Doing the UN-Thinkable

Pamela is ready for the holidays year-round because she loves watching Dr. Seuss - How the Grinch Stole Christmas and even snagged a copy of The Grinch Grinches The Cat In The Hat and Grinch Night but, thankfully, drew the line at the live-action version. She even loves Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer plus the highly cheesy spin-offs, Rudolph's Shiny New Year and Rudolph & Frosty's Christmas in July.

But, that is not what was un-thinkable about yesterday . . .

For the first time in her life, Pamela succumbed to the Black Friday hoopla and decided we were going shopping on that ominous day. Ominous because I hate shopping and the day I hate most to shop is black Friday! However, I will do anything for Pamela and we braved Walmart together in search of stuff for an elder basket and an angel tree child. Fortunately, because we waited until after lunch shop, we did not witness any stampeding shoppers. Of course, in a town south of the Mason-Dixon line with population 4,000, one would not expect such unladylike behavior.

We picked out three of four items on the wish list of a four-year-old girl who is part of the angel tree program hosted by our church for foster care children in our area. Pamela enjoyed picking out a Baby Alive Sip 'N Snooze for she thoroughly adores the Baby Alive (a baby, not a D-O-L-L) she received for Christmas last year. She scratched and sniff all three kinds of Dora dolls present (lemon, cotton candy, and cherry) and chose lemon, of course: Stylish Scents Dora- Lemon Drop. She smiled when she tested out the Vtech Write and Learn Letter Pad and wrote a letter on the pad. We included extra batteries that came with a wind-up panda toy plus two books: The Animals' Christmas Eve and God Knows All about Me.

Our church also participates in an elder basket program in which people fill an ordinary laundry basket with packaged food, personal care, and household items. Pamela helped me pick out items for our basket and I used up the rest of the baby blanket cotton yarn on a Basket Weave dishcloth, nubby-scrubby washcloth, and extra thick potholder and I still have enough remaining to knockout another basket weave dishcloth I plan to include two bars of Ivory soap for the under-a-dollar gift I'm supposed to bring to the monthly Bible study class next month.


David, the giant, jolly elf, decorated the Christmas tree. He also terrified our gentle parakeet Lily by putting a gargantuan lifelike bird on top of the cage. She flustered about the cage, so he took it off after a minute and replaced it with less intimidating froppery. And, when he was not busy entertaining the neighbor's grandsons, David took a picture of the Arwenator wearing a Santa hat . . . I guess all that hard work makes up for the disappearance of half a container of ice cream, egg nog, and pumpkin pie . . .


Steve nearly finished his mammoth to-do list, which included doing Christmas cards, which he decorated with the most interesting collection of stamps. . .