Last night I figured out why I'd been in such a good mood all day and that was because I was finally feeling like myself. I'd been feeling half sick for a few days with everything from a stomach that was not behaving properly to a headache to just general malaise. But yesterday I felt pretty terrific and I guess my reaction to that was to get all jiggy with the Christmas stuff and not be in a terrible depressed mood.
Or...could it be that I'd been feeling rather under the weather due to being in a depressed mood?
You know, some of us have such a strong mind-body connection it's often very difficult to know what's going on. Am I sick or am I just sick of life? Throw in some anxiety and things ramp up even more.
I don't know. Sixty-nine years in this mind and body of mine and I'm still never sure what's going on with either.
I was feeling pretty good today and went to town and did my usual Costco/Publix thing and went to another store to get a little gift for one of my kids and to Michaels to get some more battery operated lights and during that spate of time, I started feeling a little icky again. Now- was I "going back on myself" as Mr. Moon's mother used to call a relapse of an illness, or did the anxiety of being in town cause me to start up with the symptoms?
I do not know but I feel pretty okay now.
Well, except for the fact that Mr. Moon has spent most of today putting in a new hot water heater which of course also required him to take out the old hot water heater and oh yeah, buy a new hot water heater.
Our (very) old one was leaking and the water was seeping into the kitchen floor and god knows we don't need any more wood problems around here. In the parts of the house which are original, the floors were made of heart pine, as were the joists. Heart pine is like iron and the trees the wood was cut from were obviously extremely old and mature. They simply do not make trees like that anymore. Or at least, they've all long since been cut in the areas where pines are harvested for wood. So the floors in the original part of the house are fine for the most part, but there are some funky places in a few of the newer rooms. And by "newer" I mean probably a hundred years old instead of a hundred and sixty-five years old which, I realize, is practically brand new compared to many of the houses in other parts of the world but you know- we here in the good ol' U.S. of A. think ancient is anything over fifty years old.
How I do ramble.
The upshot of all of this is that a new hot water heater was required and of course my husband can replace his own damn hot water heater, thank you very much. So when I got home from the stores, he was just getting ready to connect the new gray beast but before too long he had to go BACK to town to get more tools and parts because that is how these things work. So we have no water, much less HOT water, but I did fill some gallon bowls and a pitcher and a pot of water in case this situation arose so we're okay. His goal is for us to have hot water for our showers tonight.
We shall see.
Because I have no other pictures and nothing else to discuss, I'll give you these pictures of all the kids' Christmas trees.
Hank and Rachel went to a tree farm and cut down their little guy.
What a fine and cheerful tree!
Lily and Lauren have a rainbow tree. Of course.
I love it!
May sent this picture of their tree last night before they decorated it.
A darling little tree. Beside it you can see the dressmaker's dummy that Michael bought May for her birthday, I think.
And finally, Jessie and Vergil's tree.
There's an area of the Apalachicola state park where, for a small fee, you can go out into the piney woods and cut your own tree and that's what they like to do. It is a bit spindly but it looks pretty much like all the trees my family had growing up. I don't think they even SOLD Christmas trees within five hundred miles of Roseland but anyone with an axe or saw could go cut one off the property beside the railroad tracks or out in the woods. And then we hauled the tree home and strung cranberries and popcorn to drape over the branches and lit the candles on them because electricity had not yet been invented and Dino the Dinosaur crawled up under the tree and snoozed away, dreaming of how he could somehow get rid of that damn saber-toothed tiger we had for a house cat.
Ah, the good old days.
And by the way- what happened to tinsel? Remember that shit? You could get regular or crinkled and your mom would always tell you to hang it strand by strand which no kid ever did, instead flinging it with abandon, and then out would come the spray can of a snow-like substance you could spray on the branches. It was probably pure asbestos. And then you'd go chase the mosquito spraying truck on your bike and delight in the lovely fragrance of DDT. Because trust me- in Roseland there were still mosquitoes at Christmas. Hell, Mr. Moon got eat UP with mosquitoes right here in Lloyd two days ago.
Why are we even still alive?
Again- I have no idea. And yet, here we are, celebrating (haha!) one more Christmas. I guess that's a good thing.
Love...Ms. Moon
Boy, those mosquito trucks were fun! Our tree was always huge and covered with ornaments...my dad would stare at it and make us move an ornament or change bulb colors so they weren't too uniform in spots. He was a tree fanatic.
ReplyDeleteYep! Mosquito trucks were awesome entertainment!
DeleteA tree fanatic can squelch your Christmas joy.
How fortunate to have a handy man in the house.
ReplyDeleteThe trees are all delightful. I love how everyone's tree is always different.
Is Maurice a direct descendent of your sabre tooth tiger?
Yes. Maurice is the multiple-grands daughter of my sabre tooth tiger. She has the original mother's fierceness.
DeleteYou are lucky Mr. Moon can do all he does, He got a good brand of heater too. All the trees are fun!
ReplyDeleteI swear- this man can do just about anything. I am so very lucky.
DeleteI always thought they were icicles and tinsel was the gaudy rope things. Maybe that was just in Ohio. Icicles were aluminum I think. I know it amused me as a child to look at how big my nose was in the shiny balls, which were shatteringly fragile.
ReplyDeleteSemantics, I guess.
DeleteThe shiny balls are still my favorites.
Many years ago, in my first house, the hot water heater failed and I think my heart failed learning the cost of a new heater. I bought one of those units hung on the wall that heated water on demand. There is a vast difference between that and a bona fide heater. We called it flash fried hot water. I almost had to buy a real heater when I sold the house, except the buyer was charmed. "They have those things in Europe!" I didn't say a word.
