All the News That's Fit to Print

Fio started cleaning out her office closet and discovered she will never need to patronize Office Depot again.  Paper, envelopes, file folders, binders--she's overflowing with them. She also discovered that she'd saved copies of her home-made Christmas cards for what looks like thirty years back. All this and, so far, all she's gone through are two shelves. What wonders await her in the rest of her closet? Narnia?
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Fiorella caught Husband watching a television sensational on the Caylee Anthony trial and blew a gasket. Having shoved that whole horrible, disgusting, sick episode into a dark room of her mind, locked the door, and lost the key, Fio did not appreciate Husband asking whether or not she thought that lying slut was guilty.
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Younger Son stopped by today for a long visit and Daughter is coming by tomorrow. Nice.
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Has Fio told you that not only do we have a cardinal who attacks our dining room window, but a whipperwill who tries to keep us awake when we try to go to sleep at night? And a bobwhite who awakes us every morning, whether we want to be or not?
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Fiorella cringes every time she drives by the land on our boondocks road which is being cleared for new additions. She understands that people need homes, but what about the carbon thing and global warming.

Revelations

Fiorella is the most creative creature on the face of the earth, and she's usually pretty self-secure about it too, but sometimes she needs someone to pat her on the head and say "good dog." Like about now, when she's desperate for someone to come over to the house, ignore the messes, and admire her Christmas decorations. AND SHE'S NOT GOING TO PACK AWAY SO MUCH AS A  STRING OF TINSEL UNTIL SHE GETS HER FILL OF OOHS AND AAHS!
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When it comes to keeping fires going, Fio is a great believer in rotten wood.
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An extensive analysis of the personalities of the hero and heroine are the basis of every romance your Fiorella writes. From then on, the characters make their own story.
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Strangely enough, Fio felt quite comfortable walking up the driveway to the mailbox yesterday when everyone else was complaining about the weather. Sure, the temperature was hovering at freezing, but the cold was still--no wind--and the sun was bright. Of course, Fio was clutching her mother's mink jacket around her, which also may have helped.
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Fio is gathering all the evidence on the dining room table in preparation for working on the taxes, one of her least popular chores, but it must be done. Luckily, she has a very nice CPA couple who tolerate her ignorance and stupidity. Thank you, Lisa and Blake.

Tinsel Interview

Interviewer: Fiorella, every time I drive by your property, I admire those tinsel garlands strung from tree to tree down your driveway.  Where did you get the idea?

Fio: Actually, it was pure desperation. I wanted to decorate the front of our property, but the road is an acre up from the house and we have a screen of trees across it, which meant I couldn't use lights or fiberboard stand-ups. I stared at everything for a while, waiting for inspiration, and finally realized garlands were my only choice. They're lightweight and inexpensive, tinsel catches the light, and they provided a continuous line for the eye to follow.

Interviewer: I noticed that you have added more garlands this year.

Fio: The first year, I was using leftovers from inside decorations and hung just a few trees on the road and a few more down the drive. Now I'm up to 300 yards of garlands, although half of that number is due to my adding a second tier of tinsel so I have a double hang.

Interviewer: How the heck do you secure the garlands to the trees?

Fio: At first, I just looped them around whatever nature provided, which meant I had to walk the drive every day and reposition the them. The next two years, I used wire, which was a bitch to take down after Christmas. This year, I used twisties, which are fabulous, especially when I have to hang the garlands from metal stakes because I've run out of trees..

Interviewer:  Any problems?

Fio: The cedars. I've had to be ruthless with them because they tend to reach out and snag the tinsel. My repair kit this year consisted of twisties, scissors, and pruners.

Interviewer: Do you have any final advice for anyone else who wants to hang garlands outside?

Fio: Buy your packs at a dollar store and save them year to year. Tinsel is cheap, but it adds up.

YEAH!

