I am really tired of the ongoing feud between my mother and youngest sister, and I grow weary of trying to play peacemaker. Both feel wronged. Both refuse to budge. They talk at each other, but not to each other. It gets worse around the holidays. It’s only going to get uglier now that there is a grandchild on the way. I’m making one last attempt to nudge them into working out their own truce…
My holiday greeting this year:
I measured 11.5 inches of snow in my front yard. The bird bath in my backyard now wears a white top hat. Last night, the lights of the city reflected against the snow on the ground and the snow in the air to form an eerie brightness, as if it were still late afternoon.
I put up the Christmas tree this morning, aided by a pot of coffee and Trans Siberian Orchestra cranked up on the stereo. I’m still not feeling like Christmas, but the Christmas Spirit has a lot of muck to wade through to get to me this year. The tree is a fake. When I bought it, I rigged the lights so that I can pull the tree apart for storage without removing the lights. (Yes,…
For some inexplicable reason, the name of my last piano teacher popped into my head. I haven’t thought about him in about 25 years, so I Googled him. He wasn’t your average schoolteacher enduring dissonance to make a few extra bucks after hours. He was supposedly some former musical child prodigy. To study with him, you had to have references, and you had to attend both a group session on music theory and a private…