ReplyDeleteWe have those here, some of us anyway, they're the best because the hot water doesn't run out.
Delete"Flash fried hot water." Ha! We were thinking about getting the heater-on-demand thing and Glen said, "I'll have to discuss this with my environmental engineer to see how many years of using it it will take to recoup our investement." The Environmental Engineer is Vergil of course but I pointed out to Glen that we are on a time frame here when it comes to outliving our appliances.
DeleteWe got the regular kind.
River- our hot water doesn't run out very often and this tank holds more water so we should be good.
This blogpost is nice and upbeat and it's good to find you in a cheerful mood - no doubt giddy with the Christmas spirit you have imbibed. I really hope that Handyman Moon got the new heater up and running before the end of Tuesday but if he didn't - well what the hell - it will be fixed tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteHeater in place and functioning! Mr. Moon is a gem and a jewel.
DeleteChristmas cheer? Can't it just be regular cheer?
Tinsel: I have unopened packages of it from the attic of a house. I myself went off the stuff the year we had a new puppy who was fascinated with the tinsel. He kept eating it. Multiple times we were called upon to undecorate the dog's behind because he had only partially expelled a strand of tinsel.
ReplyDelete30 years later, holding unopened boxes of tinsel in an old house still made me shiver.
I have seen tinsel coming out the backside of a dog myself although I had forgotten that! Not fun. Oh, dogs.
DeleteI can see why you have such an innate and negative reaction to the stuff!
We had ropes of tinsel on trees, but I don't think those strands were available where I lived. I was introduced to them as an adult, and became one of the fling it in handfuls, then scoop it up off the floor and repeat, persuasion.
ReplyDeleteNowadays I like looking at other people's decorations. All the trees!
Yes! Scoop off the floor and toss it back on! That is the way it is done. Or was done.
DeleteI don't mind looking at other people's decorations either. They can be lovely.
I have never heard of mosquito trucks, here anyone who has them sprays their own mosqitoes. I only ever see a few if I am watering my garden early in the morning or at dusk.
ReplyDeleteI love all the kids Christmas trees.
Mosquito trucks are for large areas (generally rural) where it takes massive quantities of some sort of deadly poisonous fog to control the little fuckers. As we know, they do cause disease. And, in Florida (and many other southern states here) they are absolutely thick and can be and often are, torturous.
DeleteI like the trees, each different in their own style. Ah yes, mosquito trucks. I remember them "fogging" our neighborhood as well. And then more trucks would come and spray old oil on the dirt road to keep dust down, and when we went barefoot our feet would get brown. Talk about toxins!
ReplyDeleteLike I said- how are we still alive, Steve?
DeleteMr. Moon sure is handy. I've always wondered why we call those “hot” water heaters as opposed to water heaters. I love all the different trees. I miss our days in rural Connecticut cutting down our own tree and sledding it back to the barn to pay for it and have some hot chocolate or hot cider.
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness, Mitchell! I've never asked myself that question. The "hot" is rather redundant, isn't it?
DeleteDo they have Christmas trees in Spain? Is that a thing?
The tree farm where Hank and Rachel got their tree is like the one you describe in Connecticut- you go out and cut your tree and you drag it to the shed where you pay and get your cider. They wrap it all up in plastic which is not very environmentally friendly, is it? But it does make taking the tree home easier.
Christmas trees are popular here although nothing like in the States. The truly big tradition here is the Nativity Scene (called a Belen, which means Bethlehem). They can be enormous and elaborate and are not the standard “family” set-up. These are entire Bethlehem reproductions. I'll share at least one soon.
DeleteGlad Mr. Moon got that water heater installed and you have hot water for your shower.
ReplyDeleteI love all of the trees - each cute in its own way like each of your children!
I thought of that- how each tree was as different as the kids are.
DeleteEvery one of those trees is gorgeous. We have a very scraggly tree this year, with gaps, I keep looking at it askance, but my dear man brought it home one very cold evening, so I'm saying nothing about the lack of symmetry. Probably good for my OCD to contemplate a lack of symmetry anyway. And oh, I hooted when you started talking about tinsel and spray snow. I don't even know when those staples went away, but I sure am glad we don't have to deal with tinsel falling all season long.
ReplyDeleteAnd I swear- you'd find that tinsel in July! You'd just never really get rid of it entirely.
DeleteIn our house, Glen is the one who goes insane if things aren't shaped the way he thinks they should be. And don't get me started on the way he hangs pictures.
the original tinsel, the good kind, was lead so of course that had to be done away with and the new tinsel was plastic I guess. just not the same. mother's rule was place, don't throw. so of course we threw when she wasn't looking. I prefer real lop sided with holes trees, as if I ever get one which I don't, instead of the perfectly groomed and cone shaped tree farm trees. they are so fake forced into an unnatural shape.
ReplyDeleteglad you got your water heater in. I had to get a new one when Marc was in the hospital and what a mess that was but Rocky saw it through.
Yeah, once they quit making the kind with lead in it, the tinsel was definitely second-rate. So you're telling me that you like Jessie's tree the best? Haha! It's so sweet.
DeleteThe don't make the kind of tinsel we had as kids anymore. It had some sort of lead in it (which is why it was heavy, and draped neatly when you hung it, but not when you chucked it at the tree, which is of course what we did). I guess they are protecting us against ourselves!
ReplyDeleteOh yes. Well, lead truly can be a problem and I suppose it was a good thing they quit making that tinsel. And honestly, it was a damn mess. Although it could look pretty in the lights.
Delete