Wrapping
Listening to: Rosie’s Christmas
Reading: Jewels of the Sun Nora Roberts
Weather: 30’s sunny
Trivia: Why are covered bridges covered?
Timothy Palmer, who built what is considered to be the first American covered bridge between 1800 and 1804 did so to protect the structural members. These trusses, made of heavy timber are both the most critical and most expensive parts of any bridge. Should these parts decay and fall apart due to exposure to the elements they'll take the bridge with it. An unprotected wooden bridge will last about ten years, whereas a covered one will, theoretically, last for centuries. Since the early 1800s there have been up to 16,000 covered bridges built but fewer than 800 remain today. However their demise has more to do with progress, heavy trucks and destructive teenagers then exposure to the elements.
Cool word: fracas (Fracas) - Commotion; a noisy disagreement. "The nightly fracas between the couple next door was always loud enough to wake Fred out of a sound sleep."
I had hoped that I’d sleep in again today, as getting up at ten yesterday morning was one of the most unexpected luxuries that I’ve experienced in a long time.
But no such luck. I was up at seven-thirty. Bummer. I always push myself to get up at a fairly early hour, which often means two hours more sleep than I usually get, but sleeping until ten was fantastic. It also meant that I must have been really tired. I never sleep that late.
So I got out of bed and started trying to organize stuff. The problem is that everything is so disorganized that there is no end to what needs to be done.
the most important thing today was pulling together the stuff that needed to be packaged and taken to the post office. Two packages were involved here, one for my secret stamper, the other for Michael.
Not that I’ve heard from Michael in a week. That’s not totally true. I did get a brief not from him one day last week telling me that he had a piece in the Wall Street Journal. But that was all.
His package was just silly stuff, toys, a mouse pad, some candy. My favorite was the "slammer" it’s this little stuffed animal that when you toss it on the floor it says something like "earth stinks". It’s cute and funny.
The funniest part was when the package was wrapped and set to go that the little guy talked when the box was dropped. I hope it amuses the postman.
I took all the things that needed to be wrapped to my brother’s house so I could deal with it while I babysat. Matilda got a kick out of it, although she informed me that she wasn’t much on wrapping but loved opening.
I babysat for a couple of hours while my brother and sister-in-law went to a mandatory reception at his office. Weird to have to get all dolled up for a Sunday morning Christmas thing.
But I enjoyed the kids. Keith is so self contained that as long as he can play his N-64 he’s all set.
Once I left their house I went to the post office. It’s great that it’s open on Sunday. It stinks that it took a half-hour to get to the desk. But people were patient and the postmen were very pleasant. So it wasn’t as bad as it looked when you first walked in the door.
I came home to get some of the gifts for school organized, and to try to combine some of the bags and packages that are strewn all over the floor.
I have way too much wrapping to do.
I hate wrapping. I once had a job at a department store as a gift wrap person. It was awful. And it was during Christmas. I had to go to classes to learn to wrap the right way.
I may be a crafty person, but this was pure tedium. Not an ounce of enjoyment here.
These days I love the fact that they sell all those decorative bags and all you have to do is slap some tissue paper in the bag and it’s finished.
Unfortunatley the evil game Snood was calling to me. I discovered a game called puzzle. I’m now even more obsessed that I had been. I can get absorbed for hours.
I’ts not pretty.
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