I'm gettin' nuttin' for Christmas 'cause I ain't been nuttin' but bad!

Vic always ends his phone conversations with "be good", and I always tell him "no way, I want to have fun".  I do have oodles of fun "being good", but my home is seldom on Santa's list of deliveries.  Christmas isn't about presents (am I crazy!!!), although most children and a bunch of adults would beg to differ, but I comfortably live with this exclusion.

Gifts aren't my main form of feeling loved anyway, but I do have a little dark cloud forming over me, growing bigger each day a Christmas card fails to appear in my mail box; and each year fewer and fewer cards make their way into my greedy little clutches, as I thumb through all my mail around Christmas time and usually come up with zilch... :(  I know, I know...you think because of my age...my friends are dying off around me like flies, but I'm not THAT old.  People just don't keep in touch with paper you can hold in you hands...saddens me.

Sending Christmas cards is always a big fanfare with me.  It is usually the closest resemblance to a gift anyone outside of immediate family will ever receive of me, so it is a definite must that I send out WOW!!! cards with all the jingles and jangles attached.  This Christmas post is my "card" to you...a little of the past...a whole lot of the now, with all the jingles and jangles attached.   

Michael's Story

Loneliest Christmas I remember was the Christmas just after my divorce, when I was living in Reno in a six apartment building near downtown. Telephoning anyone, meant I had to walk across the street to the pay phone. I had no Christmas tree, no presents, no Christmas cards, no money, no nothing. It was like, to everyone else, I had fallen off the face of the earth and had been forgotten. I remember feeling more alone at that moment, than any other time in my life before or since.

One of the December days those big fat fluffy snowflakes were sifting down from the sky, and all I could see out my apartment window was a cool white that amazingly stayed bright even after dark.  It all looked so wonderfully inviting that I pulled on my boots, buttoned my coat up tight, circled scarf around neck and face, tugged hat snugly over head and ears; and ventured out into that wonderland of softness from the heavens.  Looking up through the street lamp light all I saw was white with all those amazing flakes radiating out of the center and descending upon my face ever so lightly.  I walked for blocks, alone in all that quiet beauty.  Magic...pure magic.   

One late evening that winter after Christmas, I barely heard a cat's low meow at my front window.  Opening the window, a gray and white cat jumped onto my living room floor from the window ledge. He became the most special cat I have ever lived with. Alone in the apartment, he would seem overjoyed every time I came home from work.  I soon discovered that his favorite people foods were baby peas, scrambled eggs, Cheez Its, cake and icing.

He always slept by my face, and would purr himself to sleep with a purr that sounded like the roar of an airplane engine.  He loved to play hide and seek...hiding in the bathtub at the end of the hallway, meowing until I peeked around the shower curtain and spied him, then sailing over the edge of tub, flying down the hallway, and around the corner to the living room and safety.  He would start meowing again until I peeked around the corner and spied him, then he went flying back to the bathtub to start the game all over again.  He was wonderful.

He would follow me around, but if I was in a room and needed to leave that room for just a short time, I would tell him to stay there as I would be right back.  He would stay there and wait for me.  Totally amazing.  At night, when he was older, and the purr was a little softer, and he was lying by my face, I would tell him that he was my sweetheart and that I loved him so much and he would always give me a little kiss with his nose.

He was just the sweetest cat ever.  I always felt that as long as he was with me everything would be alright.  When he passed away, it was as if my heart died a thousand deaths.  For all those years that he was in my life, I never felt alone.  He was the best present I ever had.

Our Feline Trio

Christmas Card News Letter

Not to fret...

only do short ones.

*HOLIDAZE GREETINGS*

from all at our cozy abode

Yummy yum yucko cough syrup...like drinking the whole bottle of this traumatizing elixir cranking out this year's holiday news letter.  Memory eludes me, but I'm thinking 2009 flew into the stratosphere without nary a comment from me. The lows were on high that year, husband unemployed, Molly leaving us after 20 1/2 years...Christmas came and went quietly.

Molly Molly Molly...so much sweetness and feistiness all wrapped up in such a petite package. Panamanian and surprisingly healthy for a feline in the tropics, confiscated from the laundry room by our landlord, no clue what to do with her, we with two cats already...well - people just assume that feline people always have room for an infinite number of little furry feet - so, we then had three meowy mouths to feed.

Being such a small kitty, Molly practically lived on my lap most of her life whether I liked it or not, protesting loudly and clinging onto me for dear life anytime I had to get up. Such a character, so loved, and extremely missed.

Vic's lodgings now-a-days is Afghanistan, so eleven months of the year he is missed dearly, and one month of the year is party time! Thanksgiving vacation we spent a fabulous two weeks going to every concert available no matter what the venue, and three days at a fantastically ritzy bed and breakfast in Atlanta.

Our feline trio is doing well at the moment, with Jesse requiring more of my care these days to keep his life in quality mode. Bummer growing old, even for a cat.

Dustin dog found his way into our household a year ago, rat terrier and jack russell mix, lovable one minute, stinker the next.

A pinch of stardust has been added to this news letter to fill your hearts and noggins with the radiance and glow of the Christmas time spirit and all of its magical powers. Much love...

Yvonne and Vic...Jesse, Andee, Zoe...purr purr purrrrr...Dustin...arf barf!

Best Wishes

For the merriest of Christmases

And the happiest of New Years