It’s a quiet Christmas Day here at home. We had nothing planned for a holiday dinner. We had no plans for visitors. We had no gifts. We had no decorations. We had nothing particularly in mind at all, except for the minor detail that we planned to celebrate Christmas 1000 miles from here.
Our two-day driving trip to New Mexico, planned to begin early Tuesday, was interrupted before it began. My partner in crime woke up that morning so dizzy he could hardly stand up—and no, before you ask, overindulgence in eggnog or hot buttered rum or some other holiday beverage was not involved.
It was apparently an inner ear problem, possibly caused by a virus or possibly not. Or maybe it was some sort of flu. Aside from pills to help reduce the dizziness, 21st century medicine didn’t have much to offer. The doctor said it should get better in a few days. In the meantime, traveling was not a reasonable option.
This caused some disappointment and inconvenience, especially for those who were expecting us for Christmas Day. It also caused us to stop and pay attention to the things we could be thankful for. Like the bug showing up before we left instead of making its presence known somewhere along the way. Or the fact that we had already enjoyed our major Christmas celebration with relatives. Or the blessing of flexible self-employment, so moving a trip back a few days isn’t a problem.
He’s feeling much better, and we will probably set out on our trip tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Or possibly the day after that. In the meantime, there were the two friends who came over this afternoon. They brought gifts of conversation, laughter, and wonderful leftovers from their family dinner on Christmas Eve.
No gifts? No tree? No big celebration? No problem. It’s been a good day.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Practical Prairie Woman 
We spent our Christmas day alone, not pitying ourselves as we were not expecting any thing else. We exchanged our gifts to each other, warm clothing articles, and got into the candy that my sister sent and a package of goodies from son Paul and family. The benefit of having a wonderful Christmas dinner at home, with the ham, candied yams, cranberries, asperagus and finishing off the meal with Ginny’s wonderful Mince Meat pie, is that the left-overs are as good as the Christmas meal. Thanks for the year of your funny and newsy message each week, Kathy, and we look forward for another year of the same..Frank and Ginny
Thanks for your steady readership and all your comments; it means a lot to me to know that someone is out there!
Kathleen
We are went to a New Year’s eve dance in Yankton at the VFW club. They passed out funny hats, plastic beads and paper garlands, horns and rattles (made in China). At midnight, we tooted the horns, shook the rattles, drank something they told us was champagne, hugged each other, and sang Olde Lange Syne (what a heavenly chorus that was), and toddled off for home. We wondered how many more of these events we will be able to attend at our age. Any way, we made were all a happy group, no drunks, well, a few that were lithping , yes, that’s lithping, but not stupid drunk Thanks for a year of your funny comments…
The response to local and national disasters is awesome but it’s a real shame that so many people take advantage of the sad situations.
I mean everytime there is an earthquake, a flood, an oil spill – there’s always a group of heartless people who rip off tax payers.
This is in response to reading that 4 of Oprah Winfreys “angels” got busted ripping off the system. Shame on them!
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/08/19/crimesider/entry5251471.shtml