What with the winter storm warning and all, I stayed home and dipped into my DVD workout collection.

This is the one with the 50-year-old instructor. Yes, she has ropy muscles, but that just makes her more fearsome when she tells us to lift things. I quite like her, and she is an excellent antidote to excessive perkiness, if you have been doing Denise Austen or working out in aerobics class with one of those sweet little Barbie-like instructors.

The workout is 30 minutes of the Lotte Berk Method, which the dancers among us will probably remember. If you are not familiar with Lotte Berk, you will be reminded of Pilates or ballet.

The DVD claims to be for beginners, and it does have a lot of instruction about form, which is of course excellent for beginners. I would like it if there were an option for skipping the elaborate set-up of each exercise once we have learned it, but it is probably not more than 5 minutes total of the workout time. Since much of this uses weights, you can simply increase the weight for more challenge. There are two sets of ten reps each on each side for a number of different movements, so this can certainly be your strength-training DVD. There is also a good stretching section. There is no cardio here. If you get your 90-120 minutes in walking or something, then doing this workout a couple of times a week will complete your fitness routine.

#1 son received his letter of acceptance from the local university, where they will be glad to welcome him to the horticulture department in the fall. He was given a list of things to do, including one in bold type: to put a decal of a wild red pig on his car window. We know what he really needs to do though: keep up his grades and hustle for scholarships.

The winter storm hasn’t gotten here yet. It is raining like billy-o, but no ice or sleet or snow. The boys will be disappointed, because they don’t close the schools for rain. The Chamber Singers rehearsal and recording for tonight is canceled, though.

Church choir met as usual last night. Church choirs at Christmas often do a big work like a cantata or oratorio, or a set of lessons and carols arranged by one composer. We have a wide variety of pieces. There is one to a mamba rhythm, one that sounds like a sea shanty, a couple of doo-wop anthems, a motet, a bit of chant. I like variety, myself.

But my favorite at the moment is Thomas Morley’s “‘Tis the Time of Yuletide Glee”, a madrigal. Morley was one of the major madrigal writers. He actually wrote a book on the subject, with a title like “The Writing of Musick Mayde Practical and Easye.” A Renaissance Music Composing for Dummies sort of book.

I love this song. But the rest of the choir hates it. I argued for it fairly passionately, but there it is. I told them I would just have to find someone else to sing it with.

Here are the words:

“‘Tis the time of Yuletide glee, all the world should joyful be
Let us sing right merrily.
Though the frost may chill the ground, and the snow lie all around
Let your song most mirthful sound.

Be ye then cheery, no man be dreary, let none be weary,
This day should joyful be,
‘Tis the time of Yuletide glee.

There are carols in the air happy music everywhere
Bidding us to banish care.
From the houses all alight shine the Christmas trees this night
And the world is all aright.

Be ye then cheery, no man be dreary, let none be weary,
This day should joyful be,
‘Tis the time of Yuletide glee.”

Learn it and give me a call.

The DVD here is “Pilates for Wimps: Fitness for the Partially Motivated.” It has a photo of the instructor in her gym clothes, eating a doughnut.

I am giving this to #1 daughter, a certified couch potato, for Christmas. I tried it out yesterday to make sure it was not stupid or offensive, and I think it is a good one. It is a basic 30-minute Pilates class. The instructor is young and toned, but brought an older, plumper friend along to show easier modifications of the exercises.

This would be good if you are sick of looking at only young, toned people when you exercise, and also if you occasionally don’t feel as though you can do that tenth push-up and would like to have an alternative. Aside from flopping onto the floor and staring balefully at the screen, I mean.

She also uses a lot of metaphors and a very relaxed tone of voice, which makes the instructions easier to understand and less daunting, perhaps. I like the DVD I have where the instructor (a frighteningly-toned 50-year-old) booms out “Courage!” from time to time, but something low-key can be nice for days when you don’t want to hit the gym. Or if you don’t have a gym to hit.

