Aurora Borealis

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.  Ours was quite enjoyable.  Agent Murphy is toddling around pretty well now, and Grandma enjoyed spending time with him.  The little stinker refused to nap on Christmas Eve, so we weren’t able to go to Mass together.  Mr. Tldz and I went Christmas Eve while Grandma stayed home with the Agent and got him to bed; then she went Christmas morning while we cooked.  In some ways, it was a nice treat to have a peaceful Mass without a toddler to look after.

We made food for an army, and we have loads of leftovers.  And the plum pudding turned out well, including the flaming brandy.  I’ll let Mr. Tldz fill in those details when he has a chance to post.  Good presents all around.  Agent Murphy particularly likes a couple of things Santa brought him – hammer balls (a bench with three holes that balls are pounded through with a mallet) and a Tigger ride-on airplane.  He hasn’t pounded the balls with the mallet yet, but he likes taking the balls in and out and banging the bench (and other things) with the mallet.  And he doesn’t like riding on his ride-on toy yet, but he likes pushing the buttons for all the sound effects, pushing it around, and putting things in the storage compartment under the seat.

Our Christmas cards have brought about a few re-connections.

Having Mr. Tldz home for a week was lovely, but it went too quickly, as usual.  At least New Year’s Day is coming up.  We’d hoped he’d be able to take vacation on the 2nd to make it a nice long weekend, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to be possible.  Agent Murphy and I drove Mr. Tldz to work this morning so he could bring in the plum pudding in all its non-pre-sliced glory to share with his co-workers.  Fortunately, holiday traffic patterns were evident.

The day after Chrismas, I got a good deal online on the needlepoint Christmas stockings and pewter stocking holders I’ve been wanting.  So next year, when hopefully Agent Murphy will understand a little more about Christmas, we shall have stockings!  As a kid I always loved looking in my stocking on Christmas morning.  I wonder what Santa puts in a little boy’s stocking?  I guess we shall see…

We’re hoping to make an Advent tradition out of plum pudding. Yes, we mean the old sort of english plum pudding. The kind that isn’t really a pudding and that contains no plums.

We’ve figured out the schedule. On the first Sunday of Advent, start getting the fruit drunk. (Technically, this continues during the first week of Advent, but after the initial session with the bottle of brandy, the following bouts only take a couple minutes per day. And there’s beef fat involved in this too, but for the moment all that is mere “detail.”) Sit the empty pudding mold out on the counter. The second Sunday of Advent is the day for the marathon steaming process. The only real tip I can offer at this point is to keep checking the water level in your pot. On the third Sunday of Advent, we just wait, and go out to eat somewhere local-ish that we like. There’s nothing to do to the pudding since it’s just sitting “in a cool place.” On the forth and final Sunday, we make the hard sauce.

We don’t know if the “recipe” I cobbled together is any good. We’ll find that out on Christmas Eve. At any rate, with as much alcohol as has gone into the production of this little experiment, and with our plan to light a little more alcohol on fire, we will feel quite festive.

If it ends up tasting good, we’ll post the recipe and let you all know where to find it. Until then, though, we resume our waiting and hoping.

So last night Agent Murphy and I just started on our way to pick up Mr. Tldz from the train.  I was stopped behind a long line of cars at a traffic light, and we were rear-ended.  I’m stiff and sore and feeling kind of yucky, but I think okay; and the Agent seems to be fine.  We are very happy for that.  But the woman who hit me apparently is telling her insurance company a very different story from what happened.  Now I’m kicking myself for not insisting on a police report.  But it seemed so straightforward, and the Agent was screaming and it was getting close to his dinner time…  Hopefully when I get into a claims inspection center, the damage to the car(s) will be pretty clear in telling what happened.  Her hood is crumpled up with other front end damage.  I have a big gash on the low panel at the back of my car and paint transfer all across the rear bumper, with apparently some denting to the tail pipe.  It looks pretty clear to me that we were hit straight on from behind.  Of course, the other driver’s policy has only been in effect since middle of November.  Did she get canceled by a previous company?  Maybe she’s trying to cover he a$$.  But shame on her for lying.

