Thanks to a really splendid and profitable Saturday spent at the New Braunfels Heritage Society Museum of Texas Handmade Furniture (thank you, Leslie and Justin and all!) I could do a little impulse gift shopping for my daughter, Wee Jamie the Wonder Grandson and for my distant family in California, which now checks off one more item on my Christmas “to-do” list. We send my youngest brother one of the fruitcakes from Corsicana, which he loves, and my sister and her husband and family, a selection of only-Texas-available rubs, sauces and spices from HEB, to include a big bottle of Whataburger Spicy Ketchup. We think of this as a care package for the sadly deprived California branch of the family. Since we didn’t do Giddings Word Wrangler this year, we couldn’t send the bottle of Harley’s, bottle of which usually among the offerings in the swag bag for authors and which my sisters’ family loves, but what the heck, it’s available now through Amazon anyway.

The big thing – no, the two big things accomplished today were 1) getting everything mailed; this at the central post office on Perrin-Beitel, where for a miracle, every window was opened, so it all went briskly, although the line went out into the lobby. I quite like doing business at the central post office, by the way; sent mail and packages move fast, being that it is the central post office, and the staff are amazingly friendly and helpful. I have no idea of why this should be the exception in San Antonio, when tales of shoddy and abusive service elsewhere are legend – but I have never had a complaint about the post office staff, or that of the local Department of Motor Vehicles, either.

And 2) We got the Christmas tree assembled and decorated, mostly with the decorations that my daughter has begun acquiring for her own eventual Christmas tree – not the massive collection that I had gotten over the years. More importantly, all the assorted boxes and tubs which littered the living room and hall are moved out to the garage. This is a project that we had been putting off for some days, mostly because of the humongous chore that it presented … but it was important that we get it done, because this may be the year that Wee Jamie begins to acquire memories of family Christmas, the tree and decorations and lights and all … and my daughter wants to establish those memories firmly for him.