Our Christmas Letter, 2015

CHRISTMAS #2

26 December 2015

It started out as a weird Christmas morning.  With no kids here, and nobody expected there was no big Christmas breakfast, nobody to squeeze a bazillion oranges for juice.  I did make Trader Joe's chocolate croissants.  Sometime during the morning, Walt said "I guess we could open each other's presents?"  So we did.  We now have a DVD/VCR player again, something we have not had in more than a year.  Can hardly wait to get it installed.  And Walt has a fancy new watch.

I called my mother around 10 to wish her a Merry Christmas.  She didn't know it was Christmas.  I told her we would come and have dinner with her, knowing full well she would not remember when we got there--and she didn't, though was happy to see us.

But the day itself was just like any other day.  I worked in my office and watched an NCIS "Gibbs rules" marathon.  Walt and I both took naps.  At 4 we went to Atria.  And of course she was surprised to see us and didn't know it was Christmas.  When I plugged in her tree (she always unplugs it after we leave), she told me over and over again how much she enjoys the tree (last time I saw her she was concerned about how she was going to get rid of it) and how she could never forget it was Christmas because the tree always reminds her.

We brought egg nog and brandy and had a nice pre-dinner drink.

Then I gave her her gifts -- White Shoulders perfume, which she used to wear all the time when I was growing up ("didn't I have a boyfriend who liked this perfume?" ... I reminded her it was my father who liked it), some new underwear (I can go 3 days longer now before doing her laundry!), and some slippers that were a last minute impulse purchase, but which seemed to be her favorite gift.  She was surprisingly delighted with everything (last year she just told me she didn't need anything and didn't want anything).  It was fun to watch her delight.

We went to the Atria restaurant for dinner.  They had their "big" Christmas meal at noon, a prime rib buffet, which, of course, my mother did not attend.  There were so few residents at dinner that they had blocked off half of the tables.  We had the choice of turkey tetrazzini or crab cakes and of course all of us chose crab cakes.  We were ultimately joined by Robert, the guy my other always refers to as her "boyfriend."  He's a couple of years older than she and is a retired surgical veterinarian and a published author, who regaled us with the plot of the story he had written this afternoon.  (He has a reading once a week at Atria...I think he said that he usually has an audience of one!)

It was all lovely and we really had a good time. Walt and I planned to drive around Davis and look at lights, but it was about time for Jeopardy and we were both tired anyway, so we just came home and stayed.  The dogs were happy.

Tomorrow Tom and the family will come to Atria at 11 and we'll have Christmas #3 and then lunch in the dining room.