The previoud post I started maybe a week ten days ago and just finished it. During that time we put up our Christmas e and Christmas has come and it is now the day after Christmas.
One day about the time of the snow storm I bought the tree down from upstairs. Teri and I had already had our discussion about the price of Christmas trees and how neither one of us could in good consciousness spend a minimum
of fifty dollars on a real tree. So I bought the Christmas tree that Linus bangs on while him and Charlie Brown are looking for a Chrismas tree down stairs. I felt at that point I'd done my duty and would leave it up to others to take it from there. On a Wednesday, after bowling, I think, I could be wrong, Elena decides it's time to put up the tree. SHe starts to unbox it and she puts the middle in the tree stand first. I was just going to watch, but I am the one who each year has put the tree together and having all that experence can't stand by and watch someone learn to do something. I know give someone a fish, they eat for a day. Teach someone to fish and they fish the oceans empty or something like that. We work on it together. I guide her and let her take the lead.We both hunt around for the electrical connections to light the prehung tree lights. Then Elena starts the canned music (ah, such a tradational christmas)
(It's now New Years day 12:10) Christmas eve night Nastia, Elena and I are upstairs wrapping presents. We would have done it a day earlier except Teri still had not finished wrapping the presents. THe three of us wrap gifts for Teri and as a modern family I have Queens album Sheer Heart Attack playing, while they both have their boyfriends or maybe just friends on their phone facetiming. I wrap the Apple computer I got Teri. Two funny stories about that, maybe three. About a month ago, I am talking to Teri telling her we should get Elena a new computer because she
can't play games on her computer. Teri says that it would cost too much. An udea starts to form in my head. I ask her what she things is too much and after she tells me, in addation to telling me she needs a computer because her wireless connection is not working (I think that was what gave me the idea) I ask her what computer she would want. She says an Apple. I hate Apple because of Steve Jobs arrogance and the companies arrogance. They keeppushing the price of their products up and up seeing how high they can go And people continue to buy them. At this moment I decide to buy her the computer she wants.
A few weeks later I go to Apple in Nanuet. I walk up to the store forgetting that Covid rules still. I get ready to get on line when a worker tells me I have to call up and make an appointment to get in. Surprizingly I keep my temper and go back to my car and call. The women who answers the call is very nice and I end up buying it on line. I wanted to get a computer with a large screen. I get the bigger screened computer, but it has the Intell chip in it not the new Apple chip. That adds about a thousand dollars to the price. If I'm buying a computer, I'm in for a peeny, I might as well be in for a pound, so I go the whole nine yards. The tenth was just too much to bite off. I got the Apple pro with the larger screen and the Intell chip spending just slightly north of.......I wait the half hour for my appointment and I go right in and pick up my computer at the front of the store where they have step up booths to block off the store and protect the workers. What I spent on the computer would not have been so bad had I not also bought the Romba vacuum and spent more then I should have. I end up giving that to the girls to give to Teri. THe sweater I bought earlier in the month I'll give her for her birthday.
Christmas morning I go up to Nastia's room. Both girls are sleeping in her room, while Nancy and Nevel are in Elena's room for he night. I roll camera as I step over the dog fence and start telling everyone to get up. it is after all the crack of something like ten-thirty on Christmas morning and Santa Claus has come. It's a classic video and I hope I can up load it.
After a while eveeryone gets up and after we eat and do some other things and Amanda come by we open presents. I'm sitting on the couch by the front window across from Teri. Every so often Teri complains to me I am taking pictures. I always do this bacause I never know when it will be the last one. These videos used to include Tony and maybe even
June Teri's parents, but they're gone now.
I notice Teri is opening up the Romba so I start teh camera. When she realizes what it is she starts to cry a little. When she does that you know you have really touched her. Then she opens the computer. At first she doesn't know what it is. I can even hear her ask what it is. When she realizes what it is, well lets just say she was very touched. It was a good Christmas.
Teri got Nasta and Elena Stitch onesies. Elena opens her's first, Nastia second. Now like any regular person Elena takes off only a few items of clothing keeping herself mostly covered. Nastia on the other hand proceeds to strip down to her t-shirt and underwear. Whe I notice this through the lense of my phone camera, I tell her. She acts embarrassed for a moment, covers up, then proceeds to continue to change into the onesie. She really doesn't get embarrassed around family too easy. If asked she'd say it was just like wearing a bathing suit. Well sort of.
For dinner we have a rib roast. Joining us for the first time in a few years is Amanda's father Donald. Like Teri Donald was forceable retired by Pfizer a few years ago. He was able to find a job, but at half of what he was making, I can relate to that. Unfortunately Covid put him on unemployment and he comes over in a very deep and blue funk. He was let go by Rockland Bakery in hte spring and during that time he went into a deep depression where he just gave up again I can relate to that. His depression is still so all consuming that when he comes in it proceeds to consume everything. I'm sitting at a table, in a house eating a rib roast, having just given my wife a gift that cost way too much and it is mostly all because of Teri that I am able to do that. I can see myself one divorce decree away from being in Donald's shoes. How do you enjoy Christmas when the waif from the corner selling pencils in the cold is sitting at your table or something like that. There but for the grace of god go I. It is scary. I know he made his bed and all and he is just following the path his father blazed, but damn.
The two things he did that I wish he hadn't was when he proceeded to lecture the girls on safe driving. I won't
expand on that thought. The other thing was he sat at the table and let his ex-wife act like she was his servant. She should have just left his dishes alone. Maybe doing his own dishes like we did is some of what he needs to do to get back on his own two feet. Something to make him feel useful, not taken care of.
Christmas ended early. Donald left, Teri took Nancy home and Amanda had to leave before dinner to go to work. It was a memoral Christmas, but it was still a Covid Christmas.
It seems like it will newver end.
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