I keep waking up tired and it doesn't help that the sky continues to be cloudy and dark. Colorado spoiled me for life, I'm afraid. It's very expensive to live there; the state taxes are killer, but there are about three hundred days of sun shine in a year and the air is crisp and dry, summer and winter.
I miss it. I miss being able to see the Rockies from the deck, watch the weather come tumultuous over the peaks and down into our little valley.
What I don't miss is the dust. I haven dusted since we moved in and I haven't needed to. Instead of dust, out here they have moss. At first I found it picturesque. However, now that I understand it is the product of five days a week of rain, I find it less so.
At least we won't have any problems growing grass. In fact, I think in the bluegrass state one would have to work hard in order not to have a lawn.
Christmas keeps creeping up and we still haven't decided or know what will happen. And we haven't attempted yet to do our Christmas shopping, as we don't have the money for it. I hate this part of Christmas. Who to buy for and what to buy and at what cost?
It gets even more complicated between Keith and I. After all, we have a single budget and a single account. If money comes out, we each of us knows it, so how can we surprise each other with gifts? Even if we tried, Keith buys himself everything he needs right when he needs it, making gift giving almost impossible.
Case in point: the watch we bought last weekend. His old one, the one that carried him through two deployments, literally fell apart. The watch band was canvas and it just wore right through.
I found the perfect replacement at the PX and he promptly bought it. It will end up being my Christmas present to him, but there won't be anything under the tree on Christmas morning indicating this and in reality, the money was ours so how could I really "buy" it for him?
On the same day, I found a Crabtree and Evelynn lotion scented "Summer Hill." I thought they had stopped producing it years ago. I love that fragrance. Years ago, as a teenager, I had bought a tiny bottle of scent and had been so frugal with it that I had the bottle years after the scent had evaporated.
And there it was, years later, at a PX in Kentucky! A large bottle! So I bought a bottle and it's now in my Christmas stocking.
This is how Keith and I give each other gifts. It's not very magical or romantic really. I'm not sure, exactly, if that should be an issue. Should we try and make a production of Christmas? If so, to what extent? What do I expect from him and vise versa?
We were talking about this the other day and all we knew is that we were confused. Sometimes we want to have extravagant holidays. Other times we would rather be entirely pragmatic about it all, take the expectations out of it entirely.
All I know is, when I think of my best and most moving experiences during Christmas, they none of them have anything to do with gifts. I think of walking home from an evening piano lesson, looking up at the frosty, clear stars and singing "O Little Town of Bethlehem" to myself, hands jammed in my pockets.
Or the flurry of changing into the formal black and white outfits in the woman's changing room during the Messiah festival, the high necked white lace blouse and the brand new stockings and later on, the gold heat of the lights, the clear, resonant sound of the harpsichord, which stood right before my folding chair and standing up straight, holding the score high, to sing the Hallelujah chorus with two hundred or so other enthusiastic amateurs.
Christmas is the house quiet, all my brothers tucked into their beds and the dark house lit up still with lights; the blue candelabra in the hallway, the golden glitter of the Christmas tree in the living room and the pure white of candles in the dining room.
Christmas was putting on the tree that little blue velvet house ornament that my father had made as a child and then day dreaming about the tiny family that lived in it, the glass icicle ornaments and the ancient baked clay monstrosities that we had made as very small children.
The best of Christmas day was not the gifts at all, but the food. The breakfast with muffins or coffee cake and a huge plate of bacon, endless heaps of bacon. As children, my brothers and I could never get enough bacon to eat.
And then Christmas dinner and running around the house finding various beautiful, mismatching dishes for things like butter and gravy and digging around in old cabinets for cold, clean linens or red and green silks. Later, our fingers over the rims of the glasses to make joyful discordant sounds and playing endlessly with the candle wax and then cleaning up all together, hands in the soapy water.
Keith and I still aren't sure what Christmas means to us, but we have a few things down. The white Christmas tree, for example. I'm certain that I want to try making a lamb roast for Christmas eve dinner, which I would like us to have all to ourselves. And I want to try one of those midnight Christmas eve services, where everyone holds candles with those paper sleeves to catch the wax and Christmas carols like "Joy to the World" and "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" are sung.
That would be a good place to start, I think. The rest of it we can figure out by trial and error.