I followed the instructor most of the time, and found it a relaxing yet sometimes challenging workout, though I am sorry to report that I have no sore muscles today.

Another gift for that daughter (she doesn’t read this) is the table runner I’m working on. I went ahead and bound it in one of the striped fabrics, since it is to coordinate with striped dishes.

The pictures here are not good, I realize, but I tried.

I think the difficulty of photographing this is a combination of the shiny fabric and my desire to have the quilting stitches show, the fact that I take all my pictures before the sun comes up, and my lack of talent. Oh, and let me just blame the camera and the computer too. And the moose.

I think that what I need for the rest of the quilting of this item – thanks to the excellent suggestions you folks gave me — is something like this:

It can go at either end, pointing toward the central rose and forming an on-end square with the piecing.

The image is on a Dover clip-art disk, so making it print out the right size will require some techno-savvy, of which, as you know, I have none. I have a book somewhere that explains how to calculate the percentage at which you need to enlarge something on a copy machine in order for it to be the size you want, so that is another option, as is lengthy trial and error or making grids and copying it in by hand.

As always, your advice is appreciated.

In return, I offer you a song for the day. “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree” is an early American poem, commonly referred to as a “mystical” poem, set to music in the twentieth century by Elizabeth Poston. It may be called a “mystical” poem because the words are mysterious. At the very least, it is a mystery why we sing this at Christmas, although I suppose it has as much to do with Christmas as “Frosty the Snowman” has.

Here is sheet music and MP3. The exciting thing about this is that it is actually being sung, unlike most of the recordings we get online, which just give us a strange beeping, useful for learning the tune but not enough to get a sense of the song. The people singing this sound like a little community or church choir or perhaps a family. Their pitch is fine, but their vowels are untrained and they aren’t always together, and I say there is nothing wrong with that. Christmas music ought to be sung by everyone, it seems to me. Here is a much better one, musically speaking, sung by the William Jewell College Concert Choir, courtesy of Chanthaboune. You can find a snippet of a jazzed-up choral version of  Apple Tree by clicking on the words “Apple Tree.” These are all choral versions, because that is how I like this song, but the tune is quite lovely. It is not all that singable, so you might not be humming it as you go about your daily tasks, but again I say why not?

If more of us were cheerily singing things, even if we squeak on the high notes and rumble on the low notes and sound odd on the large intervals, the world would be a happier place.

Jamie has spoken out against insipid Christmas songs. Yesterday’s song of the day, “Suzy Snowflake,” came under fire, and also “Frosty the Snowman,” as well as one I’ve never heard and now don’t want to, called “Christmas Shoes.”

Many people hate Christmas music (not Jamie; she just objects to the insipid songs). Most of you are not looking at the sheet music, as I am, and thinking about how it could be arranged. “The Christmas Waltz” sung by Frank Sinatra is a different experience from the same song done by The Carpenters. “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” by The Jackson Five is actually pretty cute, if you don’t get sad just listening to the young Michael Jackson knowing what would become of him. The most commonly heard recording of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” right now is by a girl who sounds as though she is bravely continuing her song in spite of excruciating stomach cramps. These things affect the enjoyment of the music.

But I think the main problem is the lack of variety. Jamie says that you will hear “Suzy Snowflake” a couple of times if you listen to the Christmas radio station for a bit. A couple of times? In the course of the hour or so that you might listen to that? “Suzy Snowflake” can be a once-a-year pleasure.”Frosty the Snowman” might be enjoyable once in a decade if Ella Fitzgerald were singing it for us.

Unfortunately, most of the people who are subjected to Christmas music against their wills are listening to the same thing over and over and over. And often it is something like “Frosty the Snowman” sung by the Chipmunks. While they are trying to work or conduct conversations. No wonder so many people say they hate Christmas music!

This is why, at this time of year, I like to offer you a song a day, as an antidote to the horrible and repetitive stuff causing you to dislike Christmas music in general.

