Nope

The plan was to come home and make at least one batch of cookies, but nope.  It just didn't happen.  I was too tired to really do anything.

As the line from my Great-Grandma's favorite poem says, "my get up and go has got up and went."

All the plans I had for this evening went by the wayside, except for one.  I did watch The Homecoming.  

Still, so many of my favorite Christmas movies I haven't had time to watch yet.  But since tomorrow is my last day of work, that's the plan.  Bake cookies and watch movies.


And I hope to get caught up with all these blog posts I have rattling around in my head.    TMI warning,  but it's not too bad.  About a year ago, I started taking those women's vitamins.  You know, the ones that are supposed to keep you from having hot flashes and night sweats and mood swings and all that?  Well, they did that, but they also seemed to turn off my brain.  I stopped dreaming, I stopped writing.  I lost all my creativity.  A couple of weeks ago, I stopped taking them.  I tell you, it's been like coming out of a fog.

I'm not going to take anything like that for a while, but when the night sweats start up again, we may have to do something.  I just don't know what yet.

Speaking of Christmas shows, I've been tuning in to ABCFamily's 25 Days Of Christmas, and it's been a bit of a disappointment.  Seems that the only three Christmas shows they've ever heard of are Home Alone, Disney's Christmas Carol, and The Polar Express.  They keep showing those three over and over, and over and over again.  Why?  There are so many to choose from!  I'd love to see Christmas Every Day, but my station doesn't show it.  I read on GetGlue.com that other people are getting to see it, but just not here.  Bummed.  That was one of my favorites.  I have it on VHS, but no longer have a VHS player since mine went out last month.

That's about it for today, but before I go, here is a variation of the poem I referenced above:  (It's one of those that has several iterations.  This is the one closest to what I remember from my childhood though the verses are in a different order.)

My Get Up and Go Has Got Up and Went

How do I know that my youth is all spent?
Well, my get up and go has got up and went,
But in spite of it all I am able to grin.
When I think of the places my get up has been.

Old age is golden, So I've heard said
But sometimes I wonder, as I get into bed.
With my ears in a drawer, my teeth in a cup
And my eyes on the table until I wake up.

Ere sleep dims my eyes I say to myself
"Is there anything else I can put on the shelf?"
And I'm happy to say as I close the door
"My friends are the same, perhaps even more."

When I was young, my slippers were red,
I could kick way over my head.
When I was older, my slippers were blue,
But still I could dance the whole night through.

Now I am old, my slippers are black.
I walk to the store and puff my way back.
The reason I know my youth is all spent,
My get up and go has got up and went.

But really, I don't mind when I think with a grin,
Of the wonderful places my get up has been.
Since I have retired from life's competition
I busy myself with complete repetition.

I get up each morning and dust off my wits,
Pick up the paper and read the 'obits',
If my name is missing I know I'm not dead
So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.

Candy!!

I made my Christmas candy today.


The usual suspects:  Turkish Delight, chocolate fudge, and peanut butter fudge. 

Tomorrow, I'll start on the cookies:  Snickerdoodles, gumdrop cookies, cherry kisses.  

I also made a clove and orange pomander.  I have one more orange, so I'll do another one, too.

The last Christmas gift is wrapped, and I've got two more days of work until I'm off for the rest of the year. 

Right now, though, I have to go stop the cat from eating the garland around my front door. 

Oops, didn't make it in time, and now she's puking it up all over the kitchen floor.  

And everything was going so well...

Music Monday

If you've never heard of The Piano Guys, you're in for a real treat! 

I totally love this:



But this one is probably my favorite:



I know this isn't specifically a Christmas song, but to me, it kind of embodies what Christmas means:

Tragedy

I came home from work and errands to hear the terrible news about the tragic school shooting in Connecticut.  All through my Facebook feed were people asking questions.

Why?

How?

How could this happen?  

How can such evil exist in the world?

Who could shoot little children???

Yet, all across the country, during that very same hour, ten times as many babies died in abortion clinics

and nobody batted an eye.

I'm not sure, but I think you have your answer. 

Words On Wednesday

Most of you all know that Wednesday is the day I usually do a WIP update. However, right now all I am knitting is Christmas gifts, and therefore I can't really share them with you.

So today, I thought I'd head in a different direction.

I've always loved Rudyard Kipling's stories.  The Jungle Books.  The Just So Stories.

And I've always known he'd written poetry, too, but never really took the time to read any of it.  Recently, I was introduced to one of Kipling's poems, and just fell in love with it.  Thank you, Bill Whittle.

So, here I present it to you:  The Gods Of The Copybook Headings.  It was written in 1919, but it's amazing how relevant it is today.  

 (If you don't know what a copybook heading is, click the link above.  Bill explains it right before he reads the poem to you.)

---

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

---

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

A Little Bit Bummed

For years, I've used a photo hosting site called Webshots.  Not only did I post my own photos to my albums there, but they also had daily professional photos that you could download and use as screensavers.  I liked this service so much that I even upgraded to the premium membership. 

