Well! Here we are at Christmas Eve! We are attending a service today ~ tomorrow ~ and Saturday. Yep, that is, as I've heard from one of my Orthodox friends "a lot of church", lol. Old calendar Orthodox will celebrate the nativity on January 7th. New calendar Orthodox like myself will stick with the 25th of December. It is both humorous and confusing, at least to me. Gregorian calendar (which is the one most of the world uses) was established by Pope Gregory in 1582, to modify and correct errors in the Julian calendar (yep, named for Julius Caesar). I love history, but I thought it best not to subject you to more than this, unless you are interested, go here.
We did not buy each other gifts this year. This was a relief to Romeo, who unfortunately really sucks at picking out gifts. No matter how many hints I give! Some years I've bought the gift, let him wrap it, etc..... He never wants gifts, every year he says there's nothing he wants. For all I know I may suck at gift giving too, so there's that!
It has been very cold. Nights in the teens, highs in the 30s or 40s. No snow, which surprised me when we first moved here. I thought we would more often than not have a white Christmas, but in the last 25 years, it's only happened a couple of times. When living in San Antonio (Texas) we sometimes had temps in the 70s at Christmas.
I have stopped baking. It is not very fun anymore! I have given away 85% of it, and still need to finish baking the cookies I started on Sunday. I'll get to those eventually, and will give those away too, but the recipient won't get them until after Christmas. I just didn't have time.
Today marks the first of 11 days I have off until Jan. 4th. Our dental office has given us a week off, paid. We were all so excited, and ready. This has been an exhausting year, and very stressful. We got the word that we will soon be able to get the vaccine if we want it ~ they aren't making it mandatory. We have a few that aren't going for it, because they believe it's been developed too quickly. We also have a couple of folks that believe all the conspiracy theories that it will be "the mark of the beast" and all that nonsense. I don't know when we will be scheduled, but perhaps soon? Even though I am not a hygienist or assistant, I do come in to contact with 20-30 patients a day. I take their temperature which it close contact, although only for 1/2 a minute or so, then we distance for the screening questions (fever-cough-difficulty breathing-loss of sense of taste or smell-exposure to anyone positive-pending Covid test-travel outside the state in the past 14 days). We still have people who will come in without a mask, or wearing it under their nose. And people still give us "the look" when we ask them to put one on (we supply if they don't have one) or to wear it over their nose. What the heck? It's been nearly 10 months! One young guy grumbled how we are going to clean his teeth with his mask on.....the educational system isn't really doing it's job in our state.
And now.....
Merry Christmas to you all!
Love, 365
Love your cartoons, especially the last one. Merry Christmas to you and Romeo.
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas!! On that last one: I wish I had that tip when my kids were little....but not sure I could have gone through with it :-D
DeleteLove those jokes. I must tell my daughter about that last one, throwing a present in the fire when they act up. Perfect!!
ReplyDeleteShe and her family will go to church tomorrow morning. They can't go inside but candles are put outside and they can stand and listen.
Have a very merry Xmas. Enjoy your holy-days and your holidays.
All the best. It has been great following your blog from so far away
Oops, my reply is below......
DeleteI do enjoy your blog so much! It gives me a tiny taste of Greece :-)
ReplyDeleteWe went to church on Christmas Eve, but decided not to go today. It is too cold to do church outside here, and I am thankful that we can go inside although there are limits.