish of old photographs for sale, the posed kind from the photographer's studio. All those faces stared out, people who lived, had their photo taken, went through their lives, and who are now gone, yet their images remain impressed upon paper. Were they happy? Did they live long? Did they marry? Have good jobs? My favorite was a little girl posing with her baby brother, with Mom carefully hidden under draperies to keep the baby quiet. You can see her skirt peeking out at the foot of the photo.

I did buy a book: Barnes' The Wonderful Year about a girl who moves to Idaho during the early part of the century. The illustrations are by Kate Seredy, but they aren't the lovely ones she did for her own books, or for Caddie Woodlawn and Winterbound. They're more sketchy. I wonder why.

Stopped by Book Exchange further up the street, but all the romance books were overwhelming and I was hungry, so I just lit out for Tin Drum, which I'd promised myself as a late birthday treat, even though I really didn't have the money. When I got there and opened the app, I found out I had enough points to get the meal for free! Yes!

Came home to watch Geraldine Page in Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory, and then the original broadcast of Amahl and the Night Visitors that I'd found on YouTube, which I did not realize was the very first Hallmark Hall of Fame. (I miss the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Now all Hallmark Channel does are kitschy Christmas love stories. Yech.) The composer himself, Gian Carlo Menotti, introduces the story. It was funny because next to me was the little hardback book in which the story was retold in print form in 1952, with pen-and-ink and brightly colored illustrations, which I'd found at one of the book sales. (Even funnier was that it was adapted to print by Frances Frost, who wrote the Windy Foot books, one of which, Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot, I was reading right at that moment.)

Had a happy moment during Jeopardy: they had a series of questions at the American Helicopter Museum, which we visited in 2009.

Today I baked wine biscuits and did laundry. James worked and we listened to Christmas music. He had found a bag of gingerbread cookie mix on the clearance aisle at Publix, and I made those, too. We got six gingerbread boys and four stars out of them. There was a fifth star, which I split in half. If they all taste like this, it will be delightful.

This evening we watched A Peter, Paul and Mary Holiday Concert. I can't believe this is thirty years old already!

The First Sunday of Advent

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.                      Book of Common Prayer, collect for the first Sunday of Advent

It's been a busy Sunday. I did not intend to go out today, but we needed something immediately, so I ran to Kroger for it. By the time I got home, the temperature was almost up to 70℉ (we've had a warm front come in, but thankfully it's supposed to be gone by tomorrow), so I had to quicktime it to get the lights outside before the sun swung around and turned the brick front of the house into a bake oven. The net lights properly fit the trimmed bushes (hurrah!), and I had to rearrange the bead garland on the little lighted porch tree (I'd rather tinsel a tree than drape garland—ugh!), and then program that temperamental timer, but it all finally worked out. I'd already put up the wreath, the greens basket, the mailbox cover, and the banner, so all it took was to decorate the two chairs with garland and holly and perch stuffed Santas on them, then lean the little metal sled against the side window, and I was done. (Realized later I'd forgotten to put out the log deer, but I can do that quickly tomorrow.)

Also put the candoliers in the windows, pulled out at least one box (the dining room one, but the table needs to be polished with mineral oil first), and put all the wreaths on the inside doors. I've even managed a candle in the kitchen window, where we've never had one before.

Of course everything is untidy right now and it makes me crazy. But it will come together the longer I work.

Spent the afternoon listening to Christmas music off TuneIn radio, found a little news between the football games this evening, and then watched some Christmas programs: Mickey's Christmas Carol (James' favorite) and Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol (my favorite) before Alaska: the Last Frontier came on. Oh, and have sorted the pills for this week and washed towels.

As always this Advent, I pray for health and happiness.

Rainy, With a Chance of Kringly

The forecast of rain precluded us going to Chattanooga today, so we had an alternate idea: we'd go up to Books-a-Million for a hot cocoa and a look at the calendars, and come back by MicroCenter to return something we'd bought that we didn't need. Well, the weather report seemed to indicate the rain would start at noon and end right after three, and we didn't want to rush, so we put off the book trip. Since we don't have to cook for Christmas Eve (much), we can go up there tomorrow.

Instead, after breakfast we returned the item to MicroCenter, then, because we were halfway there, made a quick trip to Trader Joe's for a tea James liked, got a little more peppermint bark (the Peppermint JoJos were completely gone), and then headed for Ollie's Bargain Outlet, as James was looking for new bungee cords to hold the tarp on the power chair. We picked up a gadget that is supposed to air fry in the oven (and if it doesn't it's only $10 wasted) and I found the same three-calendar set as I did last year, so I can have a small calendar near the computer. It has become so hard to find calendars smaller than 7x7 anymore. There used to be several sources: Michaels, Kmart... We got home right as a few specks of rain tapped the truck window.

Had lunch to M*A*S*H Christmas episodes, then did a spate of vacuuming while James was making more breakfast burritos. This will get him past Twelfth Night before he has to do any more. Once he finished, did two more M*A*S*H episodes, and finally The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, after which we left for supper, timing it just as the mailman arrived, with another Christmas card from a friend, and two Christmas packages from two different friends. And the rain? The few specks of rain went away until about one, we had about a half hour of hard rain, and then, whoosh, it was gone. We even saw a brief gleam of sun until the clouds closed up again.

Oh, well, I can't say I wanted to drive up to Chattanooga two days before Christmas...

