Merry Christmas — Day 2

First, I wish everybody (belatedly for anybody east of the Atlantic Time Zone) a happy second day of Christmas — which is also St. Stephen's Day ("Good King Wenceslas looked out/ On the feast of Stephen…"), and called Boxing Day in England etc.

Another blogger posted a link to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth's Christmas Message to the Commonwealth, and I think it's pretty good. I love the fact that, being head of the Church of England, she gets to express her faith.

On the first day of Christmas my brother and I opened presents first thing in the morning, then called our kid brother in Tokyo to thank him for what he sent us and let him thank us for what we sent. My big brother gave me a new microwave oven. The old one was a Sharp "Pint Size" low wattage model which the kid bro and s-i-l gave my mother when we moved here 17 years ago. It was very simple — no control panel, just a dial to turn to set the time you wanted it to run. A while ago, most of the lever you pushed down to open the door broke off, so it was about time to get a new one, but, typically, I had been procrastinating.

I had been to Midnight Mass, but my brother and I were both at the 11:00 Mass Christmas morning.

At 3:00 p.m. went for Christmas dinner to the home of an aunt who lives about a mile away. She is the widow of one of my father's brothers. She's over ninety and has just recently started using a walking stick but is still completely "with it" and looks no older than me. A friend of hers did most of the work on the dinner (roast turkey etc.) but she decided to bake a pumpkin pie, using her mother's recipe, and it was very good. There was another couple there as well. The wife knew my aunt and uncle when they lived in Chicago, 50 and more years ago. The husband knew my dad through their church. There was good conversation— reminiscences, talking about "Kindle," discussing the Occupy movement and other political matters, and hearing about our cousins. We were there for about six hours. When we got home, we called other cousins in Colorado, and chatted for a while. So it was a fairly relaxed day with a large component of family.

Today, since it is the fourth Monday of the month, I cooked three 3 lb. meatloaves and baked 18 potatoes for a soup kitchen in a nearby city. There is a group of us in my parish who do this. When my mother was alive and still able to cook, she did this and often prepared a fourth meatloaf for us. But living alone , I can't use a 3 lb. meatloaf, so I haven't been making an extra. Today, however, with my brother around for the week to help out with it, I did make a fourth, and we ate some of it for dinner tonight. I figure it will make good sandwiches for lunch for several days.

Tomorrow, I'll probably cook some lamb chops, and then on Wednesday roast the turkey I bought before I knew we'd be going to my aunt's on Christmas.

I hope everybody will enjoy the rest of the twelve days of Christmas.

P.S. I've changed the prayer in the sidebar for the first time in over three months.