Today let me offer you “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” which is not insipid in the least. The words are by Longfellow and the tune by John Calkin, which lets you know that this song is not from the 20th century Christmas song renaissance, but from the previous upsurge of holiday tunes which took place in the Victorian era. It’s good poetry with a sweet and plaintive tune, and not as well-known as it should be.

Still, this song has been recorded by Harry Belafonte — well, and by other people, but really, just listen to Belafonte.

Or sing it yourself. This can be a good anti-war song played with guitar. Click here for the tab. Or play it on your trumpet. This is a great song for brass.

Dweezy reminded me of “Suzy Snowflake.” It was written by Sid Tepper in 1951, another of the group of songs that includes “Marshmallow World” and “White Christmas.”

Dweezy mentioned another of them, “The Christmas Waltz.” Here is a midi file of the tune. I like that song a lot, really. The lyrics are here.

Most of the popular Christmas songs (as distinct from carols) come from that group, beginning with ”Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and “Winter Wonderland” in 1934. If you have been walking around cursing the continual Christmas muzak, then this is the stuff you’ve been cursing. The most recent Christmas song to hit the top 25 most-performed list is “Wonderful Christmastime” from 1979, and the ’60s gave us only “Little Saint Nick” by the Beach Boys (though there is that song about Snoopy which is quite popular in New Zealand). Apparently, there was something about the Great Depression and World War II that inspired people to write Christmas songs.

You probably have not been cursing “Suzy Snowflake,” though, because it hasn’t been recorded recently. Dweezy is lucky enough to have a vintage recording by Rosemary Clooney. The rest of us may know this from Barney (shudder) or the kids’ nursery school holiday pageant, but to my knowledge, the Cheetah Girls haven’t yet gotten around to it.

 We got the tree decorated. I have always felt that the goal was to put an ornament on every single twig, but the boys assured me that it would make the tree “loud.”

We therefore stopped at this point. I may put on more, though, because it seems to me that the whole point of a Christmas tree is to be excessive. It is nice to know, of course, that my sons have such elegant sensibilities, but if you are going to do something as unreasonable as to bring a tree into your house and hang stuff all over it, then you might as well go all the way.

The soldered slide charms work very well as ornaments.

I kept half a dozen of them for my own tree, and have packed up some for various family members, but I may do more. I think that old sheet music and Christmas card images would make nice little tree ornament collages.

Thus far, my ornament slides have tended toward elegant simplicity, but I am rebelling against elegant simplicity. I will sing “Suzy Snowflake” and “Marshmallow World” while I work on them, to inspire a sense of cheerful holiday kitsch and cheesiness.

Here are some inspiringly kitschy commercial versions with 3-figure prices. More affordable ones here. These things make me feel good about the price of my soldering iron.

We also hung up the stockings. Our mantelpiece ends up looking like an altar to Santa Claus, but here again, why go just partway with such a silly custom?

It is not as though there were some decorous and sensible way to hang giant fake socks on your mantelpiece.

It is true that we have too many stockings for the current residents of the household. Neither daughter took her stocking with her when she grew up and moved out, and it didn’t seem right to leave them in the storage container. What I ought to do is get one for Son-in-law as well, fill them all up, and mail them to their owners.

We are hoping that #2 daughter will be here for Christmas, though, so perhaps we can keep hers for another year.

Once we had done the decorating and gotten a pot of beef stew on the stove, we settled down to watch the “Monk” marathon on TV, and I got on with the Christmas present table runner. This picture shows the shininess of the fabric.

This picture, I hope, shows the quilting pattern.

It was handy that  the motif fit in a hoop. I was able to sit comfortably with the guys while I worked.

They were not sitting comfortably. They were whipping each other with bead garlands, leaping over the couch onto one another, enticing the dogs to climb onto the furniture where they are not allowed, and eating up all the snickerdoodles which I baked for cookie boxes.

