Blessings and More

I hope everyone had a wonderful, magical Christmas morning.  I feel a bit like the cat who got the cream – and the canary, and the fluffy toy and more!

I feel almost guilty for the bounty we’ve experienced this year.  We’re nowhere near rolling in money, but for the first time in my life I’m making enough to pay the bills on time; and hopefully we can finally start paying off some additional bills that have been hanging over our heads for a long while.

We opened gifts last night and I was utterly floored. G and I exchanged our gifts first.  Yes, he most assuredly stepped up to the bat this year.  He gave me some very lovely little tchotchkes; a very cushy (and muchly desired!) set of over-the-ear earphones for my MP3 player; a gorgeous coffee-table book on Craftsman homes from Europe; and a classical music DVD.  ALL of the above were on wish lists, some of them going waaaaay back.

Besides what my spousal unit gave me, my daughter handed me a box last night, one that contained Crabtree & Evelyn goodies in Lily of the Valley scent.  That’s one of my two favorite floral scents and nearly impossible to find.  (I didn’t realize C&E carried it or I might have tracked it down sooner.)  The other favorite is honeysuckle and a peripheral family member gave me a set of scented goodies from Bath & Body Works – in Honeysuckle.  I rarely wear perfume or cologne per se, but adore scented creams and lotions, and fortunately I’ve never encountered creams that irritated my skin or left me sneezing mightily.  The same can’t be said of perfumes.

My daughter’s on-again off-again boyfriend/friend took pity on the fact that I still hadn’t seen the Harry Potter movie from last summer.  I now own the DVD, and will be camping out to see it sometime in the next few days.  I’d watch today but the family is tentatively planning to go en masse to see Avatar this afternoon or evening.  I’d like to do the IMAX version, just not sure the bank account will stretch quite that far.

For the moment, there homemade cinnamon rolls in the oven; veggies for a veggie tray waiting to be cut up and arranged; chicken & dumplings simmering on top of the stove; and fudge on the countertop waiting to be cut.  There’s also a ham in the fridge, cooked last night.

With so many people struggling for survival these days, I am immensely grateful to be employed, to be in a relationship that seems to be vastly more stable than I expected even a few months ago, and to have a decent roof over our heads without worrying about how to pay for it.  We’ve got wheels again – not the latest model, maybe, but certainly driveable.  My children are reasonably healthy and three of the four are financially stable as well.

Truly I am blessed.   I hope the same is true for all of my friends.

Merry Christmas, everyone.  Happy Festivus.  Happy Yule.  Happy Hanukkah.  Happy Kwanzaa.  Whatever name you call your celebration, I wish you peace, joy and love.