## 251224: Weird Christmastime

I continued sorting stuff in the house, and prepping an inventory to mail out.
Maintenance kindly came by with a golf cart and took the exercise-bike away,
as the rehab-center guy expressed interest in it even if it wasn't the style
of recumbents they have over there.  One of mom's friends made an early visit
to the house to grab a few things, and I helped her carry it all back across
the campus.  She'd been here for almost a year and never found the gravel
walking path that runs all the way behind the apartment buildings, and she
was overjoyed to know about it!  She also offered to take me to dinner,
although there *is* some kind of policy about guests without their own family
member residents present.  Or maybe it's just about payments, like they don't
want nonresidents billing to resident accounts because as you might imagine,
there have been some abuses in the past.  Upshot: we had a lovely dinner and
chat in the "formal dining room", and since it was all on her tab there was
no problem after all.

I finally reached out to Mom's lawyer, and the earliest they can fit me in is
sometime a fair ways into January.  Argh.  So either I stay here through all
that time, or maybe if I get more done with things I could take a run back
home and return later.  That's now tempting given the timeframe.  In better
news, the funeral home called and said I could get death certificates already,
just two days later!  Meaning the Hospice docs were prompt with signatures.
So a run up to the county health offices can be combined with several other
errands I have to do up that way too.  Not till Monday, though; the county
offices just shut down for the rest of the holiday week.  I am advised by
more than one person to *check* the accuracy of the death certificates, or
huge problems can result of having it wrong.

So now there wasn't much to do other than continue organizing the stuff, and
shortly made a local "big Barbara's giveaway!" announcement, inviting people
to come "raid the house" and pick through any stuff they might like to take.
I got pretty much everything laid out, and drawers and cabinets hanging open,
etc to make all the content visible.  I went around and marked a few "off
limits" items, and got ready to host any willing visitors.  Now, a lot of
folks in retirement communities are trying to downsize their own possessions,
so this was kind of an experiment.  Plus this was heading right into their
actual with-family Christmas activities in many cases, but a few said they'd
come by over the weekend.  On Christmas eve, a small gaggle of ladies stopped
in to poke around, and wound up taking just *one* sweater between the three
of them.  These are one-off hand knitted items; my Mom's fantasy was that I
could sell them for beaucoup bucks on ebay or something, but nobody I've
talked to has *any* idea how to price stuff like this and frankly, it might as
well all simply go to good homes.  The art aspect has been preserved in our
big photoshoot from last year, I'm just hoping that the physical items
will exist a bit longer gracing other peoples' homes and bodies.  If Mom's
publisher that had the stuff for a couple of years was unable to auction it
off into the crafts communities they knew of, there's even less chance that
I could.

So late afternoon on Xmas Eve, the house smells like the simmering "Mess" that I referenced in the previous section, this year's variant using ground bison because it's more flavorful than typical beef, and Spanish yellow rice instead of the instant, so it'll take longer to cook down to final consistency. It's going to feed *me* for days hence. I've been surfing a few Trans-Siberian Orchestra videos and other stuff for some fun musical perspective. I found this and this quite entertaining, and there's so much more of that genre out there. The headphones that I bought for Mom a while back so she could hear her Zoom calls a bit better are inherently very "bassy", and I'm trying to figure out why, and if I should keep these or try to give them away too. This is the first Christmas I'm spending alone, in my entire life. Sixty-plus years of always being with family at this time, with the one exception when Mom and I at least did some "pandemic togetherness" via Zoom in 2020. This so far isn't bothering me too much as I've been in work-mode much of the day, and Christmas Day itself is pretty much a nothingburger around here except for the big lunchtime buffet they do over at the main dining rooms. I don't need that, I'm not about to eat $35 worth of food especially after gorging on Mess the evening before.

At least I've had one of Mom's old candles going on the dining table most of
the day; that's my "Holiday Flame" for now, in contrast to the days back
in NJ where we'd build a nice Yule fire in the fireplace and then I'd doze off
with the dog in front of it.  With a bellyful of Mess, of course, all of us
enjoying the post-feast stupor.  Next day would be the whole turkey-with-
trimmin's and the usual other holiday trappings, like we actually needed that
much more food?!  Prep would start a little after noon, and going through that
was all part of the ritual.  Humans apparently need ritual, it helps bind them
to temporal timelines that bring comfort and stability.  Even if the ceremonial
motions we make now have been barbarously stolen from elder times and twisted
into the oft-nonsensical processes we perform today.

I've been back to the Mess pot like 3 times by the time of this writing, and
it seems like I haven't made a dent in the quantity of stuff in there.  Maybe
it's still expanding into the rice, hard to tell.  It's still yummy stuff,
and will likely form the basis of dinner tomorrow as well.

A very merry <whatever-it-is>, folks.