I pointed out that I would have no cookies for this year’s cookie boxes if the boys continued to eat them all.

“Who really deserves a cookie box?” said #2 son in a voice he must have learned from courtroom dramas.

I suggested that all the people we usually gave cookie boxes to deserved them. I made an impassioned plea for the postman, hairdresser, accompanist, teachers, co-workers and family members. #2 son was willing to concede that his grandparents deserved their cookies, but argued that they deserved fresh cookies. He pointed out that I get up early and could bake all the Christmas cookies in the week before Christmas if I set my mind to it.

It is now time to make a decision about the quilting: whether it is finished or not. The circle around the rose motif is just the mark left from the hoop, and not part of the design. I will press it out.

I like the relative simplicity of it, and I know that the recipient prefers simplicity, but it might be nice to repeat the motif on either side, making a row of three roses. Or a line of quilting in a Celtic knot pattern along the center from one pieced end to the other might also be nice. I generally like a lot of close quilting, for the texture of it. In this case, since I am using contrasting thread, the quilting is more overt than usual. And, while I am currently rebelling against astere elegance, that will not last. On the other hand, I happen to know that the girl I’m giving this to bought a pair of Ugg boots and plans to get another.

I may go ahead and bind it and then see. Your opinions are solicited.

For those of us doing the HGP, it is Holiday Decorating Week, and that is well begun at my house. I put away all the autumn decorations and the boys and I put up the Christmas tree. We found a string of lights that play little tinny electronic Christmas carols. None of us has any idea where it came from, but it is kind of cool in a “what will they think of next?” way.

I’ve been married and decorating for Christmas for about a quarter of a century, so I have a lot of decorations. I change the regular dishes for Christmas dishes, the regular pillowcases for Christmas ones, the table linens, the cushions and throws in the living room, the things on the tables and dressers, all that. I will finish that up this afternoon.

In the process I also hope to do some housekeeping. My house is a mess, and I have gained weight with all the partying which hasn’t obediently disappeared again once I returned to oats and gym visits.

The high proportion of partying to normalcy may explain it.

But it doesn’t seem fair. Before each party and visit, I have the house clean and tidy, and that melts away like spring snow. After each party and visit, I have two extra pounds, and they just hang around waiting for the next party.

My main quandary today, though, is a musical one. At the last choir rehearsal, a week and a half ago, someone asked what we would be singing for an anthem this morning. “A solo,” the director responded. “Fibermom?” (Well, he used my name, but that’s a secret, isn’t it?) I agreed, though I also suggested that it would be nice to have a quartet, and there was a bit of agreement on that, though no one actually stepped up to the plate and committed to sing.

A day or two after that I emailed the director with a suggestion for a song, and he responded that he didn’t know that one, and then had quite a bit to say about Christmas music.

So I have not only not practiced anything, I don’t know whether I am singing a solo or just helping out in a quartet.

I dreamed that a large symphony with a chorus came to visit and did the anthem. In the dream, I also had left the house with my dress unbuttoned, so it was clearly just a dream and not a heavenly vision or anything, so I don’t think I can count on that.

The trouble is that it is not Advent yet. Normally the Sunday after Thanksgiving is Advent, and you can jump right into Advent hymns, of which there are lots in my repertoire, and for which I have plenty of sheet music. If it were Advent, I could just walk in, hand the music to the accompanist, and sing.

But the oddity of this year’s calendar means that we have to come up with a Thanksgiving hymn. There aren’t that many. There are really just enough for the November Sundays before Thanksgiving. We’ve sung “We Gather Together,” and “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come,” and “Sing to the Lord of Harvest.”

I thought of “Gift of Finest Wheat.” Hear the tune here, and see the words here. It is really a communion hymn, but there is all that wheat in it, giving it a harvest air. It is in the Presbyterian Hymnal, which I can sneak over to the organist.

