The Dynamic Duo

Well, once again we plunge headlong towards Christmas. I’m not sure why, but most service personnel seem to feel obliged to ask me, before they cash my check, sell me my groceries or take my blood pressure, if I am ready for Christmas. Perhaps this takes the place of the standard non-holiday greeting of “How are you?” or “So, how is your day going?” designed to show a friendly, but not overly personal, interest in the clientele. It makes me faintly grumpy even as I smile and say, “No, I’m a last minute person, and it’s not yet the last minute.” ‘Ready for Christmas,’ I take to mean, shopping completed, Christmas tree up and decorated, and cookies baked and decorated. I’m sure to many folks this is a rather incomplete list, and so it is, even to me, but I won’t be ‘ready for Christmas’ even when it arrives, so what’s the point of nattering on about it?
Now, I am NOT a Christmas humbug, but neither am I one to set up the tree and decorate the house the day after Thanksgiving. At this moment, my artificial tree is still stored in parts in a large plastic box out in the shed, but I hope to resurrect it soon. As soon as I get the living room vacuumed, that is, and get brave enough to trudge all the way through the backyard to the shed in all this snow and cold.  For winter seems to finally be here. The snow is pretty, and I know the ski resorts and farmers need it, but winter driving conditions and sub zero temps I could definitely do without.  In fact, the timing of this practically first of the season snowstorm almost kept me home last weekend.
Several months ago, my sister, Panther, asked me if I wanted to go to a Michael W Smith Christmas concert with her the weekend of Dec 14th. At first I told her ‘no’, but before I has finished leaving the ‘I really shouldn’t’ voicemail, I had changed my mind and decided it would be a nice reward for finishing up my finals week. I then promptly forgot all about it until she reminded me a couple of weeks ago.
The Saturday morning I planned to leave, I awakened to a world gone white with cold, dry snow.  I told myself I should just stay home. Think of all I could get done! I could write the Christmas card family newsletter , bake my signature Christmas sugar cookies and Christmas up the house with tree and lighted village. I spite of all that good intention, what I found myself doing was brushing the snow off my car, packing it up and driving down the road. ‘Myself,’ I said, “lets just drive down the road and see how it really is. If it’s too bad we can always turn back, right?” And while not great, it never got bad enough to turn around, so I spent the weekend with Panther and her husband John.
I arrived in Boise in time to meet them at the Mall. I think that was the most stressful part of the trip, first finding the Mall, second finding a parking spot and third, finding the food court and my erstwhile companions.
That evening, we attended a BUNCO party at Panther’s friend Carla’s house. I was glad we hadn’t eaten dinner ahead of time, as there were so many interesting dishes to try. One of my favorites was a dip consisting of cream cheese, chopped beef, green onion and a dash of some kind of sauce, Worcestershire, perhaps or maybe Tabasco? When it was time for BUNCO, there were four tables of 4 couples, so I guess there were 16 of us playing. It’s a pretty simple game played by rapidly rolling dice in turn and counting score. In the end, Panther won a prize for having the most Buncos. At the end of this event, from what I gathered, was a second annual, we had a white elephant gift exchange. I ended up with a stuffed bear dressed in Harley Davison duds, but at Panther’s request I traded it to her for her plastic, milk-dud pooping reindeer. She kept the ‘extra poop’ (ie bigger box of milk duds). Anyway, I met some nice people, and the whole thing was a lot of fun.
To be continued………………(I’m getting sleepy!)