2008-12-22

Melissa and I sat down after Morning Offering and chewed over the logistics of Christmas Day and Rueckert Family Gathering food. We caught Gary on his way out the door to spend his work day serving at The Cracker Barrel and asked if he might lend Mel his bedroom for New Years Eve night, since he will be at Valerie’s. Mel is giving up her usual room to Tommy and Mary for their visit, and wants to spend New Year’s Eve with us. We have the Christmas Day cooking figured out, but are still scratching our heads over the family visit’s food. I think we will eat out a good deal during their visit, or call in some take-away food.

Mel finished her present wrapping and then took off to see to her chickens and the cats on Avalon, who have been braving the cold weather upriver at the farm. She left behind some presents for me to sign the "to and from" tags and place under the tree, and a container of homemade cookies which I immediately hid, as per Mick’s firm instructions. He cannot contain himself around cookies! And we want them to serve our guests on Christmas Day!

I spent my morning and early afternoon at Absolutely Salon, getting a much needed massage and a manicure-pedicure. I got home at almost 2:00 p.m. and had lunch. Most irritatingly, in prying a recalcitrant omega-8 pill from my pill holder, I scraped the brand new enamel on my right thumb. Rats!

I came upstairs intending to work on my UPI column for this week, but found three separate e-mails from Mary, my sister-in-law. She has been thinking about our time together and making lots of good suggestions for how it will go. She wants to attend a couple of concerts, and for the next ninety minutes I came to discover that if there IS a source of such community information available, I can’t find it! Then I spent the rest of the afternoon writing her back on the dozen or so topics she covered.

By the time I had finished, I found that she and I are beginning to fill in the blanks of our days together in ways that will be relaxing and enjoyable for us. We now have a trip to see “Light Up Louisville” planned for one night, where we’ll walk down Fourth Street and Main Street - me in my wheelchair - and see all the lights before eating somewhere downtown. We have one night at Nancy’s restaurant, the L & N Bistro and the reservations are made for that. And we have pizza planned for New Year’s Day’s football glut. There is a trip to walk the old trails at Spring Mill planned as well, with a meal at the old inn there afterwards.

This is the first time in all our years of shared holidays that Mary and I have sat down ahead of time and collaborated together to make our time more fun. It’s time well spent, I think.

Mick and I had a refreshing bath together before coming upstairs to enjoy a date! Yum! Our sharing had real fire, and I reveled in it. Soon Mick was awakening me out of my somnolent afterglow for dinner and the Gaia Meditation, at which I was supposed to offer the closing prayer. However my prayer began and ended with zzzzzzzzz so Mick offered the prayer instead! This was not my best moment!