Another hymn sometimes associated with Thanksgiving is “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah.” It has the word “pilgrim” in it. The tune is the wonderful “Cwm Rhonda,” one of the great Welsh hymn tunes which sounds like nothing as a solo but comes to life with harmonies. If there is in fact a willing quartet, I will propose that.

Or maybe that symphony and chorus will show up.

Predictably, I did not spend the entire day lolling about yesterday. There was a certain amount of lolling, particularly since my husband finally has a weekend off, so I was able to spend some time with him.

But I also finished #2 son’s sweater.

This was a basic set-in sleeve, crew-neck pullover from The Knitter’s Handy Book. This is the first time I have made something from the book, and I was very impressed with it. I chose the size based on the chest measurement and the amount of ease my son wanted, adjusted the length a bit, and otherwise followed the directions exactly. Knitters know how rarely we can do that with good results. The sweater turned out exactly as he wanted it to be. It was made with Wool of the Andes, and took about 6 skeins rather than the 10 the book estimated, so I do have some leftover yarn, but it is a great color, so I will I am sure be able to find a use for it. And of course overestimation is better than underestimation, so in all I am very happy with this book.

With the sweater completed (and lunch out and grocery shopping done), I got back to Christmas presents.

A couple of months ago, I made this table runner for a wedding gift.

At the time, a friend pointed out how well the colors would go with the dishes I was giving my elder daughter.

She was quite right, so I decided to make one for my daughter too.

Both the girl I gave the first runner to and my elder daughter are glamorous women. But where the bride is kind of a sparkly shiny fancy girl, my daughter is strictly elegant. Think Marilyn Monroe versus Grace Kelly.

So the first runner I made was a Laurel Burch bright and shiny thing, and the one I am making now is more reminiscent of jewels and exotic lands.

I am going to skip the applique, make the whole thing smaller, and do some complex quilting in the center.

Last night, I did the basic outline quilting for the ends. I have two full weeks before the HGP-recommended deadline for handmade gifts, and I have this runner and one more set of little presents planned. I am through shopping. I plan to get the boys into the kitchen once that deadline passes, to help with the cookies and candies and other kitchen gifts. I think I will finish everything without undue rushing or stress.

Today, I go back to work.

It is one month till Christmas today. I will begin playing Christmas music in the store. I am working with JJ today — she is only at our store on Saturdays, so it is a long time since I have done so — and I don’t know her musical preferences. We have had people in the past who disliked classical Christmas music, and people who have liked The Chipmunks’ offerings (I think I threw that one away after she left), and we try not to make anyone listen all day to anything they find irritating. JJ walks around singing the Mickey Mouse Club song under her breath, so I may go with children’s choirs.

At home, we have a new Christmas CD: “The Ultimate R&B Christmas 2.” This CD was a bit surprising, since Nat King Cole’s “O Holy Night” and Lena Horne don’t just scream “R&B” to me, but there are also tracks by Smokey Robinson and The Temptations. There is Rufus Thomas’s “I’ll Be Your Santa, Baby” and The Drifters singing “White Christmas,” which is absolutely my favorite recording of that song.

I was surprised to learn that The Drifters recorded their take on “White Christmas” just about a decade after the original was recorded. “White Christmas” was of course written by Irving Berlin in 1942, another song from the 20th century Christmas music renaissance. It is still under copyright, so I cannot give you a link to listen to it, but here are the lyrics for The Drifters’ version. The alert will notice that the only real difference is a section that goes “oop doop,” so this will not tell you much about the song if you haven’t heard it. If you have, however, it will be easy enough to gather up a few friends to sing “oop doop” and snap their fingers while you sing “I-I-I’m dreaming…” Doing this will improve your post-Thanksgiving clean-up chores no end.

I would take the new CD to work, but I am not sure that “I’ll Be Your Santa, Baby” would be appreciated by the moms. Would you want Rufus growling “It’s more than just a toy” to your little cherubs as they play with the trains?

