Secret Santa Blog: November 2012

I meant for this blog to be more then dumping pictures in it but you know time, its like a run away freight train. Oh and the fact that I am really lazy. Not too lazy to post. No No No NO NO. That’s not the reason!

The blog is attached to a google account. So I have to sign out of my traditional account and sign into the SS account. I can remember the SS password with no problem but I made the traditional g mail pass word so difficult to remember I have to dig out my pass word list and that is where the lazy part comes in LOL. So I either have to choose to stay on my traditional account and read my emails or switch over to the SS account and not read my email for the night… isn’t that really sad! Ha ha ha not! That’s just lazy!

So I vow to do better.

Besides dumping pictures I am going to tell you some of my past Christmas stories. I hope you enjoy them.

Leave me a few of yours in the comments.

This first walk down memory lane is mixed with some Christmas and non Christmas so sit back and get some hot chocolate and enjoy

Have you ever read the Pearl by John Steinback. He writes that the pearl is one of those life defining moments. Where you measure time in regards to it. You would fine yourself saying this happened before or after the “life defining moment” in the case of the story it was finding the pearl.

Lets see I have a few of those life defining moments.

My first was defined by the death of my grandmother and my mother remarrying. They both happened with in months so I file those two defining moments together. The first memories I would like to share happened before this time. It ranged from baby to 10 years of age.

My grandma was a feisty lady. I tell people she was not a bake cookies stay at home kind of grandma. She worked at a hotel, usually all night. She took us across the country and all around it. She loved movies and her television programs. After the hotel, my grandma worked in, closed she got a job at a gift shop in another hotel. A guy came and had his hand in his pocket and pointed it at her as if he was hiding a gun in his coat, he threatened her to give him the money or else. She informed him she would not give him any money until she saw the gun. I suppose he never came across such a feisty grandma and ran out the door.

We lived with my grandma at that time. Every year on the weekend close to Christmas we would dress up and bundle up then catch a bus downtown. We would first go to a certain department store. I remember the name but I cant spell it and it really isn’t important to the memories. We would wait for what seemed like hours to go inside Santa’s Workshop. It probably wasn’t hours but you know the attention span of a child is smaller then a knat!

Santa Workshop was a wonderous place for a little kid. It was filled with animatronics of elfs and woodland creatures. They had many scenes and Christmas music was piped in has we walked along the halls soaking in Santa’s Workshop. It was definitely a high light of the Christmas season. At the end we got to climb up on Santa’s lap and tell him what we wanted for Christmas. My mom told us one year they had a Santa of African American decent (I have trouble calling people a color because its not who they are but society has made them that… am I crazy, maybe) Personally I thought it was awesome that they would hire one in the early to mid 70’s. Even so my mother knew better to purchase a photo, while she was opened minded and that has passed that onto her children our father was not so much and would have made a major STINK. So mom was the peace keeper. I must have been super young because I do not remember it at all. Mom said my aunt thru a stink about how prejudice that was.

Kind of Ugly isnt it but it
was our tree back then LOL

After we made it thru Santa’s workshop and our hands were sticky with candy canes (by the way I never cared for candy canes I ate them cause that was the in thing to do) we made our way to the phone company building. There they had cleared out the lobby and set up this most wonderful display of miniature trains. We could watch them for hours. Ladies would be dressed like Mrs. Santa Claus and carried baskets with Yummy chocolate chip cookies in them that they passed out.

During the week when we were off from school for the holidays our baby sitter would take use to a local church that had a live nativity scene. When I say live, the animals were. The people were statues. We pet the donkeys and the sheep. Then we would go to our little library and check out books.

I lived in a place that snowed a few times a year. Usually it was nothing huge but it snowed and it stuck. We would go out and make snowman of course and try to slide down on card board boxes smooshed up. I never had a sled until I was 12 and we moved to Florida 3 months later LOL!

