A Tale of Two Christmases

Writing posts ahead can be a good thing, until I decide to do a comparison post about something that hasn't even happened yet. As I start writing this one, it's still November! And as you can tell by the date now, it's already January 2021. I came down sick with something about a week before Christmas and that threw everything off, as I'll detail later in the post.

My beautiful mother last Christmas

We were home last year for Christmas. One thing we grew accustomed to when we worked at a local factory, was a long Christmas break. The factory used the down time for deep cleaning and mechanical repair. Orders where typically low so it was a good time to shut down and work on the machines.

I don't remember decorating for Christmas last year, unless you count tacking Christmas cards to the wall. You can see one or two just right of my mother in the photo above. I didn't take as many pictures as usual. I'm not sure why, must have been feeling 'off' last year too. We did have a good time playing Phase Ten.

Of course, we won't be able to do that this year. That's one way the pandemic affects me the same as everyone else. More so because I spend most of my time out of state. I had my Christmas tree up just before we returned to the road. It's comforting knowing that it's there waiting for me while I'm out there driving. I may or may not have it completely down before we go back on the road once I'm feeling better.

The tree is one hot mess, just like me. Bottom heavy when it comes to the light distribution, but it's not as bad as it looks in the photo because I can never catch the one set of blinking lights when they're 'on'. And I only had one strand of red lights, so they're all on the bottom too.

Most of my decorations are things that were given to me as gifts or hand-me-downs. And some aren't actually Christmas decorations at all, but I use them as such because they have sentimental value. The origami stars I place in the branches are one example. They were given to me by another student the year I attended college in Allentown. She was a sweet young woman from Japan and I wish I'd kept in touch with her. I lost track of many of the women I called friends then. I've tried searching for her and a few others, to no avail. I count myself fortunate to have kept  in touch with three of them, though we haven't seen each other since 1994.

Another set of decorations that hold sentimental value, are the yarn angels. I'm not sure how else to describe them. They were a gift given to me when I was a Head Start School Bus Driver. I know it was something the mother put together and had the little boy give to me, but I could tell he was happy to be giving me something. I'll have to write another post about the Head Start days some other time. I wish there were more of those angels, because they're adorable.

Everything but the lights are off the tree right now. I have had to do things slowly as it doesn't take much for me to be tired. Which is why we're still home, we're both worried that if we go back to soon we'll have to keep shutting down due to fatigue. I don't think it was Covid-19 that we had; neither of us were tested, but neither of us had the most common complaint - loss of taste. Mr. Janney did complain of it shortly before we came home, but I think it was the burger and not his taste buds.

Our most recent snowfall, it's off the trees already

Hopefully I'll bounce back and we'll be back on the road by the end of the week. There were many days I only got up to go to the bathroom, the rest was spent sleeping. I have managed to read a book, one that was a Christmas gift from my husband. The Eighth House by Eris Adderly. I liked it, though I'm not sure I'll continue with the series as I'm not sure how into the Greek Gods I am. But, I'll never say never.

I hope everyone had a better (healthier) holiday than I've had. Here's hoping this year will see an improvement. Until next time, stay safe peeps.