See You Next Year

Well, by some miracle, we made it through another year.

This New Year's Eve, just like last New Year's Eve, and pretty much every New Year's Eve in recent memory, I tucked Sam into bed and I said, "Well, I'll tell you the same thing I tell you every New Year's Eve..." But unlike last those past New Year's Eves, Sam smiled before I finished, and I asked if he knew what I was going to say - and he did.

So, I didn't need to finish it.

But I did explain to him about that time the my dad told it to me... just in case he forgot that part of the story. And we hugged and said goodnight.

I hope for a good night, a good year ahead, and a good life for you.

Let's close the year off, as always, with this...

At the Movies, Part ll

What was my second favorite part of the movie, you ask? Another good question!

Picture this: In search of a mighty, hidden trident (again, don't ask), our hero and heroine are flying over the Sahara Desert in the back of a cargo plane. Also in the back of the plane are a few caged animals and some other crates of cargo-like stuff.

At one point, our heroine somehow decides they're close to where the trident must be buried, so she does what any reasonable person does - she rips the door off of the back of the cargo plane.

With the air rushing in, she stands in the doorway, makes some sort of remark - and then she jumps out of the still-flying plane (sans parachute), and sails down to the distant dunes below.

Next, our hero goes over, stands in the doorway, makes some witty remark to the pilot - and, with the wind still rushing in, he too jumps out of the plane (also sans parachute), eventually tumbling down alongside our heroine, onto the hot desert sands.

Sam leans over to me and says, "I'm sure those animals will be ok... right?"

At the Movies

I brought Sam to the movies this afternoon. What was the movie, you ask? Aquaman, but that's irrelevant.

What was the best part of the movie, you ask? Good question! The best part happened near the beginning of the movie.

Pirates had just taken over a submarine (don't ask). After the pirates had, shall we say, "disabled" much of the crew, the Lead Pirate captures the captain of the sub. The captain tells L.P. something, which I couldn't make it out, and L.P. responds by saying to the captain, "I'll make a deal with you. I don't tell you how to captain - and you don't tell me how to pirate!" - then he stabs the captain, killing him.

From the darkness of the theater, you hear Sam say, "WHAAAT??!?? THAT'S NOT A DEAL!!!!

That was the best part. Two thumbs up.

Tonight's Brief Comment

Blah. (My apologies if this has been stated before... but it bears repeating.)

On Our Next Episode: The Boys' Room.

A Christmas Classic (To Me, Anyway)

Six years ago (!), I wrote this post about the movie "Scrooge". (Technically, it's "A Christmas Carrol" but the movie goes by the name "Scrooge", so that's what I'm sticking with.)

Anyway, if you bother to read the post (and I won't hold it against you if you don't) you'll notice that I mention, more than once, how much I liked this movie. I still  do.

After a year or two of being too busy to watch it, I'm happy that we watched it again this year. I'm going to do you a favor and embed the movie right here, but first, a couple of tips.

First of all, watch this at night, in an all-dark room (having the Christmas tree lights on is ok -- but that's IT!). The other thing is, be prepared to get choked up when Scrooge is (spoiler alert!) visited by the Ghost of Things Yet to Come and watches as Bob Cratchit (spoiler alert again!) tears up over the loss of Tiny Tim.

This chokes me up Every. Single. Time.

Anyway, set aside less than an hour and a half of your so-called precious time and watch the movie preferably with someone you care about (but alone is ok,  too).

You can thank me later.

Christmas Eve

Even though Christmas Eve was several nights ago, I've decided to back date this post and pretend it is Christmas Eve all over again.

I could have written a little something about it at the time but I not only didn't have the motivation, I also didn't want to detract from the too-fast Christmas and Christmas Eve while it was happening.

Now that things have (unfortunately) quieted down, I'll take the minute or two to post these exciting photos.

Let's start with the Christmas Eve decorating of cookies...

Here's a closeup of Sam's tray before cooking. Note that some of the sugar actually made it onto the cookies. Also note the traditional Christmas Dinosaur.

Let's flash forward to just before bedtime. This is when Sam writes a letter to Santa. Every year I wonder if last year was the last time he'll write to Santa but, so far anyway, he continues with the letters.

Santa wrote a response, but I didn't think it was anything special - so I'm not bothering to post it. Sam must have liked it though. For the second year in a row, he wanted to make sure I saved it. (I did.)

And here's another flash forward - this time to when all of the kids are in bed and the stockings are stuffed and waiting for morning - a morning which came (and went) all too quickly.

I hope you had a merry Christmas.

And I hope your Christmas and Christmas Eve went by a lot slower than mine did for me.

Bedtime on Christmas Eve Eve

As I'm covering Sam up at bedtime, thoughts turn to tomorrow night...

Sam: "... And I'll write another letter to Santa... 

***pause***

"Maybe I'll tell him about how I'm out there in the world and the school's not helping me as much anymore."

***pause***

"And I can tell him about my ears…."

***pause***

***pause***

"... He really does give good advice."

 Me: "Yeah, I guess sometimes he does."

Goodnight, Sam. I love you.

Today's Update

Yesterday, I received my first mailing from SSI in, oh, I don’t know how long. The fact that I received this is, of course, my own fault. I had just been thinking about how, thankfully, I hadn’t heard anything from SSI lately. Obviously, this was a mistake on my part. I shouldn’t have thought about it, at all.

But I did, so here we are.

The mailing I received was thanking me for reporting Sam’s income for the month of November and it stated that I will be contacted "shortly" about adjustments to Sam’s income.

I had a couple of questions about this. I should probably have even more questions than just a couple, but since I don’t know what I’m doing, only a couple sprang to mind.

