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.

Politicians Don't give a Damn about Real People

Actually, there is someone Fiorella hates, and he's dead--Ronald Reagan.

Fio started out liking Ronnie because he seemed to be, well, a likable kind of guy, so when Son, a devotee of TV news, asked her to mail a letter to him (Son was against something or other), she thought it would be a good civics lesson. To play it safe, she added the information to the bottom of the crayoned letter that Son was seven years old.

Fio, being naive, assumed all letters to the President were answered in some way or another, if just by a mimeographed "thank you for writing" so she watched out the window with interest as day after day, Son ran out to the mailbox for Reagan's reply.

But it never came.

And Fiorella's heart broke for Son's loss of innocence and her own..

BIG BANG Bust

Sorry,  Big Bang Theory, but the much ballyhooed Mary Cooper vs. Beverly Hofstedter slugfest didn't work, and having Leonard's mother promise unconditional  love to her son at the end was lame.

First of all, it was WAY beyond even the sit-com world that Bev would  reconsider the child-rearing tactics that so closely tied in with her professional life.  Furthermore, Leonard has always excelled, which, for some reason, she has always refused to recognize, so it's hard to think that she'd alter her world view after a five-minute confrontation with Sheldon's mother, especially since she, as a psychiatrist, knows that "genius" is genetics, not upbringing.  Also, the awkward hug, which has been used at least twice before in the series, is growing whiskers.

Perhaps it would have been better to have Amy point out the unfairness of the situation to Sheldon and then have him, with his increasing sensitivity to humanoids, tell Beverly that he credits Leonard for coming up with the idea of whatever it was they were being lauded for.

But Fiorella has some other bones to pick.  She's tired of the Howard-Bernadette stereotype of a cute little woman bullying her childish husband.  And Leonard should be able to speak up for himself in a well-reasoned argument rather than an angry outburst.  And Penny was kinda dull.

Is Big Bang Theory getting tired?

Christmas, 2012

Fiorella loves decorating for Christmas.  She loops den windows with red and green paper chains.  She hangs ersatz greenery from the big dining room window and loads it with her beloved fruit and vegetable ornaments, interspersed with butterflies and birds.  Greenery also festoons the front door and the kitchen door and the door to the guest room hall and the double-door opening between the front room and the dining room (on both sides) and the display cabinets between the kitchen and the den.  Then Fiorella loads the greenery with her other special ornaments--miniatures and paper storks and feathered birds.  In the upper hall she nestles redbirds in the greenery draped from the railings.  And, of course, snowflakes, which she cuts out fresh every years, decorate every window pane downstairs and even some upstairs.  The front door is treated to wreaths back and front, as are the front windows, the area over the door to the guest room hall, and the tall window at the top of the stairs.  Three nativity scenes are tucked into the mantel decoration in the den, two more in the extensive buffet decoration, but the mantel decoration in the front room must make do with "Twelve Days of Christmas" bells  plus more butterflies and lots of tinsel.

Fiorella's light-up deer bit the dust last year, but she still has big snowflakes and for the trees outside and a plastic bow for the mailbox.

Then there's the Christmas tree--aah, the Christmas tree, laden with so many garlands and ornaments that Firoella can scarcely see the the sturdy iron(?) boughs that have sustained the tree for ten years.

Fiorella usually spends hours and days and weeks on Christmas decorating.  It's her love, her splendor, her artistic achievement. But not this year.  Recovery from hip surgery, which Fio didn't realize would take months rather than weeks,  precludes climbing ladders and carrying in boxes of ornaments and greenery and lights and all her other decorating goodies.

And Fio is very sad.