Yet Another Journal

Nostalgia, DVDs, old movies, television, OTR, fandom, good news and bad, picks, pans,
cute budgie stories, cute terrier stories, and anything else I can think of.


 Contact me at theyoungfamily (at) earthlink (dot) net

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» Saturday, December 24, 2005
It's Not a Wonderful Year
I'm trying to figure out which one of us walked under the ladder or had a black cat cross our path last New Year's Eve. {wry grin} Maybe we need to try First Footing?

James has had off-and-on sniffles and scratchy throat for a week and got up this morning with his left eye watering and "blobby." This is sort of a natural condition with me due to my allergies, so I knew how miserable that could be. But over the course of the day the eye deteriorated. It's now very bloodshot, swollen, crusty and hurts. He's been bathing it with warm water every few hours and bought some eye drops, but I suspect he may have conjunctivitis...God knows where he picked it up; isn't it usually a kids' disease? We'll see how it looks tomorrow. If it's just as bad or worse I think we may go up to the Walgreen's that is open Christmas day and see if the pharmacist is in and can recommend anything better until we can make a doctor's appointment on Monday.

A pity, because it was a nice day. We went to the hobby shop and there was quite a crowd and some treats in the back room. We had discovered when I wrapped gifts yesterday that we were missing a present, so when we went around today to various stores—mostly Hallmark stores because we had not yet bought this year's airplane ornament; we actually had to go to three stores before we found one, since apparently it was a big seller this year, but we also skipped about to two grocery stores, Michael's, and Petsmart for some Christmas millet for Pidgie—we providentially found something perfect.

Dinner was a bit of a bust, though. We usually have spaghetti on Christmas Eve, but James was so raspy I asked if he wouldn't rather have some soup. He said what he really felt like was some chicken and dumplings. That actually sounded quite yummy so we stopped at Mrs. Winner's on Austell Road and got three servings and a container of sweet potato souffle as a side. When we got home it was only 4:30, so he bathed his eye and sat back to rest them, and I put the food up in the fridge.

When we finally got peckish around 6 p.m., we warmed up the food. It was less than inspiring. The chicken and dumplings looked like globs of fat with some chicken shreds in it. Even after heating it up so that it was steaming it sat in blobs on the plate. The sweet potato souffle, instead of thickening in the refrigerator, was now the consistency of soup.

Dessert was at least delicious: our last stop had been Starbuck's, where we bought two slices of pumpkin bread, which we ate with Reddi Whip sprinkled with a little cinnamon.

To cheer him up later on, we opened presents: I'd bought James some new slippers, three DVDs (the second Looney Tunes collection, Clone Wars II, and the Wallace and Gromit shorts), a Cook's Illustrated book of baking, a Worst Case Scenario card game of cooking, and a wall decoration that looks like a bone and says "No outfit is complete without dog hair." :-) He got me an "embroidery" mystery novel and a trivia book, a "food" and an "office" magnetic poetry, a scrapbooking desk calendar, and a small glue gun—and the thing I wanted most, the Play'n'Roll Piano I saw at Providence Place this summer. This is a flexible keyboard that can be rolled up and carried with you. It has 100 different sounds and 100 different rhythms. Too cool. I was trying to pick out "Joy To the World" tonight. I can't read music well, but I can usually pick out tunes on piano keys; just haven't done it in years.

We also chilled out watching The Bishop's Wife, The House Without a Christmas Tree, and the Remember WENN episode "Christmas in the Airwaves." In a few minutes I'm going to be setting up to record Meet Me In St. Louis.