Christmas week.

Where should I begin my writing? Well, I guess I’ll just go day by day and see where that leads. On Thursday I dropped Ann and Harley off at the airport. They were spending it with their daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter down in sunny Arizona. It was nice dropping them off at the airport. Later that evening, John and I went to Centro for dinner before a Christmas concert by Tonic-Sol-Fa. Last year we saw the group, “Blenders” and this year we saw Tonic-Sol-Fa. Both groups sing A Cappella and they are pretty big especially in the Midwest. Tonic-Sol-Fa singers tend to be younger than Blenders but both groups definitely sing well. All in all we enjoyed the concert, but I would rather see the Blenders again before going to Tonic-Sol-Fa. At the end of the day, listening to their music definitely got me into the Christmas mood.

At both the residences, the residents opened their Christmas presents from the company and other presents that were bought by church members. I was told that the residents would write a Christmas wish list and either the company of the church members would try their very best to get the presents for the residents. For me, it was fun looking at them open their presents especially when they got what they wished for. You could see just a little spark in their eye as they were opening their presents.

Snow really came down on Saturday and I pretty much spent the entire afternoon and evening in my apartment watching the snow fall. This was the first time in quite some time where I literally spent a good amount of time in my apartment just catching up on dvds which was a lot of fun.

Christmas Eve was very nice because I got to really clean my apartment – something I’ve not done for a number of weeks. It’s nice to have a clean apartment. Actually, my former religious education students would be coming over on Thursday for a mini-reunion so I figured what better time to get things cleaned before they arrived?! Once the apartment was spick and span, I spent a number of hours on the Internet looking for accommodation in Sydney for our family vacation next year. I did manage to find a couple of places but everything really is dependent on whether I’ll be able to get tickets to the Sydney Orchestra which goes on sale January 1st. I got ready for Mass at 4PM and it was a packed service. Two thirds of the people in attendance were not regular church goers. I’m always tickled that people think that it’s OK to go Mass once or twice a year and call themselves Catholic! Oh well. After Mass, I trooped over to Fleming’s for my annual steak dinner and my oh my, was it an amazing meal. The best part about it, the waiter was the same person I had last year – I remembered him. No, I did not make reservations for next Christmas, but the thought did cross my mind and I did ask the hostess how soon I should make reservations for Christmas Eve dinner since it surprised me that they were not accepting walk-in because they were fully booked. After dinner, I called a number of people to wish them Merry Christmas and it was nice just chatting and catching up with them. Talk about a great way to spend Christmas Eve.

I got up at 6:30AM on Christmas Day because there was soccer highlights on the television and I was not going to miss it. Once I got my soccer fix, I got ready for the annual Christmas meal delivery. This year, my task was pretty simple. I was to staple the cold meal sack – there was only roughly 480 of them! Once that was done, I would be checking the names off the people who would be picking up the meals to be delivered. I do have to say that we were a little backed up and one guy – just one person expressed his displeasure to me and there was nothing I could do about it but apologize profusely and said we were trying our best to get things moving to the best of our ability. He was hearing none of it and it proves to show that Grinches do exist even on Christmas Day. All the other people were very appreciative of the fact that we were volunteering our time to such a worthy cause. I told myself that I would not allow that yahoo to spoil my Christmas and he did not but I truly wished that people could get off their high horse and get with the program. It is Christmas Day. Geez. After the meal delivery got taken care of, I headed to Joel and Kathy for a very nice but quick Christmas brunch as I would be working at the residential facility at 2PM. Joel prepared a very nice lamb and it was yummy to say the least. Oh, roughly a month ago John came over my apartment and while we were chatting, I was getting some dishes cleaned and I broke three – yes three wine glasses and I was extremely bummed about it. I told Joel about it the next day at work and guess what Santa bought me this year? He got me wine glasses and mind you these were really good wine glasses. Talk about a cool couple! I mentioned to Joel and Kathy that I should learn to keep my big mouth shut or next time to ask for a Ferrari!

When I arrived at the residence, I was comforted to know that there were only four residents who were there. It basically meant that ten of them were spending Christmas with either friends and/or family and that really made me feel good. I’ve told a couple of people that it sickens me that some family would not spend Christmas with their loved one because they have a mental illness. The way I look at it, just for one day a year, you could at the very least suck it up and spend the day with your family member. Heck, you don’t even have to spend an entire day with them – just a couple of hours will do but I guess for some people that’s just too much to ask. I’m a firm believer that what goes around comes around. All in all, it was a pretty quiet evening at the facility. I even had time to watch the best 100 songs of the 80s with some of the residents. They were tickled silly that I knew almost all the songs!

That’s how the week went and I guess the next big thing would be New Year’s Day and then things will definitely quiet down. I can guarantee that it’ll be a very quick week ahead and I’m OK with that.