Entry Sixty.
Monday, 2007.12.10, 8:39 AM CST.
Snow Day!

Well, things are okay in the land of the Badger.  Not spectacular, but okay.  We are currently undergoing our first big ice storm of the season, and while the power in our house has flickered a bit, it has luckily not yet gone out.  Both Lanna and I are staying home from work today, rather than braving the icy roads.

On a personal note, my costochondritis has almost completely gone away over time; I can only feel it briefly if I cough hard, which luckily isn't happening often these days either.

We're getting closer to Christmas, which is going to be bittersweet.  Obviously, with Mum gone, Christmas won't be the same.  She hated the commercialism of Christmas, and she despised Christmas shopping, but she loved seeing the look on my face when she gave me presents.  I would often gently shake gifts or just move my hands around the outside, then I would try to guess what they were, a la Mike Seaver in "Growing Pains."  Also, we made a point to recycle wrapping paper (not because we were poor, but because I thought it was a nice way to be ecologically conservative), and over the years a single piece of wrapping paper could be used on numerous gifts.  The paper would just get smaller over time; a piece would start off covering a "big" present, then, as the years went by, it would be whittled down until it covered a small stocking stuffer.  It was fun.

This year, of course, the "sweet" part of this bittersweet Christmas is that we get to share it with my son, X.  X is 8 months old now, and he doesn't really know what's going on as far as the whole holiday thing goes.  However, I want to make sure that he never has a Christmas that is less fulfilling than the many wonderful ones I had when I was a kid.

[After typing that, I got sidetracked...  Then the ice storm caused us to have a power outage.  I will give more news about the day in the next Journal entry.]

- Badger