It’s become my yearly custom, at Christmas-time, to present you with this, My Love’s an Arbutus, sung by the Fairhaven Singers, for no other reason but its simple sweetness.
If it sounds familiar to you, and yet you can’t quite place it, you probably heard it as background music in Scrooge (1951, the one with Alistair Sim), as Alice’s theme.
Anyway, here it is. Merry Christmas, everybody.
Hey, where is everybody today? Come out, come out, wherever you are!
I thought I ought to let you all know that I finally had a good night’s sleep and the sinus infection or whatever it is seems to be retreating. I’ve been hitting it pretty hard with Vitamin C and taking all the rest I can get. Once upon a time we would’ve called the doctor, he would have come here, looked me over, figured out what was wrong with me, and written a prescription; someone from the pharmacy would have delivered it, and bob’s your uncle, problem solved.
But that was back in the bad old days, before they discovered it was so much better, when you’re sick, to sit in a doctor’s waiting room for two or three hours with a lot of other sick people, and then drag yourself off to the pharmacy to get your prescription filled.
Anyhow, here I am, thanking you all for your prayers and ready to rock and roll.
After I go to the store and have a cigar.
[Aside to Unknowable: Last night Patty dreamed we had just acquired a pet bush baby (see above) and were setting up his quarters; and you were there, advising us. “Gee! What did he look like?” I asked. “Oh, he was off-stage, I couldn’t see him,” was her answer. It might have proved very interesting, had her slumbering mind produced an image…]
If God has granted my prayers and lifted my illness, I’m just now on my way to Christmas shopping and you’re listening to this–Good Christian Men, Rejoice, sung by the Robert Shaw Chorale.
Well, I still feel like roadkill, but at least I’m still here. In fact, I’m going to try to do a spot of Christmas shopping, courtesy of five hours’ sleep instead of no hours. And today my teeth fit back together.
Thank you all for your prayers. I feel like I’ve passed a crisis point and will start to get better now.
Sorry about no Newswithviews column this week, but I just couldn’t manage it.
All right, here’s the plan: one more blog post after this one, and I’m going back to bed. I got a little sleep last night, which is better than none. My head still hurts.
I probably won’t bring my toy dinosaurs into bed with me, but I’ve got the next best thing: Michael Crichton’s The Lost World (his sequel to Jurassic Park)–in which the author seems to have discovered that Settled Science isn’t really all that settled. I love it when the bad guys try to avoid getting eaten by the Tyrannosaurus by standing as still as statues. “They’re just standing there! Are they crazy?” And Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum in the movies) answers, “No, not crazy. They are misinformed.” Turned out what they “knew” about dinosaurs wasn’t true, after all. But no going back to the drawing board for them.
Hopefully I will read myself to sleep with this and move another two or three hours closer to normalcy. That’s what I’m praying for, at any rate: and thank all of you for your prayers for me.
Let’s start the day with Phoebe’s request, Christ Was Born on Christmas Day, by the Robert Shaw Chorale.
I was sick all day yesterday with a wicked allergy attack, and awake all night with sinus toothaches and eye-aches; but I think I’ll be better sometime this afternoon. I’ve just begun to breathe again.
My bathroom sink’s drain was getting clogged again, time to take it apart and clear it out. It should be about a 10-minute job, but I have a problem: I’m just a little too big to stretch out on the bathroom floor, so some contortionism is required. Plus I’m not exactly anyone’s idea of a handyman. You’d think a childhood that included an erector set would count for something; but then you don’t have to be a contortionist with your erector set.
I’ve also seen the Three Stooges try their hand at plumbing, so I hope I’ve learned what not to do.
To my astonishment, I got the job done in 15 minutes. What a man! A living legend! Move over, Bob Vila! Then I turned on the water and the pipes leaked.
Aha. On the floor lay a little clear plastic washer that had fallen out of its place without my noticing. So I had to empty the cabinet again and do the whole job over, not knowing where the washer was supposed to go, having to reassemble the drain several times before I found the right place. I turned on the water once again: this time, no leaks.
I hope I should not have said “no leaks for this particular moment.”
Please, not that.
Grrr…! Lemme get this off my chest.
I love seasonal candies. I love Christmas candy. So today I went out to Walgreen’s to get some. Several traffic jams and detours later, I arrive to discover that there is no Christmas candy for sale at Walgreen’s this year. There is only chocolate. You know–like anybody can get, every single day of the year.
Oh! But it’s got special Christmas wrapping! I do resent being taken for that big a butterball.
I complained to the store manager. “Look! It’s only chocolate. It doesn’t matter what color wrapping it has! There’s nothing seasonal about it. ”
“But they only stock us with what everybody is buying,” was his comeback. Could it possibly be that people are buying chocolate because there is nothing but chocolate to buy? That seems not to have occurred to him.
Then I drove home through the traffic jams amid the wilderness of McMansions that used to be some rather lovely country, until Democrats got hold of it.
This is a special request by our dear friend Linda’s daughter, Lyn–The Christmas Shoes. Dedicated to Lyn’s mother, Linda Sorci, who recently left us for a mansion in Our Father’s house.
We willingly pay the tribute of our tears.
Wow! Just what I needed to stir up my heart, and loosen up the ol’ tear ducts–
Requested by Joshua, sung by Josh Groban, What Child Is This?
One of my very earliest memories is of a picture, showing the stable at a distance, and the Baby lying in the manger: and you were just close enough to see the smile on the Baby Jesus’ face. How I loved that! And I am sure I couldn’t have been more than four years old, and very likely yes. How I loved that baby!
Good instincts, I guess.
Now… do I really want to cover any nooze this morning?
