let's not forget the Rum.

Its all merriment and cheer around here. And I’m totally feeling it. I’ve got my red boots--my favorite farm boots that make way more sense in mud and rain than snow, but which I wear anyway at any given opportunity because I love them: they’re big, they’re red, they rock.

Did you ever read that joke book when you were a kid that had the joke in it: “whats big and red and eats rocks?” in it? I was such a huge fan of that book and that joke in particular.

(answer: a Big Red Rock Eater! All the toddlers in the room fall down, all the grownups groan).

I made festive food last night, in the midst of a snowstorm. We got slammed, here on the coast. Lots of driving snow and wind-whipped road ways. It was quite romantic to be snowbound and baking with my sister.

Her boyfriend was trapped for about seven hours on a bus, which is totally unromantic, but he had his laptop, so he got some good paper-writing done I guess.

And today all the trees are tippled white and the snow is as pristine as it ever gets along the sides of major road ways. The roads themselves are already a brown churn, and much windshield-wiper fluid will be expended for visibility to stay good over the long haul.

I’ve got homemade candy to send to relatives all stacked up and waiting in the cold storage room, but because it is right there and already bagged and all, I keep giving it to other people. Not accidentally really, its just that I seem to want to give everything away lately. I am feeling a need to clean out my closet and crawlspace before the holiday--my mother has told me twice now that she thinks I have quite a lot coming to me, and I am worried that she has been thinking about the fact that I may be sad since August and taking it out on her credit card. I hate it when she does things like that. My parents, as a couple, and my father, as an individual, are big believers in sustainability and self-sufficiency. Once upon a not so far away time, they grew most of their own food and their house is as energy efficient as it was possible to make it (with the roof designed for the eventual addition of solar panels they’ve never been able to afford), my father is against all things consumerist and specifically “The Man”. Oddly, my mother only goes along with that to a fairly superficial point: she is something of an uber-consumer; she cannot say no to a “good deal” and thrives on discount shopping and post holiday sales and the like. She almost always overbuys in the cheap-plastic-crap department and it is something I’ve tried to talk to her about in the past, and totally given up on in the present. My dad feels the same way. When I balked a few years past at accompanying her to some post-thanksgiving day buy-buy-buy frenzy my father took me aside and reminded me that it was a small thing, I didn’t have to participate myself, and it would make her happy. My dad is good like that.