Boxing Day

For us, the day after Christmas is almost always the day I take down and pack up the Christmas decorations for another year. It is always a contemplative time, tinged with a little sadness and a lot of relief! I rather liked my birds' nest collection awaiting being wrapped and boxed. Many of them were brought to me by my kids, who found them on their travels round the neighborhood. (I put them in a plastic bag in the freezer to "sterilize" them.)

OilMan succumbed to his man cold, and took himself to the doctor for a sinus infection.  Ozzie  has been shaking his head a lot, so he went to the vet for what turns out to be an ear infection.. Reminds me for the year we took Matthew to the doctor on Christmas Eve in Edinburgh for what we felt sure was an ear infection. The doctor came to the door in his dressing gown with a bottle of penicillin in one hand, which he thrust at us, and a wee dram in the other, which I presume he continued to enjoy after we interrupted him. He never even glanced at Matt.

Our long lost bar stools, ordered on November 1st, have finally surfaced and will be delivered in Napa tomorrow. As I heard OilMan saying to someone he was talking to, trying to track them down, it would have been faster by Pony Express!

My beloved Leica was also returned to me today, fully repaired at no charge, and with holiday greetings from the folks at the Leica repair place.

After the pleasantly hectic days of Christmas, and the unpleasant nights interrupted by man coughing and dog head shaking, the stars are beginning to align themselves again. A recent article in the newspaper claimed that reading by "device" at night interrupts our circadian rhythms and our normal sleep patterns, but I think there are plenty of other ways to do that….