Having squeezed in two parties on Saturday, I skipped the one on Sunday. I felt as though I should go, because I am always reminding myself that with my daughters gone I have to make an effort to have girlfriends, rather than just having them handy in my house. The whole time I was bringing up four little children and working full time as well, I was too busy to think beyond my job and family. Now, as my level of freedom grows, I can have friendships with other grownups — but only if I make the effort.

On the other hand, Sunday afternoon at home with my family is a great pleasure.

At one of the parties on Saturday, there was a woman who kept saying how much she was enjoying having an adult conversation for once, since she was a widow with grown kids and taught special needs children. No, she said, she didn’t have lunch with the other teachers, but just drank a can of Slimfast at her desk. No, she didn’t go to the gym or walk the trails. No, she didn’t — in short, all our suggestions of ways to extend her social circle were shot down. And then she bored us all into submission with endless repetitions of how cute her students were and how much they loved her, regardless of the conversational topics others introduced.

Nothing wrong with telling us a story or two about her job; it was the self-centeredness. She has made her world small, complains about how small it is, but simply won’t step out of it, even to the extent of feigning interest in other people or in ideas.

I finished all the planned projects yesterday, except that I ran out of jump rings and will have to pick up another package of them and do a little more soldering. This means that I can return to my knitting UFOs.

Erin for my epic project.

Pipes for my zombie knitting.

There is also a lot of baking, cleaning, decorating, practicing of music, and other festive preparation to be done. Oh, and of course work and the gym and the cursed fact-checking. Let us ignore those things and think about music instead.

Among the Advent hymns that I really love is “Comfort, Comfort Ye, My People.” Last year I was successful in browbeating the choir director into allowing me to get a quartet together to sing this in church.

“How do you want it?” asked the organist. “Like a madrigal? a dirge?”

“A madrigal with overtones of steel drums,” said I.

Although this is a 17th century German hymn (you will doubtless recall that the 17th century was a bad time for Christmas carols, with legal bans on them all over Europe and America, so the Germans were about the only game in town when it came to Christmas music. They stepped up to the plate admirably, I must say), it lends itself very well to modern interpretation, and I would like to hear someone like Beyonce Knowles do it. However, I do not in fact have any recordings to suggest to you. You will just have to sing it yourself. Or, if you have a trumpet, that would also be a good choice. A flute would also be very nice, and indeed, a flute is almost as good as a voice for Christmas music.

Our flautist yesterday in church began in the wrong key when we ran through the piece (“Carol for Advent,” a really nice new tune to which I cannot link you) in the choir room. Fortunately, she figured this out. The choir was suggesting that perhaps she wasn’t in tune with the piano, and she was saying “It doesn’t sound right.” We could not but agree with her. And yet, in a volunteer group like a church choir, you can’t be too picky. Sometimes you just have to hope that the congregation will figure it is an edgy atonal piece.

But she realized the problem in time and did beautifully in the service. It was unfortunate that the men who actually sing on pitch did not show up. Without those men to lead them, our choir men are like poor little lambs who have lost their way, bleating piteously on any note that suggests itself to them. We could hardly suggest that they hadn’t tuned to the piano.

People came up anyway and told us how much they had enjoyed the music. People are kind, aren’t they?

The completed marmalade, waiting to be labeled. #2 son helped with it, so he got to give the jars bunny ears in the photograph. I used Martha Stewart’s recipe, and it turned out to be delicious.

And here we have Christmas tree charms waiting to be soldered.

And, since my scanner and computer are now playing nicely together, a somewhat clearer view of charms in various stages of completion:

 If you do the HGP, then today is the last day to make gifts. You can help the kids with their holiday crafting, bake, and so forth, but it is the end of the great giftmaking. I used to rebel against this, on the grounds that I work on crafts all year long, so I could work on gifts till the last minute. However, I found that there was always something I was frantically trying to finish at the last minute, as my house descended further into chaos and my goodwill evaporated, so now I respect the deadline. Almost completely. I’ve been known to go over by a day. But I am going to do my best to complete everything today.

