Friday Challenge

How ya doin? Is your brain ticking on a track like this "did I make enough shortbread? who's coming that I forgot about? where's the turkey baster? I've never cooked a goose before what if? I hope Aunt Lily likes that soap? Oh, I forgot to water the tree..." ? Is it? Mine is. It's nearly eleven and I know I'll have a hard time falling asleep. And I run a lowkeyI'mabuddhist kind of Christmas. I can't even imagine if I went full force at it.
Tonight we had a nice dinner, borscht and potato latkes - Italian panne forte with boozy fruit. It was the kids, Ron's brother, Richard, from Ottawa and us. Lots of laughing and telling stories. It was good.
Tomorrow I'm roasting a turkey in the morning and a goose in the afternoon. We're having potatoes, brussel sprouts with chestnuts, cabbage with sour cream, carrots. I got the Christmas crackers and a new nice plaid tablecloth (sounds horrible but it is really nice). I've got lots of candles and we have wine and good cheese, crackers, olives and enough cookies and candies to sink a ship. Richard is going to make spotted dick for dessert only with cranberries instead of the partridge berries he'd use in Labrador. It'll be nice. We'll play good music and we'll talk some more. A couple more folks will join us or maybe just one more - hard to say just yet. Eating and talking - what could be nicer?
Only I want to make more candy - some of that nut crunch with a toffee base, good dark chocolate and roasted chopped up nuts. And I have to go over the stocking stuffers  - so everyone will have a good morning...
Then on Christmas Day we'll have nothing to do but open our stockings and a few (a very few) gifts. We can eat my favourite food - toasted turkey sandwiches and keep on talking. If it isn't terrible out I'll take a drive to Hubbards and see what Santa brought the grand kids.

I am so lucky. So amazingly lucky. I have a family that is all in good health or good enough. We have the regular problems- some heart heavy things that have occurred this year but really in the grand scheme - we are nothing but lucky. We might complain about the recession and be annoyed that the tenants are late with their rent or that a job didn't come through that we wanted - or we might worry about the teenagers because it is tough to be them - or fret about something someone said that wasn't kind BUT we have time to fret, we have energy to fret, we have a pretty fear-free space to fret. Here in Canada we can complain about the government, and goodness knows we do, we can freak out about the price of furnace oil, and sigh about crime on the street but we CAN talk openly about it, we CAN complain about it. We are so damn lucky.

I wish for all of us that we could float up to the big balcony for a moment and look down at our lives and see the totality of it and know that it is good. Or good enough. I hope in the hurly burly days of the holidays, in the crazy rhythm of traditions old and new, in the strain of trying to get together with those we love but maybe don't always like, and the struggle to let go of what isn't working and embrace what is, that we have a moment of seeing what is important in our lives and know that we don't need to wish for anything less or more than we've been given.

and this is an owl picture for Sue because I know she likes them...