THE Holiday. You Know The One.

[a belated Christmas report that I forgot to post!]
All told, THE holiday was great. And a lot of work. ALL of us helped. Bigsis guy brought 99% of the food. The bro helped by being able to be here, as he drives the farthest and is down to just one kind of cancer. He also brought delicious homemade beef jerky that made one of the cats try to break into the kitchen cabinets to get to it. Bro and french bro cooked breakfast on Christmas. Mrguy manned the eggs. He also cleaned the entire house, bought the liquor, wrangled the cats and their complicated schedules / medications while also troubleshooting the many things that come up on the fly during the day. And he cleaned constantly while the rest of us trashed the place.

When it comes to prep, the mama wants to help and that complicates matters. Middlesis guy did the hard work of shepherding the mama during the day, which as host was something I couldn't do. And she made these amazing stuffed potatoes while the mama slept.

 

I took the night shifts. When mom's asleep we use a motion sensor that helps us know when she's on the move and needs an escort to the restroom. The "ding dong-er", as we call it, is a godsend. However it sits at cat height and the cats loooove her, so when she's here there are many false alarms when the cats are restless and wander into her bedroom to see how she's doing. Eventually I realized that mrguy was not getting any sleep, so I took the speaker with me and slept on the sofa for a few nights, rising to help the mama. I love how she never questions that we're up when she needs to use the restroom in the middle of the night.

I insisted on not getting worked up about the holiday in advance. When Christmas was at the mama's house bigsis and I would go home one day in December before Christmas and do the tree and set the table for her. Now that Christmas is at our house we set the table on Christmas Eve, because three of the cats love to walk on the dining table. Nobody wants to eat at your house if they suspect the cats have sat on their napkins ahead of time.

I was happy to find that I'd segregated the previous year's linen so I knew what had been used, and even made a diagram of our table arrangement, which we then ignored.

We are still pretending it's 1945 on Christmas. You got your crystal champagne glasses of granny's, the wedding silver of mom's, augmented by some of ours, silver epergnes (we used to have bigger ones but they were absurd and we sold them to make room during the mama's move), we use linen napkins (but none of it matches with a group our size) and a must have is the wax angels that everybody but me likes. I put them on display, and stuck cans of pinto beans under the two large ones to weight them down, but I couldn't find something that was as stable for the little gold ones. I used ortega chile cans as their angel support, which only slightly worked. One angel did a stage dive and now I have to do plastic surgery with a hot knife to repair some fingers and a cheekbone. My brother-in-law appreciated the naked can of chiles I left on the credenza.

I was hoping someone would notice. I like to leave a little something to laugh about.

Now Christmas is over, I'm sneezing and pretending it's an allergy (hope springs eternal) and mrguy has the same allergy. This is the time of the year where the mama's schedule confuses her, so she called to complain that she's at her house and not with us. Tomorrow she gets her wish and I pick her up for a New Year's visit to our house.

Christmas Cactus Report

Readers of mrsguy know that I am hot for Christmas cactus. I'm still on the hunt for a red one.

This year I decided that life was too short to only allow myself to buy half-dead cactus from estate sales. I was going to buy a red Christmas cactus this year, dadgummit! Well I never found one, but I bought these two beauties that are giving me so much joy on the front porch. 

The dark one has huge triple flowers and the lighter one has buds that are a peachy tan color that then turn into fat pink flowers. 

This third example is one from my collection downstairs. It's a little slow to bud, but it's white. And to complete the story, the gator aloe and the aeonium are from the ancestral garden of the mama. 

Down in the breezeway under the house our other cacti, Max and Bernice, Grandpa and the one from my mom's house all bloomed this year. I'm making some pots from cuttings for friends who want to try a Christmas cactus, so if you're reading this and want one, please let me know.

Merry Holiday 2018

Tree N Sunset 2018

It is a tradition.