Catching Up

If there is anything that will make me feel like the absolute lowest of the low, it is this: Today, while in a hurry to get one of my dogs out the door and on her walk, I accidentally closed the door on her tail. Not all the way, but enough to make her yelp. She went on her walk as she normally does, so I thought maybe I had just startled her, and not actually caught her tail. But then, she got into my geriatric dog's crate, and was all shivery. I know that I have at the very least badly bruised her tail. She has spent the entire day subdued. She did wag her tail some, she is eating and drinking, and able to lift her tail to potty. But she is subdued, and I feel awful. Just....sick over it. It's not broken, just badly bruised, so there's nothing to be done about it but leave her be and let her heal. Meanwhile I am beating myself up over it, feeling the worst guilt. Mr. Parker keeps reminding me it was just an accident, but it makes no difference in how bad I feel.

Cailey and Justin will not be home until Thursday evening, so it's me and Kieran hanging out. We're having a great time. We're doing art projects, making some Christmas gifts, and making cookies. I was working on my January menu when he decided he would cut pictures of food out of magazines and glue them to a giant poster board to help. They are meant to serve as inspiration while I sit here and think of what to cook for dinner every night in January without repeating a single meal. It can be done!

I am not feeling Christmas this year. I am actually having this huge AVERSION to it. The whole consumerist thing, and all. I have not decorated, there's no tree or anything. We did buy some gifts, but only for our kids. Last year I SWORE I was going to do something super adorable for EVERYONE! I was going to knit scarves and buy little mugs and fill them with packets of HOMEMADE HOT COCOA MIX. Make flavored vodkas for my drinking friends, homemade vanilla extract for my baking friends. Even the MAIL CARRIER was going to get something! But then that all just fizzled out, and I didn't even feel like doing anything at all. And now here it is, practically Christmas, and I've gotten gifts and cards and I have done absolutely nothing for anyone but my kids, and that was minimal because I no longer want to instill that thing that Christmas is going to be some insane frenzy of acquisition of THINGS. No, we will hang out together, cook food and talk and maybe watch some Christmas movies.....Anyway, the whole thing is making me feel kind of like a very grumpy woman and I feel not so great about not giving gifts to friends, but I did say I wasn't going to really do Christmas this year...........

I've been working on my family tree. What I've determined is that it's best to see the records for yourself and don't rely on anyone's family tree. I think that when people are doing this kind of thing, especially going back so far. I found some quite remarkable ancestors, I mean, IMPRESSIVE really. I was more than a little excited to think I was related to some of these people, even if they have been dead hundreds of years. But then, I dug a little more, and it turned out to be not true at all. All that remarkableness had absolutely zero records to back it up, and someone who is related to me in some kind of way, working on the same line, says that more than once it has happened to him. People want to be related to remarkable people. Naturally. It makes for a good story to tell anyway. The only remarkable story I've found with the facts to back it up is some ancestors who came from Germany in the late 1600s and founded a town, which is still there. It's a small town, and it's on one of those historic tour things.....I also like knowing where my ancestors came from. Germany, Ireland, Wales, England.....Everyone in my family always said Germany for sure, but beyond that no one really knew for sure, or even suspected anything else. I have 500+ names so far....I wish I could know their stories. What were they like? Why did they leave their homes to start over here in the US? I have questions for almost every person in my tree....

In the time I sat here writing this post, my sweet dog has gone from lying about looking like the most pitiful thing alive, to being up and walking around wagging her tail just like normal. RELIEF.