And of course our car seat manufacturer says we should replace the car seat.  They’ll send us a letter for the insurance, once we pull the seat out to get the model number and date of manufacture.

I hope it all works out without too much hassle.  ‘Cuz I have lots of extra time to deal with all this right at Christmastime.

Agent Murphy and I have returned from our field trip to the post office.  From departing home to returning, it took probably just over an hour.  Not too bad, but the post office clearly wasn’t staffed up for the day as they should have been.  But at least everyone was pleasant, Agent Murphy behaved himself, and our cards (with the exception of the few I’m waiting on addresses for from Mr. Tldz) and the few packages we’re sending out are on their way.

I thought I caught Agent Murphy the other day taking two or three steps without holding onto anything – and actually getting some forward motion.  (I’ve seen him take steps in place a number of times, but that’s been holding onto something.)  Today he’s definitely done so several times.  So I think it’s official – our boy is walking!  Lots more practice to do, but he’s walking.  Of course, The Dog bowled him over today, but at least that’s while he was sitting.  She got put in her box for a while as a result.

I should mention that Agent Murphy has made tremendous progress.  He gets a cup 3 times a day, and now he pretty regularly drinks at least a couple of ounces from it each time.  At lunch today he just about drained the cup.  Starting this next week, we’ll switch his breakfast bottle out for a cup, and then in a couple weeks his bed time bottle will become a cup with dinner.  For now, he only likes the one cup with the soft spout he can chew on.  Most of the larger cups seem to have harder spouts, so I think over the next few weeks we’ll do some work on drinking from the harder-spouted cup that is otherwise like the cup he likes and see where we get.  Right now I’m just happy he’s drinking from a cup.  Good boy!

The Dog made one today.  It seems someone felt it was just hunkey-dorey for them to open our relatively new drive-through gate, and of course, The Dog couldn’t resist the opportunity to go exploring.  The local city animal services picked her up and called.  So Agent Murphy and I bundled into the car to retrieve our puppy, who was sitting in a cage on the back of a truck.  The county animal services office was useless when I called them, so that’s just one more reason to support the annexation of our plot of land by the local city, instead of remaining an unincorporated piece of the county.  Too bad they messed up the recent ballot initiative on annexation.  But at least I feel confirmed in our decision to support annexation.

The gate is now chained and padlocked, since people feel the need to mess with it.  We’re glad our girl is safe.  Agent Murphy would have started to miss her, I think, if she’d been gone much longer.

MARTA got Mr. Tldz home in record time yesterday, which helped with getting to Mass for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception last night.  Of course, as we sang “My Soul in Stillness Waits” during the Communion procession, Agent Murphy let out a huge shriek.  No, Agent, stillness.  Pay no attention to the boy wandering up and down the pew.  I kind of miss sitting up front, but I guess I’m getting used to sitting in the back with our boy, the Loud One, and all the other young families who have self-relegated to the back rows.  (I definitely miss the days when he routinely would sleep through Mass.  Yes, he’s a lot more fun now – just not at Mass!)

New church is supposed to have a cry room.  Hopefully the Agent will catch on rather quickly that if he plays quietly in the pew, he can move around and play (for now); but if we have to go out, his feet don’t touch the floor.  Your choice, Kiddo.

Mr. Tldz worked from home yesterday so I could go vote without dragging Agent Murphy along.  (He voted absentee – Mr. Tldz, not The Agent.)  I went over after Agent Murphy went down for his afternoon nap.  Silly me, I thought school would be out of session yesterday – at least those schools used as polling places.  But no.  And my arrival during naptime coincided nicely with afternoon pickup.  What a nightmare. One of the teachers trying to manage the kids asked me, “Why did you come during dismissal?”  Umm, because the polls are open from 7-7, and this is when I could come.

It’s always struck me as odd when schools that are polling places are open for school during elections.  Seems like a disaster waiting to happen.  Anyway, very glad we’re sending Senator Chambliss back to Washington.