I’M JUST CURIOUS: The Christmas crunch

by Debbie Walker

I wish you the happiest and healthiest New Year! Hope you remember anyone who will be alone for the holidays.

We are all down to “Crunch time” for those Christmas projects, unless you are one of those …… I don’t knit or crochet, but I can cover empty toilet paper tubes with wrapping paper! I can imagine you are wondering, “Why in the world would you want to do that?”

With any luck at all I will be able to send a picture of my finished product to be put in with my column. (If it doesn’t get there, I am making Christmas trees with the tubes and wrapping paper.)

A friend asked me if I could make her eight of these trees. No problem. Remember that number. Last year I used it to package some gifts and not just be a decoration. This appealed to my friend who ordered eight trees. The number grew to 12, no problem, the number has since grown to 17 plus five others of my friends want one. “Crunch.”

I “planned” on starting this process up the first of November. Do you ever make plans like this? (There was no room to store these ‘til Christmas in a 26-foot camper!)

“Things” happen, of course. Nana Dee, of the Wandering Nanas, had open heart surgery November 9 to remove a benign mass. I have been shuttling back and forth to my home and hers for the “Keep Nana convalescing in her own home project,” by her family and friends. She is doing amazingly well. After just a month she has been released by her surgeon.

I have a lady for whom I do errands, grocery shopping and take her to appointments. I also just spend time with her. She has been a friend for years. She is 89 years young and has definitely earned the right to have somebody’s assistance. She is still able to live at home with the assistance of a cleaning lady, a handyman and me. I pick up the slack for her family. They are in Pennsylvania and Australia. I am her Florida family.

Okay, then I have the project of putting together 50 of my “I’M JUST CURIOUS” columns into a booklet for some of my family and friends. Finally figured out that I would make one copy and let one of the office supply stores make the rest of the copies. AND we all have had plenty to squeeze into this past week!

Hoping you enjoy this little added humor:

The traditional English folk song, The Twelve Days of Christmas was revised for a school Christmas program in Donna, Texas. The gift list: twelve fields of cotton, eleven owls a-hooting, ten deer a-running, nine jacks a-jumping, eight bonnets-blue, seven doves a-mourning, six armadillos, five oil wells, four prickly pears, three ruby reds, two Brahman bulls and a mockingbird in a magnolia tree.

“Christmas is the season when people run out of money before they run out of friends.”

One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas Day. Don’t clean it up too quickly.”

Have a wonderful Christmas and a happy, healthy, New Year! Contact me at DebbieWalker@townline.org. Thank you for reading, as always.