A few weeks ago, Webshots announced that their owners --American Greetings-- had decided to delete the site.  I don't remember what their reasoning was, but they no longer felt that it was profitable or something, and were going to take it down.

Instead of losing the site completely, some of the admins pooled their money and bought it from AG.  But it's not the same.  I don't know why they didn't get it as is, but now it looks like something from a Jr High computer literacy class project.

Yeah, all my photos are still on the site, but they are no longer organized into the albums I had them in.  If I want a specific photo, now I have to search through a something like 4000+ photos, all in one giant stream.

Not only that, I can't choose specific photos to be in my screen saver the way I could before.  So, instead of my Christmas and Winter photos, EVERY photo I've ever taken is now rotating through my screen saver.  Very amateurish.

But probably the worst of all-- all the photos I'd hotlinked from the site are now no longer available.  As of now, there is no way to hotlink the photos that are still on the site, so to replace the photos, say on my blog, I'm going to have to get all my photos uploaded to another site like Flickr or Photobucket, then hotlink each one individually to get them back onto my blog.

That is going to take some time, and be a total pain in the patootie.

And it would have been nice if they'd given us a little warning.  

Music Monday

I'd never heard of Third Day.



Now I have.



They're keepers.


P.S.  I don't like the way YouTube is now.  When I try to share a song from my playlist, it links to the entire playlist.  I have to search for each song individually to share just one song.

Blech.  Put it back!

Happy Hanukkah!

to all my Jewish friends!

December 7, 1941

A date that will live in infamy.

We will never forget.

My Christmas Tree

I can't remember if I ever posted a picture of my Christmas tree, so here it is:



And Cody hanging his ornament:



The bad news is, one of my light strings has already gone out. Bummer.

One of my friends clued me in to this, though.

I'm going to look for one tomorrow at Wal-Mart.  If I can't find one there, I'll order this one from Amazon.com. 

And if that doesn't work, I've got plenty of lights left.  I buy them obsessively on clearance each year after Christmas.  But I'd rather not have to partially undecorate the tree to change out the lights if I don't have to. 

We'll see...

Dear CoWorker

First of all, let me start by saying how pleased I am that you are finally beginning to take an interest in maintaining a clean work area, because frankly, I was getting tired of coming in every morning and having to do a cleanup before I can begin working.  So, let's keep this up, shall we?

Now, about all that brazing rod you are claiming I am leaving laying around...Shortly after you got moved to our line, I brought the group leader, the shift supervisor, and the production superintendent over to show them the rod that was being left in the trays and on the table that is now behind us.  I also showed them a large amount of rod that had been thrown in the garbage. 

I confirmed with the production superintendent this morning that he did indeed remember this.  "I absolutely do remember it" were his exact words.

That morning, the group leader also made a note on the chart about the bits of rod not being used up.  In case you were unaware, those charts, and the comments left on them, are entered into the computer in the Quality office at the end of each day.  The relevant chart can easily be retrieved to prove that what I am saying is correct. 

I'm not quite sure why you are suddenly trying to imply that I am the one leaving all the pieces of brazing rod in the trays, but you aren't fooling anyone.  We all know where that rod is coming from.

It is the same with the scrap copper.  You can jump up and down and hoot and holler all you want, but everyone knows who is leaving that copper there.

Now, I don't know who you are trying to impress-- or intimidate-- by leaving all these notes, but it's not going to work.  I'm not impressed, and I will not be intimidated.

So, here is my proposed solution to your problem:

Just do your job.

Yep.  Just do your job, and I'll just do mine.  You tend your business, and I will tend mine.  You make sure you are doing what is right, and I will do the same.  You stop leaving all these childish little notes, and I won't take this matter to the front office, and we'll all just try to get along, OK?

Thank you.


That is all.

Dear Bob Costas Part II

I heard you Sunday night, during the Cowboys game, using the tragic death of Javon Belcher and his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins to speak out against the so called "gun culture" of this country.  It's the "gun culture", you implied, that is responsible for these deaths.  If Javon Belcher hadn't had a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would still be alive, you claim.

There is something I'd like for you to clear up for me, though.  When Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were found with their throats slashed, why didn't you speak out against the knife culture?  OJ didn't have a gun, yet Nicole and Ronald are still dead.  So, how did that happen?

When Andrea Yates drowned her five children, why didn't you speak out against the bathtub culture?  Andrea didn't have a gun, yet those five babies are still dead.  So, how did that happen?

When James Byrd was dragged to his death, why didn't you speak out against the pickup trucks on country roads culture?   Shawn Berry, Lawrence Brewer, and John King didn't have a gun, and yet James Byrd is still dead.  So, how did that happen?

When Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City, why didn't you speak out against the rental truck culture?  McVeigh didn't have a gun, yet those 168 people are still dead.  So, how did that happen?

When 19 terrorists hijacked four jets and flew them into three buildings and a field in Pennslyvania*, why didn't you speak out against the airplane culture?  Not one of those men had a gun, yet those nearly 3000 people who died that day are still dead.  So, how did that happen?  

