Surprise! My first birthday event was a screaming nightmare at 1:32 a.m. I never know where these come from. I vaguely remember a dream where it began getting darker and darker, and I woke up not knowing where I was and demanding of James why it was so dark, to which of course he replied that it was night and we were in bed. The scariest thing about these nightmares is how hard my heart pounds afterwards. It sounds like a kettledrum that's going to explode. Here I am, sixty today, and I still have the same night terrors I did when I was six.

So after a slightly interrupted eight hours sleep, we—for James asked his supervisor if he could have today off instead of Thursday in exchange for his working last Saturday—got up and had breakfast (I was fantasizing about breakfast at Trish's, but Cosby is a bit of a commute), and Tucker went on his morning walk. We headed out about 10:30 going toward MicroCenter; James is looking for a Bluetooth headset for use in working at home. Big surprise where they keep the computers/televisions; they've cleared all the big screens out and filled the room with laptops and desktops. I don't game, but the gaming machines look prime—16GB of RAM! Anyway, he didn't see anything appropriate.

We went on to have lunch at Sabor Do Brasil. We haven't done Brazilian since Copacabana Grill closed. This is a tiny place with a few meats and some rice dishes and vegetables on the bar, and then of course you get the meat off the grill. I enjoyed the plain sirloin the best, although I tried the bacon-wrapped sirloin. Something about steak that tastes like bacon was just wrong, and it was a little dry, but altogether the meal was satisfactory.

Then we headed up to Books-a-Million in Acworth. We had a great time looking through the store and I bought a couple of things for the Toys for Tots collection at work and the "Life" Santa magazine. James picked up a few magazines and then we sat at the coffee shop and had frozen hot chocolate (since it was 71°F out at the time)—and they had gingerbread boys! Three bakeries searched and I find gingerbread boys in a bookstore. Go figure. I saved mine for later.

Came home through Due West Road amongst all the school buses. When we got home I found the zip ties and put the mailbox cover on. Hope it keeps someone from swiping it; I'm on my third one since we moved here. Then I walked Tucker—and little Jack Wallace wished me an enthusiastic happy birthday!—and we came inside to watch Christmas specials for the rest of the evening: something on Discovery Family about extreme Christmas lights, the British history special Christmas Past, the Hill Street Blues episode "Santaclaustrophobia," and John Denver and the Muppets. I had brought the Christmas tree parts upstairs this morning and put them together and made sure the lights worked (and got up on the ladder and put the plastic diverter on the air vent, so the tinsel wouldn't get blown about), and when we got home James brought the ornament box up, I put the star on top and strung the extension cord for it down the tree trunk and then proceeded to "fluff" and make sure all the lights were visible. Just the fluffing took almost 90 minutes. About then I quit because it was so warm; I've turned the air conditioner back on. But the tree's lit anyway; it's just naked. :-)

I love a blank Christmas tree. It's like a wonderful piece of canvas, waiting to be filled.

Labels: books, Christmas, decorations, food, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:43:00 PM

Comments:

Happy belated birthday.

# posted by  Unknown : 11:12:00 AM

 

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