What a wonderful Christmas! Minnesota son and his wife came down a week ago to help Husband and Fio prepare the house for the family celebration, and Daughter drafted her aunt and sisters-in-law to help with food prep. But baby was the star of the show, as far as Fiorella was concerned. Granddaughter is almost standing now, and we think she said her first word--yeah!
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It was interesting having five alpha women in the kitchen--Fio, Sister-in-law, Daughter, and both daughters-in-law--but Fiorella thinks she will bow out next year. It's time to let the torch be passed. Of course, all the visitors flew back to their own nests in mid-afternoon, but the leftovers stayed here, which means that Husband and Fiorella have enough ham, turkey, salmon, and sides for a week. Yeah!
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Now that Christmas is over, Fio is girding her loins to go forward to the new year, which means working out some financial dealings that have gone on for far too long. Yeah!

Worry, Worry

Hurry, hurry, scurry, scurry
Fio is under the gun
The holiday is swift upon us
And so much is yet to be done

DELIVERY DAY!

It's delivery day! Fio has finished feeding the mouths of all her charities, she mailed a check to the newspaper delivery guy last week, and as soon as she finishes this post, she'll be in her baby car taking chocolate kisses to Mazda and Click, with a side trip to Chase bank to deliver chocolate Santas to Lisa and Stephanie. These people have been good to Fiorella and giving them Christmas treats is the least she can do.
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Speaking of good people, Fernando, the guy who takes care of Fio and Husband's yard--and does his best to take care of us--took down one of our dead trees and we now have enough firewood to last through next winter. Fio always gives Fernando a Christmas bonus, but he deserves far more.
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The fire is lit, the stage is set, and the picture of Baby is hanging from the mantel, but FB will not accept Fiorella's photo. Must be Trump getting his revenge on Fio for last year's Christmas card, the one in which she compared him to Ghengis Khan.
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Qestions, Questions, Questions

Fiorella's been Christmasing all day, starting from early morning, when in between reading the newspaper, she she couldn't stop staring at the picture of Baby, the one she'd hung from the mantel over the fireplace. What about making use of some of those gold chocolate bar wrappers she'd been collecting for a couple of years?  How about paving the front edge of the mantel to give Baby a background worthy of her? How about putting charming Christmas cards on either side of her picture? 
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Fiorella is still struggling with the tree, the one she thought she'd have to spend just a couple of hours on. And her other decorations aren't as far along as she had hoped they'd be. And she didn't put much time in on her book today. And her left foot orthotic isn't working like it's supposed to. And where are house elves and magic wands when you need them?
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Fiorella is sick and tired of slimy politics. Everything is so venal now, so lowest-common-denominator, and Fio is afraid for herself and for everybody else. How can we survive as a nation and how can we survive as people?

Random Observations

Fio saw her first roadside Christmas tree of the season road today. She also saw cloud formations that looked like hundreds of sheep grazing in a blue meadow.  Autumn has hardly began, and winter is upon us.
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Politics are getting boring--and repetitive. How many corrupt politicians, how many godless pastors, how many clueless plutocrats have to be exposed for America to come to its senses?
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'Tis the winter of our discontent, but discontent is the mother of action. Fio is still in the game. Are you?

Christmas Gift

Fiorella bought her granddaughter a Christmas present yesterday--her first piano, a roll-up electronic keyboard. Fio herself would have given her eyeteeth--if she'd had any at ten months of age--for a gift like this, but it wasn't till she was nine that her family acquired a piano, and although she's no concert pianist, she still enjoys playing and hopes Baby will have the same experience.

Speaking of Christmas, Fio's got to pull her decorations down from the garage shelf soon. The first thing to go up, of course, will be the tinsel garlands along the entrance to the driveway. Then Fiorella will put together her aging fake tree and load it with lights and ornaments, along the way, attending to swags and displays. Yes, Fio goes insane every Christmas, but it makes her happy.

Of course, one of the most important aspects of Fiorella's Christmas is composing the greeting card. Last year it had a political theme, but this year, it will center around Baby, which is only right. Christmas is a celebration of birth.

