04. January 2023 · Comments Off on Wee Jamie – The Charms of a Little Boy · Categories: Domestic

My grandson, commonly called Wee Jamie in these pages, is twenty months old now, and a week ago Sunday experienced his second Christmas. Possibly this is a Christmas which will establish his memories of the holiday; what with presents, visiting Santa, the decorated Christmas tree and all the lights, nutcrackers, Santa figurines, the creche and the garlands over the door and the mantlepiece. It depends on how early his conscious memory kicks in, which is extremely variable. (I can remember very clearly places and incidents from when I was just barely three, my daughter says that her memory is a blur until nearly four.) Maybe next year will be the one that he remembers as being supremely enchanted, the Christmas which sets the standard for all the happy Christmases in the rest of his life. For myself, having at least sixty of those Christmases in memory under my belt, the only ones which really stand out for me now are the ones that broke the mold – those Christmases celebrated in basic training, a couple of them in Japan, the one in Greenland, the Christmas in Korea – all those holidays wherein we exiled souls made our own celebrations. The family Christmases all have settled into one indistinct blur; a pleasant blur, anyway.

Jamie is … adorable. Not my own opinion as a fond Nana; he is adorable. He is outgoing and friendly to almost every stranger that he meets, and affectionate to those whom he knows – our close neighbors, his godparents and our own friends, mostly. I have always thought this to be a better trait in a toddler, rather than being fretful and fearful of any other adult outside a limited circle.  Adorable in my arms, sodden with sleep, draped limp and boneless against my shoulder when he has fallen asleep, ready for nap or the night. He is a handsome little boy with feathery light-brown hair flopping over a high forehead. I am certain that by early middle age he will have a rapidly receding hairline, rather like Prince William in that respect. His eyes are, alas, an indeterminant hazel-gray-brown, rather than the blue they were as a newborn. He does retain the strongly marked eyebrows and long eyelashes which were noted even in the pre-natal scans. According to his last pediatric visit, he is trending physically on the smaller side of normal for his age. My daughter and I are both certain that sometime in his early teens he will shoot up overnight and become a tall and lanky adult. He is a very well-behaved baby, not much given to spasms of frustrated crying – and that on occasions when he was very tired, very hungry and it was past his regular naptime. This is good – as it distresses my daughter enormously when they do happen. The last three times were when we were in the car, coming back from some place, and Wee Jamie was frustrated and inconsolable.

It was feared, early on and based mostly on my daughters’ age, that there was a risk of Down’s Syndrome for him. This concern haunted her pregnancy, especially as there were some early indications on ultrasound scans which hinted at that condition – mostly a thickened nuchal fold at the back of his neck. There were some small cardiac issues detected at birth, and his eyes were slightly almond-shaped, which turned out to be more of a family trait. But he had none of the other notable physical markers for Downs, and the cardiac issues resolved within a year. The one worrisome quality was and is that he is slow to develop.  Wee Jamie has been late hitting all those important benchmarks; anywhere from two to three months behind in rolling over, sitting unaided, high-crawling, cutting teeth and saying distinguishable words. The pediatrician, being concerned that he might fall too far behind and never catch up, recommended physical and speech therapy through Brighton Center. He is making progress, to the point where the therapist – wise in the ways of small children says that Jamie could walk, stand, feed himself with fingers or a spoon … but he just doesn’t want to. I suspect that he has always been a bit lazy – breast-feeding was too much work for him early on, and he preferred the ease of the bottle.  He still isn’t saying simple words, or following many simple instructions, but by no means is he inarticulate; no, he is quite chatty in baby-babble. After watching the animated series Grizzy and the Lemmings, and Masha and the Bear, will do a very creditable bear-growl. Again, I suspect that he might not talk until very late, at which time he will surprise us all by speaking in complete, grammatically correct sentences. No, thank you, Mother, I do not require another helping of mashed peas at this time.

I can hardly wait to see how he turns out, this wonderful little boy-child. My daughter had a dream of him, once, of Wee Jamie being commissioned a captain in the military medical field, with us pinning the insignia on his shoulders. She said wistfully that she wished she could have shared the dream with me, so that I could see how handsome he had turned out to be. And a doctor in the family, too. Dad would have been so proud of that!

