Quick Takes (vol. 60)
1.) This weekend, I'm exercising some dormant lecture skills. It's been a long time since I've done so. But my mother (a director of Faith Formation) asked me to give a talk to parents about Advent. And then, another friend asked me to give a talk on Sunday about baptism for the RCIA group. I'm not nervous about talking to parents about Advent. I've been reading so much about it, and I've talked to the parents before. Something about chatting in an auditorium is relaxing for me. The talk about baptism is small-group, perhaps six people. That one has me completely nervous. Maybe I should write down notes, you think?
2.) Sunday is St. Nicholas's Day. The children are excited about it. I usually am, but not so much this year. It's been a tough one. And with all the freelancing and crazy work I've had, I'm behind on my crafting for them. Traditionally, we buy them a small item for their shoes and then I add some homemade stuff in there. I've already the felt finger puppets for Sebastian. But I am running out of time for the other two.
3.) I've grown to really cherish a lot of bloggers out there, whom I include in my prayers. And it's funny to feel so close to a few of them, even if I've only exchanged a few words. I think that if I met some of them, though, we'd hit it off as friends in real life.
4.) I am reminding myself that I will enjoy and cherish the Advent/Christmas season despite all the tiny, little factors that want to botch up the sweetness for me. It's like that old saying, "It's not the mountain that wears you out, it's the pebble in your shoe." Or something like that. I always ruin old sayings. Is there a saying about that?
5.) Christmas needs to have snow. The facts that the first Christmas did not have snow and the fact that I live in a non-snowy section of the world are irrelevant. I will add paper snowflakes, turn up the a/c and pretend it's extremely cold. Remember how in the old Pooh movie, Christopher Robin held up an umbrella and kept saying, "Tut, tut, it looks like rain"? That will be me. With snow. And mittens. In 75-degree weather.
6.) Hot cocoa tastes better if you're having some with three little gleeful kids and listening to the soundtrack of "Beauty and the Beast." And little kids don't glare at you if you burst loudly into song. They actually are impressed and join in. They don't even care if they don't know the words.
7.) My husband was cleaning out some boxes that his mother brought here because we'd left them in her garage when we lived with her. (Follow that? I barely do.) And he found my old boom-box. Yes, the fact that I even called it a "boom box" makes me old. Or at least somewhere in my thirties. We had to explain to the children what the thing was and how it works. Also, he found a stack of cassettes. It felt like we had unearthed some treasures from our former lives. The cassette box included seven Morrissey/Smiths tapes (insert happy squeal here); the Cocteau Twins; the soundtrack to "Round Midnight"; Harry Connick, Jr.; Soda Stereo (a huge Argentine rock band from the dark ages); a Jack Wagner tape (I bought it when I was 13 and into Frisco Jones); and Michael Jackson's "Thriller." I've been playing the Harry Connick, Jr. tape like crazy. It's brilliant, jazzy and husky. "A Nightengale Sang in Berkeley Square" gets me every time. Sigh ...
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