A bit of everything

Etta James famously sung “At Last”, and that is exactly how I feel about the arrival of this promising Friday. The weather promises to be warm for November. The oldest granddaughter is out of school today so I think the wife is going to take the girls to the zoo.  Me,  I have to work. I may try to knock off early this afternoon. 

I had to get up early for a meeting yesterday morning. I was sitting in the old recliner in my office, sipping coffee, slowly starting my work day. Imagine my surprise to hear an owl hooting just outside. I think I know what has happened to the swarm of chipmunks and rabbits that used to live around here. Between the neighborhood fox and the owl, it is a dangerous place. Depending on the size of the owl, the three raccoons that were lined up at the patio door Sunday night may be a late night snack at some point. Isn’t an owl hoot outside your window a harbinger of death or disaster? 

We were looking at a store display of Christmas trees last night. One of the trees was flashing in crazy patterns of reds, greens and multi-colored lights. On and off, climbing up the tree, now one color now the next, sometimes the lights were white, sometimes steady for a few seconds in a crazy LED display. The wife stared for a moment and moved on to a stately tree with soft white lights. My wife is strictly  a white Christmas lights girl. She glanced back at the flashing light spectacular and laughed. “My mom would have loved that one”, she said.

She is right, my long-gone MIL loved flashing multicolored lights, one string blinking at a different rate than the next. She even had a revolving tree stand and loved to coat the tree in silver tinsel icicles. That is what makes Christmas decorating fun, we all have different tastes. 

It won’t be long before it is time to drag the stuff from the attic and spruce up the house into a Christmas wonderland, inside and out. The wife goes overboard, but the house always looks great, like a Hallmark movie house or a show place when she is done.