We had a very nice Thanksgiving, and I hope you did, too.

Neither of my daughters made it here for the holiday, but both found parties to go to, so I didn’t have to worry about them sitting alone eating turkey TV dinners.

In fact, we had only six for Thanksgiving dinner, but it was a good six, so we all had an excellent time.

The boys did not agree that having only six people implied that there should be fewer pies, so we had our usual three pies. That makes — let me check my calculations — yep, half a pie for each person.

We still have quite a bit of pie in the refrigerator, though I am of course eating steel-cut oats for breakfast.

If it weren’t for the whole health and fitness thing, I would go with leftover pie instead.

#2 daughter is singing at the mayor’s tree-lighting party tonight. We are pretty impressed by this, since we do not even know the mayor of Kansas City. It is, however, not that she will be reclining on the grand piano at the mayor’s house. Rather, it is at Crown Center, which is a big fancy mall with shops and hotels and things.

We always like to go there when we visit Kansas City, because they have a French bakery and amusing restaurants and a Franklin Covey store and a sort of clear tube you can walk through to reach Union Station, which has architectural beauty and a scientific amusement park and stuff.

She is singing “Marshmallow World.” She objects to this song on the grounds that it is stupid, and of course it is. It has lines like “The sun is red like a pumpkin head” and “marshmallow clouds getting friendly in the arms of an evergreen tree.” However, as That Man justly points out, stupid lyrics were the fashion of the time, the time being the 1950s.

There was a little renaissance of Christmas songwriting from the ’30s to the ’50s. The other big times in the history of Christmas music were the 1600s and the Victorian era, when no one would have even thought of writing something like ”Marshmallow World.”

It was written by Carl Sigman, a lawyer who decided to write songs instead of practicing law, and was quite successful at it. He wrote a whole bunch of songs in the second half of the 20th century, none of which I have ever heard, as far as I know, except for “Marshmallow World.”

“Marshmallow World” is quite jazzy, and I think that #2 daughter will sound great singing it. It has been recorded by Brenda Lee and The Cheetah Girls and The London Symphony Orchestra, but I think that the best known version is that of Dean Martin.

This would be a good song for humming while you shop, if you are doing that today.

I’m not. I have the day off. Since I am working tomorrow, I ought to treat today as a Saturday, and clean house and buy groceries and work diligently on Christmas presents. However, I do not plan to. Heeding the advice of Leonidas and providing a good example for Andrew1080, I slept in till 6:00 this morning, and I fully intend to read and knit and eat leftovers for most of the day.

Here are some Christmas tree ornaments that I made.

My boys helped me sort out the best ones for my mother’s birthday gift and the remainder will go on our tree.

They are augmented in these pictures by the reflections of the trees above them, but perhaps you can get the idea of them.

Well, I am off to finsh #2 son’s sweater.

I woke up this morning at 4:00 when the clock radio began blaring “Jump into bed, cover up your head, ’cause Santa Claus comes tonight!”

This is not the right song for today.

The right song for today, as I think we all know, is “Over the River and Through the Woods.” This was written in 1844 by abolitionist Lydia Maria Child, a contemporary of Sarah Josepha Hale, the woman largely responsible for our national Thanksgiving holiday.

We used to go over the river and through the woods quite literally to my mother’s house for Thanksgiving when the children were small, but now they come to us. My mother’s parents lived in another state when I was growing up, and my father’s parents on another continent, but after my father’s death and my mother’s remarriage, we went to my stepfather’s parents for Thanksgiving.

No rivers or woods were involved, because we lived in San Diego, but it was still very exotic.

Grandmother M had hairdo magazines. This all by itself would have made her exotic, since we had not only never known anyone who had hairdo magazines, but had never even known anyone who had a hairdo. She made rare and amazing foods like baked macaroni and roast potatoes and sweet potato things with a pineapple ring topped by a marshmallow topped by a pecan. She baked pies from scratch.