My first question was, do they know that Sam is still a student (please see cover sheets to my faxes and, hopefully, notes from my many, many phone calls on this very topic)? I won’t go into a lot of detail here (because I have before and I don't fell like it right now) but basically, the fact that Sam is still a student negates the issue of wage adjustment. So, that's Question One.

Question Two is, I've been reporting Sam’s income for several months, so why am I just now receiving this paperwork? Which I guess leads to the implied Question Number Three which is, should I have been receiving this type of paperwork right along?

Rather than wait for the anvil, currently hanging over my head by a fraying rope, to fall on me, I tried calling SSI right away.

By this point, it was close to the end of their day but I figured it was worth a try.

I made it through their comprehensive voicemail system - only to reach the brick wall recording, telling me that all representatives were busy and to please try again later - and then it hung up on me.

With only a couple of minutes until they closed, I had no choice but to let the rope continue to fray until morning.

So, I called again this morning and amazingly, AMAZINGLY (!), I waited almost no time at all (!) before I was able to talk to a polite and helpful (and no, that’s not sarcasm) SSI representative.

After an arm’s length of security questions (to make sure I am who I say I am) and another arm's length of more security questions (to make sure Sam is who I say he is), we had a long phone conversation, where she said, among other things, that if I think I’m buried in paperwork now, just wait until Sam's no longer a student. (I believe her phrase was something along the lines of, “You’ll be able to wallpaper your entire house in no time, with all of the paperwork you’ll be getting.”)

Aside from that helpful anecdote, she also told me what information I needed to re-fax and to whose attention I needed to re-fax to - all of which has since been done.

Now, there’s nothing to do but sit back and relax. And to not think about how smoothly everything is going. At least, until next time.

Tonight's Music Video

Today's Video (Comments)

Lately, I spend way too much time watching rat videos before bedtime. (This might explain, in part, why I don't sleep that great.)

Anyway, below is a link* to one of apparently thousands and thousands of on-line videos on how to catch a rat. I wouldn't waste a whole lot of time watching the video. In fact, do yourself a favor and don't watch it at all (unless you have an interest in trying to catch a rat).

The reason I post this is because I think the comments are pretty entertaining - and I happen to agree with the vast bulk of them.

Here you go (and if you don't want to dream about rats, don't watch the video before bedtime. Better yet, just click on mute, skip the video altogether and go straight to the viewer comments). Here's the link.

(Remember, don't watch the video.)

*This post has been edited. Out of habit, I originally embedded the rat video, but then I realized that, a) you would have been needlessly forced to watch a rat video, and b) you would have missed out on the reader comments - which was the entire point of this post.

Tonight's Music Video

Not exactly "of the season" but it will do for a distraction...

Holiday Help - P.S.

Apparently, once again I'm late getting on the train - or in this case, the Weird Nativity Scene Train (see previous post).

Here's an article about someone who collects them. Are they for sale? I have no idea. I didn't bother to read the article. I only looked at the pictures.

Holiday Help

In case you've been asking yourself, "Where can I find a nativity scene made up entirely of cat figurines?" - well, look no further. You can find exactly what you're looking for right here!

Please note, it does mention that it's a "Limited-edition", so you may want to hop all over this.

Meeting My Goals

I have an app on my phone, ironically named “Fit.” This app measures my footsteps, along with and any other theoretical exercise I might accidentally be performing.

I don’t pay a lot of attention to this thing. The only times I really pay any attention to it is when Sam and I are on walks - which, except for the occasional Pokemon Go! event, is currently pretty infrequent.

The only other time I pay attention to this app is when it suggests that maybe I should consider reducing my goals - which is kind of surprising since I didn’t know I had any goals - exercise or otherwise.

Anyway, being the sheep that I am, I followed the recommendation and reduced my alleged goal - which apparently I didn't reduce low enough, because it kept telling me to reduce it even more.

I’m happy to report that now, for the first time in quite a while, I got a “congratulations” on meeting this latest reduced goal. It seems my goal is now so low that all it takes for me to meet it, is to walk from my car to the back of the local Walmart and then back to the car again - which, by the way, I did while barely working up a sweat.

I’m feeling pretty good about this.

Now, all I have to do is to continue to reduce all of my other goals - which I’ll do, once I figure out what they are.

The Festivities Begin

With blinding speed, we somehow managed to pick out, buy and decorate our Christmas tree on Thanksgiving Day. This, of course, was driven by the tight schedule and availability of my kids. My schedule, if you can even call it that, is pretty much non existent. But the kids - like it or not, they all had places they needed to get to so Thanksgiving Day was going to be the only time we would all be together until Christmas.

So, after repeatedly harassing the local tree farm, we were given a half hour window for when someone would be around and if we wanted to roll the dice, we could drive down and get a tree - which is exactly what we wanted to do.

With a few exceptions, we normally like to wander the farm and pick out what we consider to be the perfect tree (or, as close as we can get to it with what’s available), cut it down, and then haul it back home.

This year, there was no time for this - which was just fine. The temperature was so bitter that even given the opportunity, wandering through a tree covered field in the frigid cold was not high up on anyone’s list.

So, we bombed down to the tree farm, picked out a pre-cut tree, threw it on the roof of the car, drove back and then set it in the tree stand - all in record time. Start to finish, it was less than half an hour. Add a couple of hours to put on the lights and decorate it, and presto! - all ready for Christmas! (Well, except for buying presents, wrapping them, decorating the house with the other decorations (if we feel like it), etc, etc - you get the idea.)

In the end, it all worked out fine.

Later in the day, Helaina and Jake took off for their respective visits and obligations, and the following day, Rachael headed back to The Big City - leaving nothing but the settling dust and me and a Christmas tree, waiting to be together again on Christmas.