Well it's Christmas, almost.*

* God it still feels like it should be a week before Halloween!!
It is the twentieth of December. Right smack dab in the middle of the holiday season. Promised myself I would be very much in the holiday spirit this year. The Christmas season is also the shortest it can be this year. The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is just about a month. I am working and don't get home until six, then I make diner and suddenly it is today. Thank God for Teri. Again like all the years in the past she is the one who shops for the presents for the girls. If it was up to me they would be getting stuff from the local convenience store run by the Indians and is open on Christmas day. So much for the Christmas spirit. I used to be real big into Christmas. I'd put lights up on the house. I'd go out Christmas shopping and maybe not enjoy it, but at least I'd do it in a timely manner so I could enjoy some of the month. For the past few years the only people I have had to buy for are Teri and my mother. Sorry for all the same gifts mom.
       The plan this year was for us to get a real tree. I was going to go out and get one one night. Back in 2012 we (the girls and I) went to Pearl River to get a tree. That was the last time. I wanted this Christmas to be like Christmas of old. A real tree with all the old ornament on it. The ones in the distant past with once new Hallmark ornaments on it, the cheap plastic ornaments my mom purchased when I was a kid, to be put low on the tree so that if the dogs hit them and broke them no big deal  and now are treasured bits of my history and finally the old fashioned screw in lights with the bubble lights. Then outside the huge old style lights. I was going to make it just like old times. Well one day I woke up and Teri says it's ten days before Christmas ans we need to get a tree. The weather says it will rain tonight, then switch to freezing rain and be awful for the next week. I need to go now or never. Teri says after I debate it for a while let's go to the movies and get it after. Okay, not a bad idea. After the movie, the family 'Christmas Vacation' (Well maybe not exactly like it) family going to get their real Christmas tree has devolved into 'You go get the tree and I'll take Nancy home.' Maybe I should have said something, it just gets discouraging when no one is on the same wavelength. I knew a family adventure like from a Christmas Story (Ralphie, you'll shoot your eye out.) would never happen. (If you don't know what I'm talking about with all theses movies, your education is sorely lacking) No one goes out like in A Christmas Story any more to get a tree. Heck, my parents maybe did it occasionally when I was about five or so. In later years my dad would just bring the tree home in his truck and it would either be in the 60's up against the fence in the old driveway or on the deck in the 70's. I even got a real tree when I had my first apartment in the 90's and that was why I started collecting Hallmark ornaments.
       When the girls first came over they were easy to buy for. When asked to make out a Christmas list it consisted of things like, gum, beef jerky and the like. It was sweet and made you want to cry a little. Their wishes were small and easy to fulfill. We'd go out and buy them these wonderful gifts and they would be happy and excited on Christmas morning. Later they would eat the beef jerky and gum. The other expensive gifts would end up sometimes not being used. Things haven't changed much in ten years, except now it is difficult to find them gifts. I can hear you, you're thinking so loud. If Teri does all the Christmas shopping how do I know these things. Well I do occasionally listen to her when she talks and she does love to talk about the girls. This year the girls are impossible to buy for. They both have jobs and they have started to buy clothes for themselves. So if you see them and wonder who the hell dressed them, it wasn't us. There wants are still simple and since they are older they don't make out Christmas lists like in the past. If they did I'm sure gum and beef jerky would head the list.
       Nastia's new 'friend' Taj and I went into other possible titles for him in my last post, is very much in some respects just like Nastia's other friend Veronica. I got a flat tire the other day when it was raining and turning to freezing ice. I'm at the age that if it isn't around 70, with low humidity and it's not a crisis, I'm not going to change a tire. So I asked Nastia to borrow her car for the day. She and Elena would drive together to RCC. I get in her car and it is a mess. There are open cheerios on the floor and the car is covered in trash, just like when Vanessa used to drive with her. It really ticks me off that these kids with no car and maybe no license are such pigs in her car. It shows what kind of person they really are. If you can't treat it like you own it....wait maybe that is the problem. They are treating it like they own it and they are disrespectful pigs.
       I remember when my friend Mike got his first car, a 1964 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88. It was a tank and I helped Mike clean it up and together we got the car ready to be repainted (We ruined it). The one thing I don't remember doing it throwing crap around the car so it was a mess.
        Okay, now Elena, it seems she has a boyfriend again, not that anyone has told me, wait, Nastia did tell me Elena had a boyfriend. His name is Cain. She met him at work and last night for the first time they went, in a group to a party. She was told to be home at 11 and she was home at ten minutes to 11.
       On Thursday, she and Nastia had their final class together for Multi-cultural something or other and it was the last night to present your project. Elena hadn't as far as Nastia knew. Nastia was home at the usual time. Elena was home almost 45 minutes late. When asked why, she said she took her time going home. I hope she stayed after class and did her presentation to an empty class with just the teacher there. I remember being as shy as Elena and how God awful it was to present to the class. Elena and I are alot alike. 
























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