Doing Up Pleasant Hill

At the office yesterday, we had our annual Christmas luncheon (Mexican!), along with fun and games (Family Feud!). Sadly, my team got trounced during the fun and games. However, as is the custom for such days, the office closed at 3:00 PM, so Ms. B. and I hauled ourselves to The Vino Shoppe, not far down the road from work, for a little afternoon refreshment. They had a several special selections of Merlot on hand, so I sampled a French one, which was a merely okay, and a California brand — Parcel 41 — which both Brugger and I deemed excellent.

The day was cold, miserable, dreary, and rainy, but I needed to head to Martinsville to take care of a little business. Plus, I was determined to get some Christmas decorations up at Pleasant Hill. So, I braved the nasty, nasty driving conditions and made the trip from Greensboro. After running a few errands, I poured myself a glass of Prosecco, put on some old favorite Christmas tunes, and set to work. Mom always loved a live tree, but since she hasn't been physically able to tend to one for the past few years, I got her a decent artificial tree a couple of Christmases ago. Thus, setting it up wasn't a major chore, and given that Mom had collected about half of the world's Christmas ornaments over the years, I had plenty of purty little thingummies to put up. After an hour or so, I got the tree looking as you see in the photo. It do please me.

Since Brugger hasn't been too bad this year, I bought her several presents. These I wrapped and placed them under the tree. However, should she get out of hand before Christmas rolls around, they're going straight back. There is plenty of room in her Christmas stocking for lumps of coal. I keep plenty of those on hand too.

Given Mom's situation, it's going to be a different kind of Christmas season for us. But so it was at Thanksgiving, and it proved to be one of the most relaxing, satisfying holidays ever for Kimberly and me. Something tells me we'll make the most of our Christmas as well. It's just what we have to do in this life.

Bless you.

Yeah, if Ms. B. isn't nice, these are going right back where they came from.