There once was a little old lady...

Have you ever noticed those little moments when your life intersects with another person - a stranger - on a regular basis?  The first time I ever noticed it was as a child, when I would stare out the window on the bus or during the morning carpool and I would see the same people every day going about their own daily routines.  In high school, my carpool would drive by a certain bus stop on the way to school, the same three people would be waiting for the same bus when we drove by.  I never knew who they were or where they were going or anything about them at all, but they mattered to me because I saw them every single day in the same place.

When that started to happen here, it made me feel as if we belonged.  We were no longer outsiders looking in, this was our home, our town, our people.  When I leave to pick up the children from school every day, I can tell if I'm early or late based on where the old man walking his dog is on his route.  On Sunday morning, the same husband and wife walk by our house every week at 9h30, with their walking sticks, clearly on their way for their weekly hike at the chateau.  There are two old shetland ponies that live somewhere on the other side of town.  Their owners take them for walks and they just passed by our window for their Sunday walk.

There is one little old lady that I see regularly, that has become a hero of sorts.  She is short, but not too short.  She is not fat, but she's not thin either.  She has glasses and short gray hair that she wears in a perm, but often it is covered with a rain scarf just like my grandma used to have.  I usually see her on the route to or from school, about half way between our house and the school.  She is usually dressed in a skirt, with nylons, black short "sensible" boots and a gray trench coat.  Sometimes I see her walking, pulling her grocery tote along behind her.  I've seen her hitchhiking once or twice, which makes me smile and think of my Great Aunt Rosella who used to hitchhike from Belle Plaine to bingo at Mystic Lake.  But my absolute favorite of all, is when I see her on her white motor scooter.  She wears a matching white helmet that seems to fit just right over her black glasses.  And she honks the little "beep beep" horn at everyone she passes along the way.

That's it, my mind is made up.  When I'm 80, I'm going to get myself the motor scooter that my parents forbid me to have when I was 16, and I'm going to ride around town and "beep beep" the horn at everyone I see.

Holiday Hangover

On Saturday night, we were invited to a neighbors' house for happy hour.  Happy "hour" turned into several hour(s) and at 10 o'clock at night our kids were finally home and tucked into their beds.  I should have expected as much.  After all, we were with an Irishman.  Yesterday, came with evidence that I cannot actually "drink champagne all night" like I originally boasted early on in the Saturday evening outing.   

It turned out to be a good metaphor.  For the last week, my entire family has suffered from holiday hangover.  It was next to impossible to get out of bed in the morning.  No one felt like doing much of anything all day, every day.  It required extra effort to go outside, even if the sun was shining.  We ate what was left of the Christmas cookies.  We went made frequent visits to frite guy.  We recovered, and it took an entire week. 

Today, the kids went back to school.  John left on a trip for work.  We all dragged our feet this morning, but everyone was ready, sort of.  We never reached that point where we made each other so crazy that we looked forward to today.  It was more like it was just time to go back to our regular lives.  And we did.     

It was a pretty awesome vacation doing absolutely nothing.

Shortcuts

The kids went back to school today, after two weeks of Christmas vacation. I think it was the first time where we haven't had visitors from the U.S. during the break.  Grandma came before Christmas, for three weeks, including Miss B's birthday, but was home in time for Christmas Eve.

We loved every minute with Grandma, and really appreciated the time we could spend with her - in those special weeks in anticipation of Christmas.  But when she left, I realized that having a visitor right up until the few days before Christmas means those few days before Christmas become jam-packed with last minute holiday preparations.

Not to brag or anything, but I breezed through these last couple of days without stress, thanks to the shortcuts.  Upon reviewing my mental list, and realizing there just weren't enough hours left in the countdown for the cookies I wanted to make, presents I wanted to wrap, food I needed to prep for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners.  Go skating, at the rink in town with the family?  Of course!  Who wants to miss out on that!  Go to lunch with a good friend? (that, by the way, was supposed to be a back-to-school lunch date and was pushed back all the way to Christmas).  Of course!

Thanks to the shortcuts.

I took shortcuts wherever possible.  Knowing my patience level with baking in general, let alone cutout Christmas cookies, I only mixed a half batch of dough.  It was brilliant.  Just at that point where I was getting sick of rolling out dough, and pressing in the cookie cutter shapes, I was done.  Choosing just two of the essential shapes (trees and stars), helped my decoration assembly line go much faster as well.  It would have made the Ford company proud.  When it came time to make John's favorite christmas cookie, I shortcut that as well.  I only baked one sheet of cookies - enough to put on a christmas cookie plate - and I saved the rest of the dough to bake after Christmas.  There were still plenty of cookies, and no one cared that most of the cutout cookies looked the same.

My dinner prep shortcuts worked as well.  I sauteed one giant pan of onions, portioning them out and adding mushrooms and garlic to one pan for the risotto, and celery to another for the stuffing.  My Christmas day dinner list was whittled down to the bare essential turkey trimmings - potatoes, vegetable, stuffing and gravy. I was glad to have saved a cup of cranberry sauce in the freezer leftover from Thanksgiving, and even more glad to remember that it was there.

All in all, it was a wonderful Christmas.  For the most part, free of the stress I usually shoulder, trying to make everything "perfect."  I was happy to settle for "adequate" in the details, and I think my family was pretty happy about that as well.