To say this has been a week full of ups and downs would be an understatement.

The good news: I finished putting up the downstairs decorations on St. Nicholas Day (as well as doing most of my Sunday chores) and put up the Christmas tree the next day. Alas, even these fun events were fraught with frustration: the top half of the library tree did not light, I couldn’t fix the problem with the Lightkeeper Pro, and I ended up just replacing bulbs until it came back on. It looked as if most of the yellow bulbs were burnt out! I lost count of how many I replaced, mostly yellow, but also some at the bottom of the tree where I’d replaced lights last year! Not only that, when I plugged in the three segments of the main tree to test them, the top did not light. I left it plugged in while I decorated the library tree and the library, and then the downstairs hall and the airplane tree. When I came upstairs with the tree ornaments, nary a light did I see in it.

Until I kicked it. Then it lit up!

Since I started late (I was sick during the morning), I had to quit tinseling the tree halfway through to attend an online seminar on “Christmas Past” that I signed up for last month, thinking it would be fun. It was, although I didn’t learn anything I didn’t know. The company was nice, though. Then I did finish the tree and it was safely pushed in the corner for this Christmas season.

Tuesday I found some special programs on Amazon Prime about Tasha Tudor, and really enjoyed those, especially the Christmas-themed one with her children. This was filmed, of course, before she died; apparently there was then a big court battle because she left everything to the son and not her other children. Happier times at Christmas, at least. And Wednesday I found out where to drop my Toys for Tots contribution.

And then Friday we thought everything was really hunky-dory because we went to IKEA and finally bought a new mattress. It was a great birthday gift: our old one that we bought at the Home Show had gotten so soft James was sliding off the side of the bed. It was warrantied for fourteen years and only six years old, but the company that made it had gone out of business. Bye-bye warranty. So we went there and once again tested all the foam mattresses (we have to have foam, as we have a adjustable bed), and still decided on the same mattress we had picked out a couple of months ago, except instead of the medium firm we got the firm. We made arrangements to have the mattress delivered and the old one taken away, with signed documents to that effect. Cool, right? Well, maybe… On the way home we stopped at the Buckhead Barnes & Noble, which had been the best one around here. Alas, it has been as denuded as the others, the magazines aren’t up-to-date, and there were panhandlers hanging around the doors. At least we had some ice cream as our dessert.

And then came Saturday! We had a delivery window from 1 -5 p.m., so I took my time getting up. It was 9 a.m. before I noticed I had a call from a delivery service at 8:05: it was the people delivering the mattress. He said it was contactless delivery and he would just leave it on the porch! Sure enough a few minutes later Tucker barked, and a rolled up mattress was dumped on our porch. A few minutes later the dispatcher from the delivery company called me to make sure we got the mattress. I explained it was supposed to be delivered, set up, and the old taken away during the afternoon. He said he’d call to see what was going on. I continued calling him all afternoon, but never got any satisfaction, and of course I tried calling up IKEA, but their automated message continue to inform me that they were too busy to take calls and to contact them online (but the only thing you could do online was cancel the delivery, and that had already happened!), and then it would hang up on me! I finally got through via a different phone number only to be told that they shouldn’t have told me they would do a pickup; they weren’t doing any pickups. Our salesman called the desk and asked before he made out the paperwork! This is a violation of my contract with them–we wouldn’t have bought the mattress there had I known they wouldn’t take the old one away. Basically after several calls they tell me they are refunding our delivery fee and we will have to make arrangements to get the old mattress removed ourselves.

About five o’clock I got mad. The mattress was in a deflated roll, and I just kept upending it until I got it on the landing, and then I managed to tug it up the nine stairs left one at the time till I got to the top and James could help me pull it. We always turn the mattress when we change the bed, so it wasn’t much different to actually get the old mattress off the bed (it took about ten minutes of tugging and grunting because the old one has no handle). After that, the new mattress was positively a doddle to cut open and unroll on the bed to inflate. I know it’s supposed to inflate for a whole day, but it can’t be helped. Tired of James thumping his heel against the side of the bed when he starts to slide off and it must hurt his feet as well.

