I finished my shopping a few days ago. Direct from puzzle vendors, local bookshops. And museums. Museums are fucked, so I tried to order as many toys from museum shops as possible. 24 pack of excavateable dino eggs for the stockings.
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I don’t know if I mentioned it here or where, but we leave out treats for the delivery guy and try to give appropriate thanks. Especially times like now with bad weather and the holiday load has to be hard on them.
Today we got a thank you card from the mailman, hand written.
That just made my day. At first I thought maybe it was just a thing they had to do, but no, it was legit, a handwritten thank you from the delivery guy that we’re so thankful for. That’s a ridiculously small thing in the grand scheme of things, but it means something to me.
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I’ve found Christmas and Easter cards to my dad from folks on his route(s). And I found one from the mailman we used to have from 1991 to maybe 2013.
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I allowed myself a little holiday cheer yesterday. I bought a box of holiday cookies from a small local bakery. They’re very good.
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I agree with everything Daaksyde said. Amazon sucks. Yet we still use it.
We have a friend of 40 years who owns a bookstore. He’s a conservative but we’re OK with that. One day a couple years ago I somehow mentioned something (probably a book) I got at Amazon. He said “Shame on you.” I bought a book from him some years later at a local sf convention. He charged me full price. I didn’t say anything; it’s his prerogative.
He’s definitely playing the Capitalism Game, a seller trying to maximize his benefit. So, somewhat cynically, I feel that I should be able to play the Capitalism Game too, as a buyer trying to get the best price.
But I also believe that current capitalism sucks big time, with huge international corporations essentially running the world. I feel powerless to stop it, except by voting (which, unfortunately, for 40 years has done absolutely nothing to stop the juggernaut). I suppose I could write letters and protest and so on, but I don’t feel they’d sway anyone. What needs to be done is to somehow convince the Trump-like people that they are voting against their own interests – like our friend the bookseller, who is poor, now has Parkinson’s and no health care, but has argued fluently against universal coverage.
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We did end up putting up the mini tree yesterday.
The cats did not climb on the table and knock it over last night so it might be ok to leave up.
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I know something’s wrong with me because I started decorating early (last week) and even put up the tree. And I’m not putting up any of the vintage glass ornaments, only the vintage plastic ones that I didn’t know existed until last year.
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Warning: Blinky ads.
It’s like that every day at my house, 'cept for the drunkenness. Cannabis helps me too much to be considered a “vice”. I wish I had some good LSD or mushrooms.
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I’ve been wishing everyone a Joyous Saturnalia for a half dozen years at least.
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Heeeeeeyyyyyyy… Saturnalia!
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I believe this is my first photo with Santa; I’m waiting for my brother to let me know if he remembers the year. And I think I have those boots I’m wearing in the garage, lol.
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I don’t know if the photo still exists, but my siblings recall drunk santa very clearly. I was old enough to make lap sitting weird (like 12) so I was standing outside the whiskey plume, but the youngest had a similar reaction to yours.
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My brother doesn’t remember the situation at all in the pic. I just didn’t like any men other than my dad, his friend from work Tony Manzo, my Uncle Dick, and a couple of others.
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There are some who say that Christmas, like Halloween, is a time when the veil between living and dead is thin. I think that’s very close, but slightly off. With the traditions and the repetition, the same music we’ve heard since long ago, it’s the veil of time that is thin. After a few beers and an egg nog with perhaps a bit too much rum, you can easily find yourself 20-30 years ago, alongside the people that were there then, regardless of their corporeal state. And perhaps accidentally start a new tradition.
Which is a long way to say that I went down memory lane and hit up my high school alumni group to try to pass on a message of appreciation for our old vice principal, who was my nemesis at the time, and in retrospect must’ve thought that he failed me. But looking back I can see how much he did to try to help me. And I wanted to let him know I appreciate that. And that it ultimately turned out ok.
And now there’s a whole thread of other people talking about him and others, about the teachers they had, and how they went above and beyond to help them and did so much for us. People are reaching out to show and share appreciation for each other. And a few people I haven’t heard from since then (25 years ago) have reached out to me.
I woke up this morning thinking - well I got drunk and rambled last night, I better go delete all that stuff right away. But it all turned out so wholesome and positive, I’m gonna let it stay.
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