Fiorella's Schedule for the Day

Fio finally got the fake Christmas tree dismantled and packed in boxes for storage in the garage, which cleared out the living room. Now she hopes to move the them and all the other Christmas boxes into the garage, which may be difficult because of the huge fiberboard panels that are leaning against the storage shelves. But never feaar--Fiorella is quite talented when it comes to tottering. Her calendar also calls for finding Husband's wallet and showing up for her monthly INR appointment, but she hopes to spend most of the afternoon writing, Then, in the evening, she'll have her reward--her telenovela. Will Nora get away with killing Ricardo? Will she somehow manage to shift the blame onto Lucia? Will Lucia end up in jail? Inquiring minds want to know.

On the side, Fio must correct herself--she remembered the murder wrong. It wasn't a swinging wine bottle that dealt Ricardo the fatal blow, but what looked like a Notebook which Nora was using to assault him. It shattered the glass of wine he was about to drink and drove the sharp edges into his neck. (Just in case your inquiring mind wanted to know.)

Movin' On

Christmas is almost over at Casa Fiorella. Husband kindly packed away the last of the Christmas ornaments yesterday afternoon, and Fio hopes to get his help unwinding the lights from the tree today. Maybe we'll even get the tree disassembled and stuffed into its many containers.

Fiorella loves decorating for Christmas and is always a little sad when her creative efforts have to be banished to the garage shelves till next year, but it's not just that Christmas has a limited shelf life--it's that tax time is just around the corner, which means that Fiorella has to turn her mind to IRS and her dining room table into a processing station.

At the same time, she's trying to rock-line a driveway, learn Spanish, write a book, and pretend to be human.

Into the Past

Fiorella and Husband gave each other Ancestry.com for Christmas, which should be interesting. They did the National Geographic thing about twenty years ago, when genealogy could only be determined to about ten thousand years back so now they're looking forward to learning about more recent developments. Not that any of it matters.  We all are what we are--not our parents, not our grandparents, not our distant ancestors. Which, keeping evolution in mind, is rather a good thing.

What Would Jesus Do?

Donald Trump has not only legitimatized hate, but he has endorsed it. The hate of blacks, browns, Asians, women, the handicapped, anyone with a different opinion than his. At the same time, he has made it acceptable to lie, insult, defame, belittle, and attack. To be a liar, a lecher, a voyeur, ignorant, and vengeful.

Merry Christmas. Sounds like Jesus needs to throw the money-lenders out of the temple again.

Miracle Needed, Please

Count-down to Christmas, which means Fiorella hasn't worked on her Spanish for a week (una semana) written a word on the book (el libro) for two days, and didn't lift a single rock (una roca) today. What she did do was finish off her card and take it to FedEx Kinkos for printing, run around to several stores to buy up the last of the tinsel in town, and populate the fake greenery swag over the dining room (el comidor) window (la ventana) with small birds made of feathers and ornaments that look like fruits and vegetables. She's hoping to have all her Christmas preparations finished on Wednesday, Thursday at the latest, but we'll see.

Meanwhile, send healing thoughts to Fio. She's been crying again--the Electoral College thing. She didn't expect anything, but had prayed for a miracle. Maybe, maybe, maybe, there still is one in the offing. It's that time of year.

Perceived Value

Fiorella's Christmas tree ornaments are precious to her. Not that they're worth a lot of money--the most she's ever paid is $12 for a nine-inch long yellow school bus--but because they are fragile. She loses one or two of them every Christmas, and, because styles in ornaments change yearly, replacements are impossible. Thus the Virgin and an angel are the only two she has left out of a charming nativity set she bought fifteen years ago, but, on the other hand, she picked up a dump truck, a food stand, two choo-choos, two fire engines, and two aviones (airplanes) last week and has hung them from the artificial greenery swag above her mostrador de madera (wooden counter), an interesting trade that might have something to do with what is happening in the country today.

