so this is christmas

I don’t remember much about Christmas eve--all of my posts are written well past the posted date. I did think it odd that I have zero excitement about Christmas, which I guess is the norm as you get older. Once upon a time, I couldn’t sleep for the excitement.
We started Christmas day at church, where I felt ill, physically ill, seeing a woman a few pews in front of me wearing a white mink coat. Hundreds of animals tortured for no other reason than allowing her to swan around in their skins. Having just bought a down coat, I am not without guilt in this regard. But the goose isn’t killed. And the awareness around the cruelty of fur coats predates awareness around down coats by a few decades. Maybe just another juicy rationalisation.
Christmas for me was making chicken salad out of chickpeas and tofu, making a nut roast for Christmas dinner, building a fire and feeding it all day, spending hours on mom’s Amazon Fire tablet, trying to resuscitate her yahoo account--she doesn’t know the password or answers to security questions. Trying to buy a book on kindle--complicated because Amazon wants me to be in the UK not the US.
All of this made me pretty frustrated. So I went for a long walk at the park nearby--a very hilly forest, stripped of leaves, bustling with squirrels and deer. The odd snatch of birdsong. That was probably the highlight of the day. And mom really loved the Wedgewood table mats I got her. She’s not sold on the Fire yet, but I’m working on it.
12-24, 25