So yeah, we have a new bed, but now we’re stuck with a queen–sized mattress leaned up against one wall of our bedroom, blocking the chifforobe, the toy chest, and the chair that I sit in to put on my shoes. Not only that, but just as I finished taking my shower, I got heart palpitations! I’d already taken my pill over an hour earlier, so I didn’t know whether I was going to bed that night or Urgent Care.  I finished drying off and put my nightgown on and went to lie down, taking deep breaths and willing my heart to get back to normal rhythms. It would beat-beat-beat-beat then try to slow down then go back to beat-beat-beat-beat to start the cycle again. And then it was back to normal rhythm. The whole incident only lasted about 20 minutes at the most, but seemed like hours. Now I know how my mom felt when this happened to her. She would be doing something and just stop in her tracks and sit down and be very quiet until it passed. Scary.

In the meantime James admitted to me on Monday morning that he almost fell again in the bathroom–I was really upset and went ballistic, which was why I was sick on Monday morning. He is continuing to have problems with his shoulder after the fall, even though the X-rays determined he did not break anything.

Labels: books, Christmas, Christmas decorations, Christmas lights, events, health, shopping, sickness, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:24:00 PM

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Books And Christmas Lights in Our Hearts

Labels: Christmas, Christmas lights, Holiday Harbour

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:43:00 PM

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All that preparation, and it all leads up to this: the day before Christmas! All the gifts are wrapped and under the tree. How quickly it's all gone by! It seems like yesterday we got back from vacation and were getting ready for Thanksgiving!

It was the usual at first this morning: get up, walk the dog, eat breakfast. It was still gloomy out, but not cold at all, as the cold front wasn't expected till this afternoon. I spent the morning working with some old Christmas photographs to post on Facebook, including two from my first Christmas, when I was only two weeks old. I had BBC4X and was listening to Christmas radio shows, one about stars, David Sedaris' "The Santaland Diaries," and the first part of the very last episode of Cabin Pressure.

About 12:42 Snowy burst out singing, and not much later James arrived home. He seems to have a time sense the way Frisky did when I was a kid; he'd always start singing at 3:30 when my dad left work and then put his head under his wing and fall asleep when he arrived. It was as if his job was finished and he could relax! Dad always wondered why the bird was always asleep when he got home! If Frisky didn't sing, invariable Daddy would call to say he was working late. Mom would say "I know, the bird isn't singing."

We watched Mercy Mission: The Rescue of Flight 771 as our late afternoon offering. I think this is James' favorite Christmas film, along with Mickey's Christmas Carol. An American pilot flying a small plane to New Zealand is lost when his navigation equipment fouls up and a New Zealand airliner piloted by an American expatriate is the only one who can help him. Considering the stars spend three-quarters of the film stuck in a cockpit, this is amazingly suspenseful, and after years of viewing we still cheer at the end.

I also watched The Night Before Christmas, an animated story about how "A Visit from St. Nicholas" was written, but didn't have time for The Little Drummer Boy because we went out to look at lights. We did some neighborhood lights first, including that development on Old Concord Road where all the homes have double glass doors as front doors. One house is very striking, with white lights and a red spotlight on the front. Then we drove on to see "The Lights of Life" at Life University. The traffic was bumper-to-bumper until you got to the place where you had to pay (alas, no longer free!), and then the rest of the drive was fine. Santa and his team were taking off in their usual place over the playing field, "Santa's Flying School" was up on the main hill surrounded by Christmas trees of all colors, and they had the religious iconography (a nativity, a Menorah, and Noah's Ark) in an alcove in the rear. The sea serpent swam in the pond and near the apartments Victorian couples celebrated with a kiss and bears snowballed each other and penguins cavorted before igloos. Then we came back by way of Spring Road and the Park View community before returning home and I put on The Homecoming: A Christmas Story as always.

Later NBC played Midnight Mass from the Vatican, but Channel 11 cut off the Pope smack in the middle of preparing Communion for yet another replay of the Spellman-Morehouse College concert. And a Merry Christmas to you, too! Besides, it was bedtime anyway.

Labels: birds, Christmas, Christmas lights, movies, pets, radio, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:23:00 PM

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