Things You Find Out at Christmas Time

Did you know you can't just one carrot? At least not at the supermarket we shop at. We needed a carrot for the grandkids to leave for the reindeer and they said they only sold them in a bag. Now we have a bag of carrots.

Still so good to enjoy Christmas with the grandkids and see them tossing reindeer food on the front lawn. At 7 and 8, we don't have many Santa years left.

Another thing I learned is not to get careless and forget getting a flu shot. Sure enough, this week I got the flu or some virus. Talk about bad timing.

Anyway, I was still able to count my blessings this holiday season and hope you and yours are having the best of times. And if life does leave you with some lemons, hope you can make lemonade.

FD

Christmas Letters

This is the time of year we write and get Christmas letters. You know they are sometimes lampooned for being all about how Suzie won the Nobel Peace Prize and not about how she got fired from her job. Or something like that.

Anyway, I thought I'd ask your opinion of Christmas letters. Do you write them? Do you like getting them? Do you get a lot of them?

FD

Hiding

Saw a thing on CNN Money that 80 per cent of spouses hide some purchases from their spouses. Surprisingly, clothes or accessories were 24 per cent for men and 43 per cent from women. Don't their spouses pay attention when they wear these clothes?


Alcohol was 19 per cent of the men and 8 per cent of the women. Music was 14 and 8, Gifts 12 and 21 and dating websites were four per cent for men and one per cent for women.


So do you want to share? Do you hide purchases from your spouse?



FD

Stress Time

I just looked at the calendar and Christmas Eve is two weeks from Friday. Two weeks!!! So little time and so much to do.

The holiday season is supposed to be a time of peace and joy, but why does it seem to be a time of stress and worry? How do you cope with the stress of getting everything done? Or are you one of those organized types who has everything done?

And are you so stressed that you don't get much play time at this time of year? Or is that a stress reliever for you?

Hope you will share your thoughts.

FD

Holiday Tales

I'm about a week late on this but thought I'd share a few tidbits from my holiday weekend.

It started with a Thanksgiving Dinner with friends and there were two 80-year-old women there with different perspectives on their sex lives or lack thereof. One was lamenting that she hadn't been touched in three years or so and has even been online trying to find a guy even though she is on oxygen. The other one said she is tired of taking her clothes off in front of men and has no interest. What a different perspective from two women of the same age. The one who wants to be touched likes hugs on arrival and leaving. And you must wonder how this subject came up at Thanksgiving Dinner. Like in my blog, I like to ask questions and listen to the answers but the one who isn't isn't interested brought it up out of the blue. I knew the other one so I was familiar with her story.

And then there's the daughter of one of the 80 year olds who's in her 50s and has been divorced for about three years and found a guy who loves her but she feels she shouldn't grab the first one who comes along without jumping into the dating pool so she is trying online. But she says she is a klutz with computers and having trouble signing on. Meanwhile, the guy said he'd wait for her. I don't know what advice I'd give in her situation. Whether it is best to go for it with the guy she knows or try to check out alternatives. I guess if she isn't sure enough about the guy she might as well check out the pool.

Then on Saturday I flew up to New York on a weekend business trip. The weekend after Thanksgiving is not usually the best time to travel because the planes are jammed but there were no delays. And by coincidence my younger daughter and her boyfriend planned to be there that weekend without me knowing I was going to be there. So we had lunch and then went to the Museum of Natural History where they have more dinosaurs than you imgine and rocks that are billions of years old. Hard not to believe in evolution when you see the exhibits.

My daughter and her boyfriend have been going together for a year and we are wondering if he will pop the question at Christmas time. I never thought she could find a guy so compatible with her. To give you an idea, she doesn't shop at one well known chain because she feels they exploit their workers and she goes online before she buys clothes to see if they are made by people who get a living wage. And she spent two years on a volunteer program in a Third World country and now works for the non profit recruiting new volunteers. And he also works for a non profit involved in commuity development. So I think they are a good match but I have a don't ask, don't tell policy about their future.

Then that night I went to dinner with a former colleague at a restaurant called Josephine's that is a tribune to Josephine Baker (you can google her if you don't recognize the name and are interested) and one of her relatives is involved in running it. They have a topless picture of her on one wall. The meal was delicious and then that night we saw the play called Lombardi about Vince Lombardi. For our non football fans and for our friends outside the USA, he was a legendary football coach.