Supper was at Fried Tomato Buffet (it's barbecue rib night) and we came home by Kennesaw Avenue to see the decorations on all the big old houses, and then went past our old neighborhood to see if they still do luminaria in Dunleith. If they do, it wasn't tonight. We did go past one of my favorite houses; among all those modern designs, there is a house that looks like a colonial saltbox, complete with a period door, etc. They still just use plain white candles and plain green wreaths and red bows, although the white electric lights on the big pine tree out front kinda ruins the period effect. 😃

More Christmas specials tonight: Father Christmas, The Snowman, The Night Before Christmas, "Christmas at Plum Creek" from Little House on the Prairie, and finally The Best of the Andy Williams Christmas Specials. Snowy sang blithely to all of them!

The only sobering part of today is waiting to hear about James' mom. She and his sister went to visit his sister's daughter and husband and their little boy up in New Jersey, and Mom was not feeling good, so they went to the emergency room. She is not critically ill, but she's stuck in the hospital while they are doing tests to see what is causing her shortness of breath, and who wants to be in the hospital at Christmas, even if it's the best hospital in the world?

Left-Over Christmas

I did get some party prep done today by cleaning out the hall bathroom, tidying up more things, and giving Willow a bath. I really need to apply myself to this, but it's a bunch of tiny little bits that need cleaning up rather than just one big thing (well, except for the kitchen, and that's James' job). I was also slightly handicapped by waking up with terrible pain in my middle and ring finger of my right hand. I have no idea why, as when I went to bed the hand was fine; I woke up with it this way. I can barely bend the middle finger past a 90 degree angle. I can type relatively painlessly, but the finger feels odd and swollen. James says I was talking loudly in my sleep last night, but as far as he knew I wasn't thrashing around in a manner in which I would have hit it. I took three ibuprofin and went back to bed for a half hour, and that didn't help.

After breakfast and some tidying, I decided to go out for a little while. I wanted to check out the clearance at the Barnes & Noble at the Avenue at West Cobb. This store usually has the best clearance items, but the pickin's were slim today. I did find the Christmas issue of a British magazine called "LandScape," which I probably won't buy in spring because gardening bores me silly, but I did want this issue because it was all about Christmas plants and animals: reindeer, mistletoe, robins...and it also had articles about sledding and change ringing (as in Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mystery The Nine Tailors). It will be my last Christmas magazine unless I can find the December issue of "The Oldie," which is a British commentary/nostalgia magazine.

On the way back I stopped at Lowes, looking for an organizer I want to buy for the closet. Unfortunately it was too heavy for me to lift. I did get a new triple-tap for the plug behind James' recliner.

When I got home I should have been cleaning more, and, later, I did scrub the bath and then the dog, and got her bedding and towels washed. But I was scanning the DVR contents and came upon The March Sisters at Christmas, which I had recorded a month ago. This television movie, a modern-day take on Little Women, had garnered some virulent criticism, and I was almost afraid to watch it, but a Louisa May Alcott blog I read said it was not bad, so I turned it on.

Surprisingly, it was pretty good. This was a Lifetime movie, so the male casting was weak: Laurie, here known as Teddy, was a good-natured but sort of nondescript jock instead of the sensitive musician of the book, and John Brooke was a nebbish (but no worse than the Eric Stoltz version in the 1994 film). The actor playing Bhaer (here named Marcus and a book editor rather than a teacher) fared better and John Shea was an entertaining Mr. Lawrence (here Teddy's custodial uncle, not his grandfather).

The sisters were updated in the spirit of the 21st century: Meg, a law student, and John (her college classmate) were not chaste; Jo ghostwrites celebrity twitter feeds rather than penning blood-and-thunder tales; Beth is a superlative pianist who is shy of the goals her family wants her to achieve; and Amy is an updated version of the brat she is in the book, a girl who is familiar with partying and using a fake ID.

The pivot around which the story revolves is that their parents plan to sell the family home (called Orchard House like the real Alcott homestead, which is seen briefly at the beginning of the film) after Mr. March, a war correspondent, is hurt, and they cannot afford to have the decrepit home remodeled. The sisters decide to do the work themselves while their mother is off helping with the father's recovery, and Teddy and John endeavor to help them. Basic Little Women plot points are touched on: Amy does something stupid in revenge for Jo's criticism and she and Jo quarrel, Jo tells Teddy they are best friends and nothing more, Marcus tells Jo her real writing (she accidentally e-mails him her generational novel instead of a prospectus to ghostwrite a young singer's "autobiography") is better than the crap that is earning her money, etc. The only thing that doesn't happen is that Beth does not meet the same fate as in the book. So the prospect of Laurie being a hunk or Meg and John having sex might horrify you, but it is pretty well translated to 2012. I enjoyed it.


An Old-Fashioned Christmas, Rochelle and Nicholas Pennington
This is the "nostalgic book" I bought at Bronner's last year, a picture and text remembrance of Christmases past, from 1930 through 1960. Black-and-while photographs and color and black-and-white ads and other illustrations (including the inevitable Norman Rockwell) illustrate the warm memories of home-cooked meals, home-baked cookies, hard times softened by love, gatherings, and Christmas celebrations, going to church, assemblies at school, playing in the snow, listening to radio programs. A whole bunch of cozy wrapped up in hardcover. Comes with a CD of the "Billie the Brownie" radio program from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.