Every time we arrived, my mother would say “You said you weren’t going to go to any trouble!” and Grandmother M would chuckle and assure us that it hadn’t been any trouble.

Grandpa E was a vegetarian, though it seems to me that his definition was rather elastic, and read Rosicrucian magazines. He believed that the Bible had all kinds of secret coded messages about history and current events in it, and was sort of a scary guy.

Today we will have only six people. I haven’t had so few for the Thanksgiving meal since I can’t remember when, but my boys assure me that I should still make the same amount of food. I made a pie yesterday, and some appetizers, and Jello (required, though people don’t eat it) and a centerpiece. Today I will do two more pies, rolls, and the vegetables. My dad brings the turkey and dressing.

We have three kinds of cranberry sauce. This is because That Man and I have a cranberry arrangement. We both like the odd Cranberry Relish Susan Stamberg shares every year on NPR. It is a lot of trouble to make, and the recipe makes too much for either of our households, so we alternate years and share it. This year it was That Man’s turn. But this year Stamberg also shared a new recipe, for a garlic and ginger cranberry chutney. You can click here for both recipes, or here for a tutorial with stuffed animal. So I made the chutney and took half to That Man.

It smelled downright evil as it cooked. I don’t know what it will taste like, but I will be serving it. There will also be whole berry cranberry sauce from the can, because otherwise we wouldn’t be sure it was Thanksgiving.

Here is the recipe for the appetizers:

In any case, enjoy your holiday!

The Chamber Singers recorded seven songs last night. We were missing several members — noticeable in a chamber group — but all three of the altos were there.

Frankly, I have a little bit of tension with one of the other altos. She is a good sight reader, as is the other alto, but I am not. I stand in between the two of them and do my best. But this woman pokes me when I make an error. She smacks my leg if we’re sitting down and my shoulder if we’re standing, and last night she jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow.

I appreciate her high level of accuracy, but I do not think that anyone’s singing is improved by physical violence.

What’s more — and this is true confessions time — my natural dislike of being assaulted by this woman is not the only reaction I have to it. The truth is that this woman, accurate though she may be, does not have a pretty voice. So I have a petulant “How can someone who sounds like her object to my occasional error?” kind of reaction. Or even “You are criticizing me?”

So last night, when she jabbed me, I jabbed her right back.

I am not proud of this. Not only is it always wrong to offer physical violence, but this woman is also a lot older than I am. Maybe she had a pretty voice when she was young. I am not good at estimating ages, but she has wooly white hair with scalp showing through, so she must be twenty years older than I am or more. Where do I get off jabbing old ladies* in the ribs just because they do it to me? I tried to be particularly friendly in between songs to make up for it.

Maybe she will stop doing it now, though.

Today I have Pampered Chef deliveries, baking, cleaning, and soldering to do before I go to work. I also made the error of peeping into a book I am giving as a gift, and found that it is really fascinating and amusing, so I may have to read bits of it surreptitiously before I wrap it up.

This requires holding the book closed at the spine and parting the pages slightly so that the book will not look as though it has been read, and is naturally a slower process than openly reading. I do it all the time at work, where reviewing the books is part of my job, but do not usually do it with books I give to people, which are supposed to be new. We will see if I can resist the temptation.

And I was hoping to get to the gym as well, since I have not made it there yet this week, involved as I have been with holiday preparations and my sons’ vacation.

* Ozarque has been having an interesting discussion over at her place about what to call old people. It appears that they do not want to be called “old” any more. I am watching to see what the concensus might be on a suitable new word, and when they all decide on one, I will use it. That Man says that he wants to be called an “activegenarian” when he gets old, which he plans to do pretty soon now.

And Marji is starting the official SWAP contest, which begins December 1st. I could never make eleven garments in four months, myself, but I am looking forward to seeing her do it. Her very pretty storyboard is up at her blog, and in more detail here.