Looking back in the blog archives to December 2021, it seems that I didn’t sit down and map out goals for the new year, as I had been doing in late December in most years. The last set of new year professional and household goals I set for myself were all done and dusted in the following year, all but the one involving me being able to wear a size 10/12 pair of jeans again and finishing the Civil War novel – which is still only half-finished. Done in 2023, I absolutely promise. Over the next year, I am resolved on these several projects –

  1. As noted, finish That Fateful Lightning; a novel set in the Civil War. The first half, concerning the activities of Miss Minerva Templeton Vining in the Abolitionist movement in the 1840s and 1850s is more or less complete – it’s her experiences as a battlefield nurse during the war that I have been putting off. I’m not certain why – just that I will have to immerse myself in a fresh round of research and that readers of Civil War historical fiction will be going over it all with a fine-tooth comb.
  2. Finish the latest Jim Reade-Toby Shaw adventure collection; it will be titled Lone Star Blood and comprise five or six short adventures loosely based on the Lone Ranger legend … only set in the era of the Republic of Texas, historically accurate and less the stupid mask, the silver bullets, and the magnificent white horse. Like the above, it is half-complete.
  3. Complete Luna City #12. That, unlike items 1 & 2, isn’t even begun yet, although I do have some partially-formed notions of what the various story arcs will accomplish.

Moving on to goals for the household. I considered getting vinyl flooring installed in the rest of the house, but after talking it over with my daughter, decided to wait on that one until she has moved herself and Jamie into her own house, which will happen after she completes several profitable years in real estate. At least a quarter of the furniture will go with her, which will make it much easier for me. I did the den flooring myself, but that was a small room, and even so, exhausting. More realistic intentions are –

  1. Get the short length of privacy fence and a gate from the side of the garage to the gatepost at the corner of my next-door-neighbors’ property – this to enclose a small private patio by the front bedroom, a patio already accessed by a French door. This would increase security at the front of the house and provide a secure play area for Wee Jamie. It will also baffle the heck out of delivery drivers and door-to-door salespeople looking for the front door, but that’s a price I’m willing for them to pay.
  2. Get one of those inserts for the slider door which incorporates a pet door, so that the cats can go in and out of their own will. I’d also like to move at least one of the litter boxes to the catio and finally, to replace patio furniture which was basically destroyed by cats and a series of dogs. I used to love sitting out on the back porch when it was temperate, watching the sun go down, and the birds fussing around the bird feeders.
  3. For certain, now that the back yard is secure with a solid new fence – start with chickens again. Four for choice, as we had several years ago. We really did like having fresh eggs, and so did our neighbors.
  4. Get the dryer vent professionally cleaned, for once and all. We’ve done our best to clear out the lint with various consumer gadgets, but we suspect that the vent is at the point where it does needs a full top-to-bottom scouring.
  5. This may be an optional item – but see to having the chimney swept and inspected. We haven’t had a fire in it for years, and in the event of the next snowmagedden and subsequent power outage, it would be nice to be able to burn wood in the fireplace without taking down the entire house.

And that’s my set of goals for 2023. The mortgage on the house itself has just two more years to go, and once that is done, I can turn to paying off bills for the work done on the siding and the replacement windows.

Well, this next weekend, is Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and I think we have just about everything squared away. The last of the gifts that I ordered after doing so very well at New Braunfels’ Heritage Society museum last weekend were delivered on Friday, wrapped and set under the tree, near the tree, hung from the stocking hangers (to escape a pee-blessing from one of the cats establishing possession) or in the Christmas stockings for the designated recipients. The care-packages of Texas foods to my brother and to my sister’s families were mailed on Monday. The tree is up and decorated, my daughter’s Christmas village is laid out … and I have spent the last four days making fudge – the gift that we have been giving to friends, neighbors, establishments that we do business with … it seems that we can afford to give this bounty this year, having stashed away certain essential ingredients. For a good few years, we cut bite-sized bits of fudge and put them into paper cups, packaged in tins from the Dollar Tree, which made a pretty presentation, but that has just turned out to be labor-intensive, messy, wasteful and eventually too expensive. We’ll go with two- or three-inch square chunks wrapped in saran wrap and labeled with what flavor that it is, and stacked in pastry boxes … less messy, that way.

(Note to self – must do a separate nut-free package especially for the partner at Brakeworks, where all the routine work on our cars has been done for at least two decades. Justin is allergic to tree nuts …)

One last batch of fudge, to replace the one batch which has turned out to be less than optimal – there is always that one batch which fails to solidify properly. We did something wrong in following directions, mistakenly didn’t simmer the basic sugar-butter-condensed milk/crème mixture long enough to congeal, added a critical ingredient at the wrong time … or as mostly turns out with one of the most temperamental fudges, the Chocolate Mint Bavarian, didn’t melt the milk chocolate in a microwave

… or over a pot of simmering water. There’s always one batch which has to be thrown out as a flat failure. This we have come to accept.

