As I begin writing this I'm not planning on writing another Christmas entry but these two little charmers are so cute, aren't they?  They just put you in the spirit!

I'm going to write about hair.  My hair in particular.  Once upon a time a million years ago I had lovely long chestnutty brown locks that waved their way down past my shoulders.  At 54-in-a-few-days, I have more white than silvery curls now.  And when I say curls, I mean curls.  I've kept my hair short for several years, trying to keep this unruly mop halfway civilized looking but my Dear Hubby said to me a few months back rather wistfully, "I sure wish you'd grow your hair out again.  I like it so much better longer!"  Well, I hate longer hair on older women but, since he grows a goatee that he hates to keep me happy, I felt the least I could do was grow my hair out a little bit.  Definitely not down to my shoulders, but...longer than 3" or 4" in length at least.  So...I began letting it grow.  Is there anything worse in this world than the in-between stage of hair growing?!   I can't begin to tell you how many times I've been tempted since agreeing to this plan to go and have it all whacked off again!  But now, a few months in to it, I'm finding out I'm glad I let it grow.  I haven't had my hair long since it's been silvery-white so I had no idea what it'd do if I let it grow.  I figured it was so wiry and curly short it'd probably be a frizz-ball long...but actually the curls are relaxing quite a bit.  They aren't the soft barely-there waves of my youth but my hair now sits down on my head and behaves itself the way it's supposed to.  All I've been doing is trimming up the fringe of bangs I have along the way.   I have to go in and renew my driver's license in the next week or so and I'm thinking maybe I'll have a halfway decent photo for once.  At least I won't look like I came in after putting my finger in an electric socket!

I haven't decorated my house at all for the holidays.  For one thing, my very active little grandson would be into everything all day long and he keeps me busy enough 10 hours a day without adding that to our days, too.  Did I say this wouldn't be about Christmas?  Well, I've got stacks of Christmas cards all over the house that have been sent to us.  I've lost count of how many.  A lot.  And my daughter asked me the other day, "Aren't you at least going to hang those up for decorations?"  I have good intentions to do so but I haven't gotten to it yet.  So they sit in stacks all around the kitchen and dining room and living room and I look at them and I think, "Today."  Or, "Tomorrow."  But todays and tomorrows are slipping into too many yesterdays and I still don't have them up.  We got a beautiful card from my very dear church email friend I've written about on my blog here a couple of times in the past.  A lovely, long hand-written note inside.  And what had I sent to her and her husband?  I was so rushed with cards this year I think I wrote:  Love, Dear Hubby & Kris.  Stuff like that makes me feel like a lazy heel.  Ouch.  Honestly, I'm NOT lazy.  I'm not.  Frazzled.  But not lazy.

Oh, why not go ahead and make this another holiday entry?  With a birthday right around Christmas I always felt like I was missing out on something when I was little.  My parents were so broke after present-buying I usually got one nice birthday gift...one year I remember getting a Cinderella watch with a pink wristband that I loved.  I never had a birthday party because most of my friends' families either visited relatives or had family-related get togethers during the holidays.  I did get to choose whatever I wanted for dinner on my birthday, and I got to choose the cake and ice cream flavors, too.  But my brothers also got to do that on their birthdays so I never felt there was something special just for me on my 'special day.'  I think I was 6 when my mother decided to give me a half-year birthday party in June just so I could experience a real birthday.  It was fun and it was appreciated...but I told her at the end of the day she didn't have to do it again.  Because, you see, it really wasn't my birthday and I knew it.  I've always been too practical and literal-minded to be able to "pretend" stuff like that.  And my mom understood that and agreed to go back to celebrating on my 'real' day.

One of the sweetest things anyone ever did for me on my 'real' birthday was around the time my mom died, back in 1989.  I belonged to a Secret Pal club at my church and on my birthday my Secret Pal sent me a beautiful bouquet of flowers.  She and two other friends took me out to lunch at an expensive restaurant down on Portland's waterfront...tho at the time I had no idea it was Donna who'd gotten the lunch together and paid for the whole thing...they'd all just told me they were going to pick me up and take me out on my birthday to 'cover' Donna's surprise.  She's such a special person...for my "revealing gift" she'd taken a poem I'd written about my mother right after she'd died and spent a year cross-stitching it onto a gorgeous sampler.  I have it hung on the wall in my bedroom. 

Goodness.  I dunno what's come over me the past few days.  I think I'm trying to convince myself that I do have the holiday spirit this year, and some of these memories that are coming to me as I sit down to type in the evening certainly are helping to restore it somewhat.  I dunno.  I can't dwell on a lot of the things in the past, the Christmases I would've loved to spend differently than we had to.  They're gone, never to be relived.  So I've been having a talk with myself this year, telling myself to focus on the Christmases of the future.  Lord willing there are more.  There's no guarantee on that or even tomorrow.  Each day is precious.  And I am blessed.  And I am happy.  And I may not have all this world's goods, but I'm one of the richest women in the world.