This was the snowman
that lost all his clothes
LOL, apparently his scarf
was not on him yet

One year we had such a terrible blizzard it shut the whole city and town down. We could not drive but we could walk and we had to walk to the convenient store for dog food. Lucky they were not out. They were out of all the people food though. We built our snowman that year and after he thawed out… we found his hat down the street and his scarf was no where to be found…. Makes you go HMMMMMMM

We walked every where in those days. The cold did not bother us. I think now that we live in a warmer climate we got spoiled and complain and complain and complain like we never did back then. I remember going back to that convenient store (you may have those or remember those, its like a mini gas station with out the gas station) and buying my mom and grandma a Christmas present. It was the first Christmas presents I ever gave. I got my Mom a 16 pack of Wrigleys spearmint gum and I got my grandma some chocolate balls wrapped in Christmas foil. They had mini Christmas cards for 10 cents and I got them each one.
I will be honest, some of Grandmas chocolate balls got eaten before I gave them to her!
Let me tell you what my stinky sister did… LOL. This is not Christmas related. The convenient store also had a huge jar filled with pretzel stick rods. You could buy two for a nickel. She bought two and gave me one for my birthday LOL. My birthday present cost a whole 2.5 cents!

I remember driving around looking at the lights and my sister and I were so silly we OOOOOOHED and AAAAAHED literally at every light we saw, even if they were not spectacular.

Before we moved to Florida, the amusement park that was near by had a huge water fountain. They started freezing it and they offered Ice skating. I had the opportunity to go a few times before we left. I am sure that would have been another tradition if we had stayed.

My mom would come home from work with a bucket full of goodies. There was a lady who loved to bake goodies and passed them out at mom’s office. Our favorites were the chocolate chip cookies and the buckeyes. My sister and I would fight over those. She also included fudge and sugar cookies in the bucket to enjoy. After all the treats were gone my mom would take the bucket back to the gift giver and she would put it away till next year and pass the goody buckets out again .

My grandma would hunt for the snowman that the United Dairy Farmers would sell. I do not remember liking them. But she was crazy for them and they were hard to find.

On Christmas Day my mom would cook dinner. My mom can manage to cook a whole turkey dinner with all the trimmings but no matter how hard she tries and she did try every year she could not make a jello fruit salad. It would never set! I tell you what her dumplings were divine though. She used the cheapest canned buiscuits and dropped them into the chicken broth.

She also made these candied pears things. I am so glad she dropped that tradition. We never really liked them. She took canned pears and melted candy red hots till the pears turned pink in color. She would take cream cheese and use green die and color it and place into the center of the pear half. She would sprinkle nuts over it.

The funny thing about traditions they never remain the same. They last for a while so they do become traditions but for one reason or another they get left behind.

We no longer live in that city, like I mentioned. We do not live in Florida either. In fact we never spent a Christmas in Florida.
The department store is no longer there. The building is, they turned it into business offices.
I do not know about the Phone companies train display nor the churches animal nativity. I do know the library is still there.

My grandma is the lady on the left

I mentioned they closed the hotel my grandma worked for. It was bought by another company and they remodeled it. They re-opened it with the same name. It was a name that celebrated the city and it was a perfect name.
The hotel resembled nothing like I remembered. When my grandmother worked there, it was the type that some people lived there and others just stayed for the night. Behind here was a wall of cubby holes or mail boxes that they would drop their key off and the clerk would put the key in t heir box. I remember watching men mysteriously go down a flight of stairs into the basement. It was only men, never any women. I always wondered what was down those creepy stairs. I never did find out. Today the hotel is high class and modern looking with the elevator going up and down the middle of it.
I now live in a climate that may… may snow once every two or three years and that never sticks.

I am sorry I havent posted some goodies in the past few days. Thank you for worrying but all is fine in my world.

I had been asked to go on a spur of the moment trip and did not take my computer.

That is part of the reason for my absence.

The other part is because i been composing in my head what I wanted to write to you about the lost of your family member.
I wish I had the gift to say the words that come so easily for others but I know I dont so sometimes I just end up being silent. Its not that I do not care, because I do. I just do not know what to say.

I am a huge advocate of not drinking and driving. I personally never drank a drop. I mean NEVER EVER. Not even to taste. I had a father that was an alcoholic and its a wonder he never hurt anybody or himself.

I live in a small world and I do not know many people ... a bit shy though you may never can tell if you meet me or by the group (grin) but I personally know two families who lost children due to a repeat drunk driver.

One family was a co worker. He lost his son before I met him.

The other one I use to baby sit for the little girl that was killed.

Its weird... because the little boy was killed on fathers day and the girl was killed on new years day and now your relative on thanksgiving.

Each suppose to be a happy time and the actions by one person has scarred the celebration forever.

My heart goes out to your family and I can not even begin to fathom the pain your family is going thru. Its hard to loose a loved one but to loose one because of somebody else stupid stupid decision. I cant even call it a mistake. A mistake is if you do not know better. They know better.

You have been in my thoughts this last week, even though I have not posted.