When Ki Suk Han was shoved in to his death on the subway tracks in New York, why didn't you speak out against the subway culture?  The man who pushed him didn't have a gun, yet Ki Suk Han is still dead.  So, how did that happen?

You see here the fallacy of your argument.  You are blaming the gun for the action of the man holding it.  These are but a few well known examples of murders committed without using guns.  In fact, the majority of murders in the United States don't involve guns at all.

That's because murder and violence doesn't originate in the gun.  When Cain rose up and slew his brother Able, the Bible doesn't say what he used to do it, but you can bet he didn't have a gun.

And when God asked Cain where his brother was, did he say, "Cursed be the rock (or the stick) you killed him with"?  No, he said "YOU are cursed."

You could take away all the guns in the land and people would still kill people, because murder originates in the heart.  What we must do to reduce violence is to change the heart.  

How do we do that?  Well, it won't be easy, and it won't happen overnight, but perhaps we could start by hanging signs in our schoolrooms that say:

Thou Shalt Not Kill

Music Monday

This is beautiful.



One of the best flash mobs I've seen.

Why can't this kind of thing happen in Wal-Mart? 

Dear Bob Costas

You and Jason Witlock are both idiots.  

It's not the "gun culture" that is responsible for Javon Belcher's death, and that of his girlfriend.

It's the abortion culture that is responsible, because it teaches us that human life is cheap, and that if that life is inconvenient, then it is OK to just kill it. 

It's the evolution culture that teaches us that we are no more than glorified apes, no better than any bug or worm that crawls through the mud.  Then you act surprised when people act like the animals you teach us we are. 

It is the abortion culture that teaches us that we are not set apart, that we are not created in God's image, because it teaches that there is no God.  And if there is no God, there is no judgement.  If there is no judgement, there is no accountability, so what is to stop us from killing with impunity?

It is the entitlement culture that teaches us that we can do whatever we want, take whatever we want, no matter who it hurts.  

It's not this mythical "gun culture" that is responsible, because it simply doesn't exist.  

If Javon Belcher hadn't had a gun, he and the girl would still be dead.  If he were that determined to kill her, and take his own life, even if he hadn't had a gun,  he would have used a knife, or a car, or a baseball bat. Or he would have choked her to death, and then jumped off a bridge or a tall building.  

It's not the gun that is responsible.  Just ask Nicole Brown Simpson. 

Guns don't kill people any more than a word processor makes you a moron.

Perhaps it is those that we need to ban.  

Idiot.

Forgotten Treasures

I got up this morning, feeling just a wee bit under the weather so I decided to go to church on the computer. Thanks to those greedy capitalist pigs who make computers available to the general public, I can do this.

After a while, I started feeling a bit better, so I thought I'd start wrapping Christmas presents. I went into what used to be Cody's room and has now become a storage room to get the wrapping paper. I am working on cleaning his room out, so I picked up a few books that had been stacked on his bed to put them back into the book shelf.

There, on the shelf, I found a large brown envelope with my name on it. I didn't remember it being there before.

"Huh?", I thought to myself, wondering what was inside.  

I opened it up, and lo and behold, old knitting and crochet patterns that had belonged to my Grandma fell out!

In addition to loose patterns that had apparently been clipped from magazines or released as leaflets, there was a beginner's manual from 1949.

It had knitting, crochet, and tatting instructions. 

It really was a how to book, even showing you how to cast on, using the long tail cast on method.

It also had a basic techniques section, and simple fixes to things like dropping a stitch.

Then there was a stitch dictionary,

followed by a few beginner patterns. 

What a treasure that was!

My grandma knew how to knit, but she'd had a stroke when I was just three years old, leaving her right side paralyzed.  She tried to carry on knitting and crocheting, with a block my grandpa made her so that she could hold her needle/hook between her knees as she sat on the couch.

She gave up knitting first, but still crocheted a few years longer.  She eventually gave that up, too.

One of my biggest regrets from my childhood is not asking grandma to teach me how to knit.  I'd wanted to, but my mother was afraid it would make her so sad that she couldn't knit any more that she talked me out of asking.

So, instead of learning to knit when I was 7, I learned when I was 30.

But the point is, I learned.

The desire, no, the need to knit is one that has been with me as long as I can remember, and I'm so glad I persevered in spite of all the people who tried to talk me out of it.  Knitting is too hard.  Knitting isn't easy.  It's just not....here, try crochet instead.

I never could get into crocheting.  Even today, when I have to crochet, it makes me tense and nervous.  So I carry on knitting.

And I carry on dumping all my knitted stuff off on family members for Christmas presents.

Yes, here we have three washcloths with the initials of three of my cousins on them.  They are for Christmas. 

Now, these three cousins have never come to my blog before, but knowing my luck, today will be the ONE DAY they decide to visit.


Ummmm.......SURPRISE!!

And Merry Christmas!!

Oh, and I learned something I didn't know.  Sears used to have their own brand of yarn.  Sears brand yarn.  They really did sell everything.  Which reminds me of how much I miss the old Sears catalogs. 

But that's another post for another time...