I know everybody is full of the Christmas spirit right now, busy shopping and wrapping presents and making plans for being with family or friends for the holiday. But here at our house, we are not really feeling it. We are just looking forward to all the holiday hype and hysteria being over with so life can get back to normal again. For both Terry and I, the real meaning of Christmas disappeared a long time ago, smothered in an ever-growing avalanche of commercialism. The sound of cash registers drowned out silver bells and Christmas carols.
Go to any shopping center or mall in the country and you will see people buying all kind of crap that nobody really needs, because some advertising whiz kid convinced them that their children’s lives will never be the same unless they find the latest Xbox or whatever the hot new toy is under the Christmas tree come Monday morning. Then they will bust their rear ends for the next 12 months paying off their credit cards, so they can do it all over again next Christmas. Meanwhile, ten minutes after they opened their presents the kids were bored with them and wanted something new.
The other day I actually read a post on Facebook by somebody saying that if they don’t get their kid the latest and greatest virtual reality headset, he will die. No, he won’t. I’m pretty good at doing research, and I cannot find any recorded proof that any kid ever died because they didn’t get the toy they wanted for Christmas. Then again, what the hell do I know? I’m probably just an old Scrooge. Bah humbug!
I spent a good part of yesterday working in my latest John Lee Quarrels book and managed to get in a little over 4,000 words. Meanwhile, Miss Terry was busy working on her loom. So both of us kept out of trouble.
Besides working on the new book, I spent some time trying to figure out why our automatic lawn sprinklers have not been working. I had turned the system off during the summer rainy season, and I thought I had turned it back on. But our grass turning brown was an indicator that I was wrong. As it turns out, at some point there was a power outage, maybe the one following Hurricane Irma, and apparently the system does not reset itself. So I had to spend a few minutes figuring out how to reset the clock and the timer to get everything working again.
A couple of weeks ago I told you that we had been watching the western miniseries Godless on Netflix. It was really good, and we are looking forward to the next season. Searching for something else to watch, we discovered another Netflix miniseries, Frontier. Set in 18th-century Canada, it’s the story of the native people and white renegades who battled the giant Hudson’s Bay Company for control of the lucrative fur trade. It was so good that we watched both seasons and we were hooked. It’s gritty, and the language and content isn’t suitable for children, but we are now eagerly waiting for the third season to begin.
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Thought For The Day – There are three stages in a man’s life: he believes in Santa Claus; he does not believe in Santa Claus; he is Santa Claus.
Source: Gypsy Journal