And Saturday, we checked the last item of the list, driving up to Boerne so that Wee Jamie could have his picture taken with an obliging Santa. It took us a bit of time to have the Santa tracked down to his lair at J-Fork on the Main Street – we had thought to have lunch in Boerne, but all the places which served food which we might have relished were crowded … and eventually, we settled for some pastry at Richter’s, and resolved to pick up something to make supper out of at the meat market in Bergheim on our way home. That enterprise is now in the building which served as the general store, which was dim and cramped and had a bit of everything … but now is open under new management and is bright and airy. Honestly, I hope that they can keep it all going. The ground chuck that we bought for patty melts was fabulous., and Benjy the Dog is still working away at the length of cow leg-bone that we bought there for him.

12. December 2022 · Comments Off on Christmas, Closer and Closer · Categories: Book Event, Domestic

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.

… perhaps the goose is getting fat but given how much a frozen goose or even a duck costs at the local grocery (which does stock such exotic fowl in the freezer case) the body mass index of a frozen goose will forever remain a mystery to me. We’ll do Beef Wellington for Christmas dinner, having maxed out our toleration for turkey leftovers after Thanksgiving. I blame this on Mom, whose’ insanely developed sense of thrift led her to prepare a gargantuan turkey for Thanksgiving, and then part it out into a series of leftover meals for most of the following month; Hot turkey sandwiches, cold turkey sandwiches, turkey croquettes, turkey stir-fry, turkey a la king, turkey and noodles, turkey pot pie… ad infinite. Just when we had finished the turkey soup, brewed from the bones and scraps of the carcass, here came Christmas with another month of eternal turkey, strong to save. Still, turkey and the interminable trail of leftovers is more appetizing than the bugs that our international self-selected overlords would want us to eat for supper, because of the allegedly-imperiled environment … ahh, enough of those cynical thoughts.

It’s coming on to Christmas, and although certain commercial establishments have been laying on the Christmas stuff for at least a month or so (looking at you, Hobby Lobby) now that Thanksgiving is done and dusted, in my house we are looking forward to Christmas. We have a lighted tree and a boatload of decorations, and my daughter has collected several lots of ornamental Santas, nutcrackers, angels, lighted candles, and a small city of small ceramic houses. Out go the usual bookshelf and tabletop ornaments, and in come the Christmas things. And we haven’t even gotten around to putting up the Christmas tree and decorating it, yet.

Our Christmas season really begins with Christmas on the Square in Goliad. I looked back in my various archives, and it appears that we did that event for the first time in 2009, and returned every year since then, on the first Saturday in December to participate with my books in Miss Ruby’s Corral of Authors. Sometimes we were in a pavilion, sometimes in a covered porch, or most often, in a small shop front on the Square. This year is the very first time that I went alone, as my daughter had her real estate brokerage Christmas party that very evening. The drive to Goliad is two hours each way; too exhausting a day to then go out and party all evening. So I went by myself, with two tubs of books; the Corral was only mildly busy this year, although we have known worse; the year that it was 20 degrees, with a howling icy wind comes to mind. I was disappointed at only selling five books, but one of the other authors only sold a single book, and she had brought a huge inventory. Wierdly, four of my sales were for sets of Lone Star Sons and Lone Star Glory; my YA collections which re-tell the Lone Ranger, only historically accurate and ditching the mask and the silver bullets and all.

Then, after decorating the inside of the house; the mantle, the bookshelves, the doorway, and the big shelf in the den, and hanging lights along the eaves outside, the next element is the yearly fudge making. We make big batches of fudge to give away to friends, neighbors, trusted businesses, delivery drivers, and a large plate each for the fire stationhouse across the way, and the police substation – all that is a chore which takes up much of a week, what with making, packaging and delivery. We like to do about six or seven varieties; regular chocolate with nuts and cranberries, brown sugar pecan, a white chocolate with coconut, peanut butter with chocolate, and a creamsicle orange or berry, and a couple of other more conventional chocolate fudge varieties. We hit upon this as a seasonal gift for friends and neighbors after a visit some years ago to a candy shop in Fredericksburg, after which my daughter mused, ‘how hard could it be?’ and it was such a hit with the immediate neighbors that we went on doing it. It’s a chore, and an not-inconsiderable expense, although to our relief it looks as if it will be doable this year, anyway. We have a stash of chocolate and other ingredients, and Costco has bulk chocolate on offer. So we’re good for this year. And that’s were our Christmas stands, by fits and starts – what about yours?