Flor de Nochebuena

Or Christmas Eve Flower as they say in Mexico. I hope this one makes it to Christmas Eve as it is looking very droopy. I can sympathise.

More drama last night as the knee pain morphed into neck pain and I was awakened by John muttering that he couldn't get up, followed by a few curses, most unusual for John. I massaged his neck and shoulder, told him he wasn't going to die and tried to go back to sleep only to be awakened by thrashing and pacing and muttering. We both got up, had a cup of hot milk with some honey and vanilla and I fed Spike half his breakfast rations because he was doing twirlies on his rug, and then went back to bed to try again for some sleep. It didn't happen for me, so I finally gave up and baked a batch of cookies for Caroline who arrived at 8am to clean the house. I'm not entirely unsympathetic to John since I have had structural problems due to what is called 'ligamentous laxity' most of my life, but I do think women tend to deal with pain better than men who don't have to bear children and all that goes with that. Instead they just regress occasionally to being children themselves....

By the time the sun came up, John was up too, fairly chipper and ready to go to Trail House. I was surprised that everyone showed up this morning because we are meeting again at our house this evening for our Christmas gathering. We talked about ailments, Christmas/Hanukah plans and canceled plans, heard about Dan's birthday trip to Mendocino with Tobi, skirted around the ongoing debacle in Washington and Mar a Lago and tried to remember Seinfeld's word for the holidays*.

We didn't plan it this way but it was nice that Caroline came today to clean the house. I did my best to mess up her spotless kitchen making Posole, and decided to use paper napkins because I had some festive red ones  and some Christmas crackers to spruce up the table a bit. I suspect there will be more cookies but we also got a box delivered to the door last night. Opening it revealed a wooden box with a  'Brazos Bottom Pecan Pie'. The top of the box says, 'You might give some serious thought to thanking your lucky stars you're in Texas'

Well no, even though somebody there does make a delicious pecan pie, I feel very lucky indeed that I don't live in Texas. After much searching, a tiny note on the shipping label revealed that it was from our friends who used to live in Oregon and now live in Southern California, but have never lived in Texas either. 

Remarkable thing, the internet....

*festivus