Also interesting to see how 42nd St. has changed. It's where they drop the ball on New Year's Eve. They ran an article in the NY Times Saturday if you are interested with before and after pictures. It used to be a seedy street with porn shops and adult theaters and now it has been gentrified. Times change.

So it was a fun day. Always good to get back to Manhattan.

Oh, at the restaurant they were advertising a Christmas Eve dinner and had a quote from the late playwright Wendy Wasserstein (you can google her if you want) that said something like the saddest thing in the world is to wake up on Christmas morn and not be a child. I would amend that to say that it's OK to be an adult as long as there is a child in the house. Christmas is more fun with young kids. And our grandkids are 8 and 7 so we don't have many Santa Claus years left.

That reminds me of when our older daughter was bugging us that there was no Santa and we were afraid she would blab to the younger one. So we told her and I will never forget the look on her face. It was like she still wanted to believe. And she never told the younger one.

Speaking of the grandkids, if you are a regular reader, you might remember that I had to be at Target early Sunday morning a couple of weeks back to get Nintendo games on sale for the grandkids. Well last week, my older daughter called and said they were now $6 cheaper and I had to take the receipt and get a $12 refund. She is a hawk for watching those circulars for deals. If they reduce them again, I will probably have to make another visit. And I had to visit that store my younger daughter refuses to shop at to pick something else out. They were raised in the same family 14 months apart and are so different. Go figure.

Anyway, if you read all the way to the bottom, I hope your eyes didn't glaze over reading my ramblings. Nothing sexy in this post but hope you don't mind a change of pace.

FD

Giving Thanks

As we celebrate Thanksgiving, I wanted to give thanks to family, friends and good health and wish the same for all of you out there.

Also wanted to give thanks for the Internet. Without it, all of us in the TTWD world would not have been able to have found one another and share our lives and understand we are not alone, which I am sure many of us, like me, thought we were before we found there is a community of like-minded folks out there. And it has been so satifying to share these interests.

I also want to thank all of my readers, especially those of you who are so kind to leave comments and share your thoughts. I hope you will continue to return and share your insights. Also want to thank the lurkers who don't comment but still stop by.

Want to wish all of you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving. And hope we are all here a year from now so we all be here to give thanks again.

FD

Sunday Morning

How was your Sunday morning?

Mine included pulling into the Target parking lot at 735 a.m. I was five minutes late. My daughter had told me to be there at 7:30 p.m. for an 8 a.m. opening. The phone rang as I was pulling in. She wanted to make sure I was sthere.

Of course, there were only two people at the door but my daughter takes this pre-holiday shopping seriously. My mission was to get two Nintendo games for the grandkids that were on sale that morning because they are coming down for Christmas. The flyer didn't arrive until I got the Sunday paper but she had already checked it out in advance online that they were going to be on sale.

So I read my Sunday NY Times to pass the time until the "crowd'' had grown to six. I got out of the car and became the seventh person. By the time the doors opened, there were 7 or 8 people behind me including one woman showing a lot of cleavage. Well, at least I was getting sometihng out of this. LOL.

The doors opened and it seemed tacky to run but were walking at a brisk pace. A woman right behind me was obviously very pregnant -- she said she had five weeks to go but joked it looked like she was delivering tomorrow -- was joking she couldn't keep up the pace. Anyway, I headed to the electronics department, pointed to the flyer and said I wanted two of these. I told the guy where they were locked up. I had checked it out the day before on my home from tennis. There was already a woman waiting there and she was telling him which thing to unlock that had the model on sale. As he opened it, I reached in and she said I was here first and took two so I took the next two. They didn't have many which makes the sale kind of a come on. I paid and called my daughter that the mission was accomplished. Well, at least it wasn't Black Friday. She gets up really early for that. I think a guy got trampled to death at a store a year or two ago.

The kicker to this story is that she saved $30 on each one and their combined salary for her and her husband just breaks six figures. I guess I should be pleased that she tends to be frugal. But all that effort so save $60? It is not as if they are at the poverty line. Don't know if I should take the credit or the blame she's like that. But then our other daughter is worse. I joke we sent her to an Ivy League school and she fell in with the wrong crowd that wants to save the world. She lived two years living in a Third World country sleeping in mosquito netting because there was no airconditioning and loved it. And now she works for the program recruiting others.

Anyway, that was my Sunday morning. Took advantage of a sale. At least I don't plan to be out on Black Friday. Are any our readers into Black Friday?

FD