Snippets

These folks sent me their Advent/Christmas CD with a solicitation letter. It's my in-car listening for the season. It has an unassuming, un-orchestrated quality that is very appealing. The selections range from chant to Holst's "In the Bleak Midwinter". There is an especially charming version of "Silent Night", with simple guitar accompaniment. I'm definitely sending them the requested donation.
It's an interesting looking college- one of the ones that have sprung up from the realization of Catholic parents that instead of sending their kid to Notre Dame, et al., they could have sent them to Secular State U. for half the price and gotten the exact same education.

Re: college. Ro has bailed on her third, and according to her, last school. It's not higher education she minds, it's college life. So, she will be working full-time while she decides how to proceed from here and living here and paying us a little rent. Maybe some community college in her spare time...

Bob took his van to Denton to pick up 76 Marie Osmond porcelain dolls, which were donated to the agency for the holiday store. The donation was a kind gesture, but I fear we may have quite a few left over after Christmas. Now if they'd been Barbies...

Went by the Holiday Store to check on the Household Gifts and wound up working Family Night last night. That is always such fun- entire families come to sort food donations or fill food boxes and the little kids, who are too young to be regular volunteers, get such a sense of accomplishment from doing real work to help somebody. One young lady brought her youth group and she was one of those natural leaders, who are so great to work with. They immediately grasp what the project is and they know exactly how to assign their kids.
A few problems: they open on Sunday, so the store has to be laid out and stocked on Saturday. But unless they can make 550 food boxes by then, we'll still need an area for box filling tables.
As boxes get filled, we can estimate how much stock we'll need to finish and can then start moving excess food to the agency or storage, which will free up some space.

But thanks to a generous donation from a company,we have large cartons full of bagged snacks everywhere. We'd stack them, but they're heavy and the bags contain liquids, so you can imagine the possibilities. We might move some of them into storage and bring them back as needed. Extra work for the CSR's, but that's what they're there for. We also need someplace to put the bagged school supplies (we package the leftovers from August and make them a freebie for the holidays). Gee, it's tough when your problem is you have TOO MUCH stuff, thanks to the kindness of your community...
I'm working again tonight and Wednesday.

Already broke my resolution. We only have 8' tables in the garage, so the Enchanted Forest had to go on one of them. And it looked a little sparse- so I bought two more Made in China trees at the Hobby Lobby. And some more birds. And some butterflies. And some LED mini-lights. Which are at least ecological, if you don't count the manufacturing and shipping them from across the world. It's all set up and ready to decorate when Nini gets back from Austin.
They were here yesterday and we discussed putting my little Tyrolean creche in, but she vetoed that. The Holy Family needs their own space on the end table.

Went to IKEA to buy our fourth living room bookcase and found a wonderful step-stool, which makes not only a fine library stool, but can also be used as a seat by the little ones at the coffee table. If it warms up today, I may take my four-pieces-of-bare-pine-screwed-together-made-in-Poland end table outside and give it a couple of coats of the stuff with which I refinished the top of the coffee table.

I regret to announce that Nini, who is a freak of nature in so many wonderful respects, has inherited her mother's inability to spell. Anything. She reads like a champ, but there's a disconnect somewhere from the seeing to the putting it down on paper. They do not get this from me, btw.

I forgot my tote when I was babysitting and Sissy brought it out to the car for me. She saw the open bags of bears in the back and asked about them. When she spotted the one that was made out of the leftovers from Morgan's afghan, she gave me the Big Bambi Eyes that got her so many things as a kid and said 'Morgie needs a bear!" So Morgan has a bear and I'll work up one more fast to make an even decade for Mother Bear. I like to dedicate the work on these and other charity projects as a prayer intention.