Small Town, USA…the day after Christmas.
It was “all good” here in Lisbon Falls yesterday. I started out the day singing with a choir at Midnight Mass and I made it through the entire performance without any yawns.
Uncle Bob arrived at my house promptly at noon and I set him up at my kitchen bar with a Moxie while I finished the last minute buffet details. Family and friends arrived, it was very good. There is no need to go on and on about it; I’ve got pretty much everything I need in my life. More than some, not as much as others, but enough.
Enough.
After everyone had gone, I took a walk around town. The Christmas sky was clear and the waxing crescent moon was bright. Little pockets of revelry remained, evidenced by lit windows and driveways full of cars. Even Uncle Bob still had his candles in the window.
I fell asleep in my clothes at 10:00 p.m., reading the December, 1947 Better Homes and Gardens magazine.
The media message today is:
Christmas is over.
The next week in the media will be the official “Year in Review” week combined with self-help and guidance for the New Year. Oh, and predictions for 2015. Let’s not forget those. The best writers want to get ahead of this curve and attract readers with dark and threatening titles like “We Just Enjoyed the Last Christmas in America.” (Bing it yourself, if you must.)
It’s all just little packages of internet garbage.
I think I’m going to put away my Christmas dishes, do some laundry, and run the vacuum around. I will keep my “year in review” to myself and avoid making predictions for the New Year. I’ll also be taking a scheduled “blog vacation” next week.
In the spirit of year-end garbage, I offer you a decorating idea I developed after writing about my past employment at a “Bridal Boutique.” Remembering how we used to line gift bags with tissue paper to make the little bags of nothing appear fuller, I started lining my bathroom waste containers in the same fashion.
Like this:
It’s prettier than a plastic bag from the local grocery chain and maybe a little greener if you use recycled tissue paper. It gentrifies the garbage, making it look almost like a gift. Try it. You might just join me is saying:
“Your garbage is a gift to me.”
Think on that while I’m on blog vacation and we’ll meet again here on January 5, 2015.
Peace to you!
Julie-Ann Baumer 
Christmas is over, indeed! I awoke to men tearing the roof off the house next door, and to machines cleaning the driveway of the house across the circle, and someone setting off firecrackers in the farmer’s property out back, or maybe at the park just beyond it. Now it’s the noise of the rinse cycle taking care of laundry (including all the dish and hand towels from Christmas) and the tumbling of the dryer zapping the wrinkles from the load I grabbed off the line when it started raining Christmas Eve. Yesterday’s roast chicken is on the stove, slowly simmering up into a big pot of chicken broth to go with out frozen stores of turkey broth from Thanksgiving, and the kitchen, while hardly up to standard, looks cleaner than it has in a long time because Aunt Tomato’s boot has a long reach. Soon to build a table for Harris to build his computer on (big pile of parts in front of the fireplace), and time to renew some Craigslist ads in hope someone who got some Christmas cash might take things off my hands. The Lavazza in my morning cup is magnificent, and my second cup later will go wonderfully with Marsilla’s apple pie, with its interesting but truly tasty (lemon zest, that’s the trick) gluten-free crust.
Peace to you, too.