When All this Holiday Madness is Over

[digitS']

Are you ready to leap on the new growing season like a . .

. Lappet-Faced Vulture on the flanks of a jackal?

Steve
thank Scott Simon for the imagery

 

[journey11]

Haha...but no. I need a break! I am going to focus on stuff like sewing the things in my mending pile and sorting closets for awhile.

 

[Jared77]

I honestly just want to sit for a minute & just breathe. I mean how can you argue with a suggestion like that?

 

[so lucky]

You know, this wasn't supposed to be a stressful Christmas. Mom is(was) going to visit her favorite kids in Nashville, and it was just going to be my one son and his kids.
I don't know what is going to work out now. We are having floods here; one report of 8" of rain in about 30 hours. and tornado warnings. And Mom fell about a week ago and is having so much pain I don't think she will be able to travel. She is so depressed now she calls me continuously wanting me to come and make her feel better. (I'm a wizard ) Last night in the pouring rain she wanted to go to the ER. I was able to get her through that, thank goodness, without going to the ER, this time. (She has been prescribed two more pain scripts, has had x-rays, etc. Seems to be soft tissue trauma.)
I can't imagine being her age and not having her life-long partner and being frail and nearly blind and in pain. It makes me mad because I can't do much for her, and I guess I still need a mom.
And my son's flakey ex is ignoring her kids, which creates behavior problems in the two little girls. I don't know if they will even get to see her for Christmas. She tells them Santa is not real, because she belongs to some fringe religion that doesn't celebrate Christmas, and doesn't eat pork. Not Jewish, not Witnesses, I don't know what they are.
Oh, apparently I needed to vent! Sorry digit'S! Way to steal a thread, huh?
Anyway, after Christmas I will start ogling my seed catalogs like a PMS gal in a chocolate factory!

 

[digitS']

Ah, it's okay, So Lucky.

My Christmas is just likely to be quiet. No one has told me if there will be a friend of the immediate family even. We are supposed to have company from one on Xmas eve but that seems uncertain, strangely enuf.

Seventh Day Adventist? That was my upbringing altho' I rebelled as a teenager. Dad was never involved, anyway. So now you see where my interests in veggies and all, comes from. Honestly, I think Mom was more that way than anything else - kind of a health nut, a long time ago now.

My family has such high walls against being critical of each other that we tend to go in the opposite direction. Yeah, silence to the point of uninvolved - don't have to worry about approve/disapprove, disappoint/appoint . . .

Some of that may be from experiencing some of the "outlaw" problems that every family has but most of it is just that this was once a very large family, with a lot of mobility, that got very small - and insular. So, one generation was huge and the next was small and scattered. That large "Greatest" generation is almost entirely gone now.

Steve

 

[so lucky]

I sure hate to witness the passing of the Greatest Generation. It seems that with their passing also goes a lot of what we idealize as "right" in the US.
I sure can't visualize the gen-Xers or millennium kids looking back at us boomers and thinking we contributed much to the moral fiber of our country.

 

[Smart Red]

Not a problem, so lucky, rant away as you need. We are here for you! The sympathetic side of me wants to empathize with your plight. Expecting a peaceful holiday and ending up with this hectic, uncertain situation filled with worrying about family isn't fair to you. I'll be praying for the safety of you and yours during this difficult weather.

The Pollyanna side of me wants to remind you that it could always be worse -- at least you do have family to worry about. You are strong and you will get through this season and back to whatever is normal in your life and we both will have time to 'ogle' our catalogs at will.

What religion, however fringe, preaches ignoring one's children? My neighbor's son has full custody and nearly the same ex-wife situation. As the girls get older they are beginning to realize Mom's faults without any words from Dad.

 

[digitS']

However, the "Greatest" were also cannon fodder for the fascists.

They were nearly desperate coming out of the Depression. One way or the other, it has taken leadership and follow-ship. Guidance from an older generation and concern for a younger. Here and there, faced with remarkable opportunity. Denying that opportunity, elsewhere.

People.

Steve

 

[bj taylor]

steve, I was looking for a pic of a 'lappet-faced vulture'. you musta made it up.
I would like to jump into the garden thing, but I've got so many other "things" I don't know which one to grab first. I think I'm going for the hall closet to be my goal - it's a monster & somebody better tackle it before something jumps out of there.

 

[Smart Red]

steve, I was looking for a pic of a 'lappet-faced vulture'. you musta made it up.

Nope! The Lappet-faced Vulture is real. I looked it up while I was trying to come up with a more appropriate description of my eagerness to get down and dirty asap than steve suggested.