Happy Christmas--kinda late

I love singing Christmas carols. They are so beautiful. One year we went to an Anglican Christmas Eve midnight sevice--that was one of the most beautiful service I have ever attended. It was so formal and reverent and full of awe. We sang every verse to each carol. And, a little trivia for you, my favorite carols are O Come O Come Emmanuel and O Holy Night. What Child is This comes pretty close though.

I spent this year's season making the best Christmas carol playlist. Now that it is Christmas day, I want songs that I don't have. I want the happy songs, not the weepy ones. I woke up singing I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. I should have thought ahead.

I went crazy baking this year. I think it was some sort of coping mechanism. It was fun, but no more late night baking sessions for me for a while. I think that might be a bit over the top.

Thanks to a some very kind people in my life, I got Starbucks Christmas Blend for Christmas. Today I drank some, from a french press, with a spice cookie. WOW. I mean WOW. It was sooooooo good. I didn't realize how much I missed drinking premium coffee. Verona, with dark chocolate, Sanani with cranberries--there is nothing like it. I might like black coffee more than a latte, or an Americano.

My life is full and good, immeasurably better than I deserve. Still, I wish there were more people physically in my life that knew me, that really knew me. I love you guys :)

The two stages

Did you know that there are two stages of weevil life? Two. They live out their youth as small eggshell colored larvae. Then they ascend into adulthood as regular black weevils. If you knew this, you are ahead of me. I didn't even know how to spell weevil, but thankfully spell check did. I also thought that they were only black, and obvious in flour.

It is Christmas time. The season of advent needs no extra frills in order for me to appreciate its meaning. However, making cookies around this time of year is fun and generates a sweet feeling of nostalgia. And who doesn't like to eat cookies? So, I have gone a crazy baking. At least, I started baking and decided to enter into true insanity this evening by making an egregious amount of snickerdoodles. My plan has been foiled. It has been foiled by the first kind of weevil. The light in the kitchen shines dimly, and I did not check the flour closely until it was too late. Now I have a ridiculous amount of useless batter. I feel defeated.

I would make more batter, but I have nearly run out of butter, and cookies are not worth their salt without fat. I do not have the energy to go to the store to buy more butter. I planned to give my friends cookies tomorrow as a gift. Maybe I will do the unspeakable and buy store bought cookies.

"let your love rage like a lion" andrew osenga

Movement

A good friend here has commented on how quiet i have been. Am I becoming a quieter person? I don't know. But I know for certain that there are times when I have no idea of what to say so I say nothing, times when getting across what I want to say would take more effort than I can give, times when I don't want to say anything at all, and times when I want someone around who will hear my words in the context of who I am.

I spend free time on the internet looking for great song writers and musicians. I keep "discovering" people that most people have known for years, loving musicians I merely liked before. I never did this in America--I even listened to the radio there but mostly because I had a very loved but very old car. I suppose it isn't the worst way to spend free time, especially since I haven't yet been able to watch a movie straight through. What has happened to my attention span?

Arabic isn't too bad these days. I still don't understand most of what people say to me, but I enjoy learning it and see progress in class. I might even characterize it as fun...