Holiday Preparation Reformation

Fiorella is planning to do something strange and wonderful this holiday season--finish Christmas decorations by the 17th. Usually she's hanging ornaments, flinging around tinsel, and pasting together paper chains till Husband finally pulls her off the ladder at midnight of the 24th, but this year, because she saved last year's snowflakes (for the windows), she doesn't have to spend a couple of days cutting them out, plus...she has a secret weapon. Actually it's four secret weapons. Austin son and his wife came over last Saturday and decorated the tree for her (THANK YOU!), and nephew Barrett and his wife are coming over today to help get the wreaths and swags up (BLESS THEM!)

Fio will still have enough to do to keep her busy because she'll be the one decorating the wreaths and swags, and she's also the one who sets up displays on every surface in the house. But what about Christmas dinner, you ask?  Well, Fio's only contributions are boiled potatoes and chocolate pudding. Husband takes care of the rest (THANK GOODNESS!).

Politics and God

As, one by one, Trump's choices for governmental positions are announced, Fiorella prays all the harder that either the recounts or the Electoral College will propel Hillary into the Presidency. What a wonderful Christmas present that would be to America.

But how in the world did Trump get this far? How did a blustering bully propel himself into being a legitimate candidate? What role did Russia play in the show? Where did the fake news stories come from? And most important, where is God?

Precious LittleTime

Shock--Fio forget to post today, which is understandable with the schedule she's trying to keep. She raced out of the house this morning to meet with a friend at Starbucks--the same friend she stood up the day before because Fio was waiting at the wrong Starbucks--only to wait again because this time she was 24 hours too early. What else to do but drive off to the post office to buy Christmas stamps. The machine didn't carry them so she had to join the tail end of a l-o-n-g line. Bored to tears after finishing off all her physical therapy exercises as she waited (neck, shoulders, plies), she started talking to the people standing behind her.

The line refused to move, but Fiorella overheard a post office lady (who was moving up and down the line with a whip to keep the lions in check) tell someone that H-E-B sold Christmas stamps so Fio said good-bye to her new friends and sped on up to H-E-B, only to stand in a new line, this time at a register. Fio asked for nativity stamps, but the clerk said she only had Santa stamps, but that every register had a different stamp. Now your Fio was not about to spend her precious time standing in line at twenty registers to find out which one of them carried a stamp appropriate to her Christmas card so she walked over to the service desk and--voila!--the clerk had an acceptable batch of stamps on hand. Fio bought 100, which should put the national treasury back in good shape, then zoomed down to Hobby Lobby to buy more red ribbon for decking the halls, then drove home via Walgreens, where she picked up pildoras (pills) and a few Christmas treats.

The whole journey, Fio smiled a lot, talked to everyone, and even exchanged cards with a few other artist types. Yes, Fiorella on the roll is a sight to behold--and perhaps beware of. She is not the person her mother wanted her to be, but  Mother is long dead, and although  Fio feels her maternal love more and more every day, her strictures have faded away. Fio is Fio, and she will continue to devote every minute of her time to saving the world.

Finger Practice

While Austin son and his wife were at the house decorating the tree, Fiorella started thinking about "O Christmas Tree" and "Deck the Hall" so of course she pulled out the carols book and headed toward the piano. She hadn't played any of the carols for a year, but now was the time to start practicing. Surprisingly, her fingers half-remembered the notes, and she even sang a little. This is going to be a good Christmas,

Tis the Season

Step four of Fio's Christmas decorating. She decked the driveway with strands of tinsel last weekend, got all the storage bins in during the week, and yesterday she put together the twenty-year-old family Christmas tree. Come afternoon, Austin son and his wife drove up from Bastrop to put up the lights and decorate the tree, which is a monumental undertaking because Fio has MOUNDS of ornaments. She posted a photo of the wonderful results on FB this morning, but she still has to roll her mother's embroidered tree skirt under the branches. Step four will be the swag along the staircase railing, which will take at least a day, and step five will be hanging the plastic snowflakes from the little tree out front, which Husband usually is kind enough to help with. Later will come the swags over the living room door jamb, the dining room door jamb, and the dining room window. By Christmas day, every shelf and surface in the house will be loaded with tinsel and Christmas what-nots. Yes, Fio is a decorating fool. ENJOY!