Friday, December 17: Let's see. I was off in the morning, grading papers. My last class of the century ended this afternoon.

An overcast day. Light rain fell on the way to work in the afternoon. When I returned to the car for the trip home, the car was glazed with ice. Oh, what fun!

In the evening, I stayed home with the boys, taking Owen to his trombone lesson and cruising the mall during the lesson. Later, Jami went to see The Green Mile with her brother.

Saturday, December 18: Gallaher's Christmas Tree Farm. We hadn't been here in years, ever since Jami's brother had a falling out with the owner over payment for some remodeling he had done on Gallaher's home. I don't understand why we went to Gallaher's today. No one told me the feud was over, but then I'm not blood. I was, however, glad for the alternative to the Optimist Club lot, because in past years, Gallaher's had been the best place around to cut a Christmas tree and give the kids a run in the country and an outdoor whiz. When Gus the Used Dog was living, we would haul him out there in the back of the van, and he would usually add his scent to someone's holiday.

Gallaher's place is about two miles beyond our western suburbs on the south side of the road to Keats and Riley. He has ten, maybe twenty acres planted in evergreens, or used to anyway. Walking down the truck path for fifty yards, I saw that the property had been neglected -- no new plantings stood where older trees had been cut. The more desirable trees appeared to be farther from the little pre-fab utility shed that serves as the seasonal headquarters and where they serve hot coffee, warm cider, and peppermint candycanes.

The shorter trees -- the Christmas-tree-sized trees -- appeared diseased. The more desirable trees were now fifteen feet tall or taller. To cull a tree from this lot meant topping one of these overgrown trees. Although the pickings for a good Christmas tree began to look pretty poor to me, the day at Gallaher's wasn't wasted. The rows of evergreens (about ten feet apart) provided plenty of cover for for hide-and-seek and ambush games, and of course the boys and I indulged that impulse.

Finally, we had a kid with a chainsaw salvage a nine-foot tree from the top of a twenty-foot tree. Except that his cut left us with a ten-foot tree. And our ceilings are between eight and nine feet tall in the room where the tree would stand.

Discovering this at home, we trimmed the tree from its base so it would fit in the room, and -- lo and behold -- we found that by trimming the bottom, we had also lost most of the greenery from the base, and that the boughs that had arched up from the base had provided most of the foliage for the upper reaches of the tree.

So, we now have a very attractive eight-foot stick in the living room -- possibly our homeliest tree ever.

But we had a good time, once again keeping the fun in dysfunction.

In the evening, Jami and Allie (a neighbor) got together to indulge their baking compulsions, commandeering the kitchen down at the senior center (where, by the way, they have quite an attractive tree.)

Joshua went off to be with his friends to whom he no doubt complained that we had ruined his final Christmas at home (well, not his actual final Christmas at home, but his last one while "in residence," I suppose) and therefore his whole life, by declining to replace the stick with the kind of tree he has become accustomed to, one with some greenery.

Taylor, Owen and I moved a television and VCR from upstairs into the living room, and spent the evening watching Braveheart and basking in the lights of our decorated stick.

For some reason, on the trip out to Gallaher's the kids were reliving the auto breakdown they experienced several years back on a vacation. They had packed up and headed out to Angelfire, a resort near Taos, New Mexico, but somewhere along the way (Flagler, Colorado), the old Nissan decided to break down in the middle of nowhere. From Angelfire, they were to continue to Houston, where I (flying down the next week) would join them and drive back to Kansas with them.

Why did they choose today to talk about this? Maybe because we were all loaded into the van again (although a new one) and in a holiday mood. But more likely it was the mention of Gus, who usually traveled with us out to Gallaher's in the back of the van, drooling onto the head of whichever boy was still young enough to be required to ride in the child's carseat at the back of the van.

The path for this HyperTalkingTransientPalaver is http://past visits to Gallaher's.com/Gus drooling in the back/Gus never rode in the Windstar/Why not?/By the time we got it, his hips were too bad/So it must have been the Nissan/You mean the Nissan that broke down in Flagler?/Yes, that one/Remember the horrible motel we had to stay in until we arranged transport to Angelfire?/There was a roach in the shower/It was a mouse/Was it?/Yeah!/I didn't like sleeping with Grandma/She farted/Where was Dad?/At home eating from the four food groups, porterhouse, ribeye, KC strip, and corn/That was a lousy vacation/Yeah/Yeah/Yeah/Let's do it again/Yeah!/Yeah!/Yeah!/index.html

Why do I bring this Flagler story up now? Because in the end, this defect in their Christmas, this flawed wreck of a tree is a serendipitous gift that will provide them with memories and conversation and bonds long after they have forgotten their other gifts from the Santas.

Sunday, December 19: In the morning, Joshua, Owen and Taylor went in search of a replacement Christmas tree. They drove by the Optimist lot, and then out to Lee's Christmas Trees on I-70 near Junction City. Joshua is the most bent out of shape by this tree, but he listened to Owen's counsel, perhaps for the first time ever. Owen (correctly) advised him that if he were to drag home a new tree, he would have to contend with the Wrath of Mhom (Mohm?).

Later in the day, Owen was antsy, ginned up by the excitement of the holiday and by the confinement in the house caused by the nasty weather. So I took him to lunch at Schlotzsky's and for some cruising in the mall. I also needed to get out of the house and out of harm's way.

Monday, December 20: In the morning, I finished the grading and sent the grades off to the school by noon.

The rest of the day?

eat

nap

read

write

And then

eat
nap
read
write

Followed by eatnapreadwritesleep.

I think I can forget about adding a true weblog page and can rely instead on the excellent one at Naked Eye, a weblog and journal that I visit daily.

OverLIB appears after a first glance to be a good source for some useful scripts.