Yes - if Kindle just doesn't do it for you, spray a little of Smell of Books in a can! You can choose between that new book smell, "eau you have cats" or my personal favourite, the classic musty book smell. Ah the smell of a library in a can - surely life is complete now!
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I want to start playing Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole Christmas songs and to dive into the cupboard under the stairs to find all the bits that make up our Christmas tree. I want to deck the halls with holly and tralalalalala. I want to make a list and check it twice.
This is probably the first Christmas that I will decorate the tree alone, now that both daughters no longer live at home. Daughter1 and The Boy have just bought their own tree and are on the way to setting their own traditions.
It is funny what traditions get carried on by our families. When Mr FD and I celebrated our first Christmas together, I bought a little Mr and Mrs Claus tree ornament and set it right in the middle of the tree. Every year since Mr and Mrs Claus have reclaimed their position. The other day Daughter1 told me that she had been driving The Boy crazy in her search for the perfect Mr and Mrs Claus for their tree. She must have a Mr and Mrs Claus too. It makes me smile to think of their future with their tree. They are so filled with hope and plans.
This is the first Christmas in years and years where I don't have to work like crazy up to the last moment. I have time to enjoy and indulge myself in all the Christmas joys I wish. All I am asking Santa for is a job...and I have been good...well mostly good...as good as a Flamingo Dancer can be. Maybe I had better bake extra cookies for him...
]]>Now that Mr FD is working from home and I am mistress of my own time, he has taken to asking me to accompany him on short trips about town, such as if he is dropping seed off for testing and knows he won't be away from the car long. I take a drink bottle and a book and sit under the shade of a tree for a few minutes if the car is too hot.
However, I draw the line at his whistling and calling "here girl!" when he wants to leave.
Mr FD has started describing people as being "about our age". As Mr FD is eight years older than I am, I am not sure that I am happy about that at all! Thin edge of the wedge!
]]>What do you give a 92 year old man and an 87 year old woman for Christmas? No not a funeral plan! We are purchasing "access ro clean water for a child" through CARE Australia for Mr FD's parents as their Christmas gift. Think about others less fortunate this Christmas ... think of gifts that keep on giving. Needs not wants...
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I went to the bank today and there was a young man undertaking training to be a teller. An older woman was assisting him through the steps. Throughout the transaction they appeared to be competing with each other to engage me in conversation. It was difficult to hear them through the vertical slit in the perspex screen and so I often had to ask them to repeat what they were saying. I guessed the gist of the conversation was that they were asking me what kind of day I was having and what I planned to do.
I stood and looked at them. Blank. My mind was a totally empty vessel. For the first time in months I did not have a long to do list, I did not have assignment tasks or lesson plans running around in my head. Totally blank, clean slate. It took until today for me to realise what freedom I temporarily possess. Until I am offered a teaching position I can be as mindless and thoughtless as I wish.
I blinked at the tandem tellers. "I am going to buy a Christmas ham", I said and smiled. Some total of my life today. It feels good.
]]>Mr FD has had his new car for 10 days or so now. He wanted to reset the trip meter and so spent an hour going through the handbook trying to discover how to do so. He was instructed to use the multi function display toggle knob but could not find it pictured in the handbook. After the hour I suggested he actually go out and "fiddle with things" in the car. Within minutes he was toggling with excitement [ perhaps a slight exaggeration, but he did achieve his goal].
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My second hand copy of Marjorie Lawrence's autobiography Interrupted Melody arrived! It was sitting on my doorstep when I walked down stairs and I was so worried as I ripped open the packaging. I so did not want it to be dirty, or grotty or realy damaged. It wasn't! It was in even better condition than the bookseller had described. I felt like I was handling the past.
and as I browsed the pages - and on page 180...
I felt like I was stepping back in time.
Who had placed the flowers within the book's pages? What did the flowers mean to them? Had they been in vase in the bookshop the day Marjorie signed the book and the book's owner kept them as a memento? Were they flowers given with love? Picked from a garden on a spring evening? Flowers worn as a corsage to a night of opera?
Suddenly, the past came into the present. I felt as though I had embarked on a romantic mystery and that I must go out into the night, mist swirling about me, to discover the story behind the flowers in my book. Was it romance? Regret? Hope? Joy? Sorrow? I can only imagine...I'd like to think that whatever the reason for the flowers being placed within the pages, that it was connected to happiness,,,
The book was superb reading - I read it in one night. I could not put it down. She told of her childhood: the loss of her mother when she was 2, the years spent with her Grandmother, her musical education, running away from home to pursue her dreams, journey to Paris and then to Neg w York, the finding of a love that lasted a life time, her battle with polio and struggling to regain her operatic career. Sometimes she was humble and grateful, at other times she was the great artist, confident and sure of her talent, craving the adulation of her public. I do not follow opera in any way - I do not understand opera at all, but I found this biography of Marjorie Lawrence, to be enthralling. Marjorie reached across the years and made me another one of her devoted fans.
I only wish there had been another chapter...
]]>I was watching Sarah Palin being interviewed - I have forgotten by whom now, there has been so many this week, probably Barbara Walters - and she was asked if she agreed to Israel expanding their settlements and Sarah said yes, as "in the days, and weeks and years ahead" that people would be "flocking" to these areas and so they needed to expand. When she was asked about the Palestinians she just repeated that Israel needed more room. Is her foreign policy to sterilise everyone in Palestine so that their populations don't grow? What is her foreign policy?
I saw the long lines of Sarah supporters lining up outside bookstores waiting for 32 seconds with her and it made me wonder if the cult of personality that the American media has honed to perfection is actually going to overtake the culture and place someone at the head of the country who has no real intelligence, or substance, but is street smart and sexy.
I know that we are all tired of old style politicians, but to replace them with plastic Barbie wearing glassess and sitting in a bus, is not doing the world a favour. I don't know - is she popular because she is viewed as the underdog? The pretty girl is being picked on, let's go save her! Has the ability to think critically been gentically removed from the human race?
I saw a woman on a bookline saying "they just don't know her" as if she did. Are people constructing the media Sarah as one of their friends? Do they think they know her because Rupert Murdoch's media has packaged her for them? Has society isolated individuals so much that we think people we never met are people we know?
Factual discrepencies in Sarah's book have been laid at the feet of the ghost writer. This person wants to rule American and yet she can't write her own autobiography? This was her chance to have a real dialogue with her country and someone else had to write it for her!
To me, it would be like putting Roseanne Barr and her TV family in the White House. I don't underestimate her for a second. As I said she is street smart and street smart is dangerous because they don't play by the rules, any rules. I just pray that Obama can lift America to the heights he promised, though everyone is so self interested, that I fear for his abilities - I do believe he is human after all. I think that it is only if American can claw back its prosperity and make peace with other nations and religions that there is any hope of keeping this woman out of the race. Or if someone can find some scandal in her life, though even if they found that she used to work as a topless dancer I think it would only enhance her reputation. Magnetism is a strong tool.
I just wish that people would stop pointing and saying "look at the pretty lady" and actually ask her for policy and substance. Is that too much to ask from a politician? Or do they give Sarah Palin a "get into the White House free card"? Maybe the end of the world will come in 2012 - when Sarah goes to the White House.
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