That is why I am up so early, wrestling with leather. #2 son expressed a desire for a pair of moccasins, and I picked up a Realeather Scout Moccasin Kit, which turns out to require more skill that I would have have thought. I figured it would be a lot like the Lauri Lace-a-Puppet kit, with which I have always been successful. If this were not the last day, I would use this pair for practice. As it is, I am just trying to concentrate hard. If you ever want to do these, I can only say that when they tell you to pull the lace tight to form a pucker, they are not fooling around.

I got the nicest email message:

“I have been reading your xanga site and it is like an advent calendar of wonderful mysterious activities. Instead of a piece of chocolate, each day you provide a song which a lot more soul satisfying and healthier.”

I’ve been up for a few hours, making marmalade and attempting to get my new computer set up.

Not set up in the sense of physically set up, because it has been that way for several days now, but set up in the sense of persuading it to recognize the camera and the scanner, both of which it persists in giving the cut direct, and getting rid of the ads masquerading as useful software, and putting on the software that I actually want, and all that.

At the same time, I am making orange marmalade. This is very labor-intensive, and should not be attempted unless you love marmalade and/or the people you plan to give it to. It begins with juicing oranges. At first, you are transported by the scent, the very distillation of summer, a reminder of happy childhood days, and you wonder why you don’t do this every morning. Then, as you continue to twist and pour and measure, you fully appreciate Tropicana.

Next you quarter a passel of freshly-washed oranges and slice them paper-thin. There is of course still the marvelous scent, and the satisfying thunk of the knife on the wood of the cutting board, and the brilliant color (it is best to do this in a blue and yellow kitchen, if at all possible), but it still begins to feel like work after a while.

Today’s song is “People, Look East!” a fine Advent hymn by Eleanor Farjeon, set to the sprightly Besancon carol. It tells us to make our houses as fair as we are able, and then gets the birds and the furrows and the angels and whatnot going on their chores, because Love is on the way. Poetic, danceable nagging, that’s what this song comes down to. It was first published in 1928, and will make a good fiddle tune, or something to hum as you race around doing stuff today.

That is what I am doing today, so I will now wish you a wonderful weekend and make like a banana and split.

Yesterday was new book shipment day at work, always an enjoyable occasion. However, it was also the first day for Stage 2 shoppers.

This reinforces what Gilbert said in his book, I think. We could go up to any random person who hasn’t begun holiday preparations in November (no, it would have to be a person who feels responsible for holiday preparations) and say, “On December 7th, you will begin to be so stressed that you will be telling your troubles to strangers in stores.”

They will tell us why that won’t be true because they are different and special, but I find by checking back on my xanga that Pearl Harbor Day is reliably the first day for seeing people who are stressed and miserable about their holiday preparations. I try to say something comforting, if they seem to be in the mood for that, or something to suggest that I am in the same boat, if they seem more in a “misery loves company” mood.

In one of the new books I found a soothing carol called “The Winds Through the Olive Trees.” If you click on the title you will find a page where you can, by searching around a little, find a midi of this 16th century Gascon carol played on a several different stringed instruments, with a bit of whistling thrown in for good measure.  Here you can find a neon-bright page with lyrics and a midi of the melody. You can learn it really quickly. Then teach it to any children you happen to have hanging around, and you can all sing it, swaying gently, any time you feel stressed.

I may see if that helps our Stage 2 shoppers.

I am not feeling too stressed, myself, though it is clear that I will not actually be able to do everything I had planned to do. There was also this message from my Sunday School co-teacher, whose turn it is to lead this week, saying “Do you have clay you can use, or should I get you some?” To this I wanted to respond, “Huh?” This woman is gone two thirds of the time. Missions in Tanzania, I think, is her specious excuse for leaving me to do all the work. And now she wants me to do something with clay on the day she is supposed to lead?

And also my boys have eaten all the cookies from the freezer. Fortunately, The Empress has a recipe that makes a lot of cookies (mine all make about two dozen) so I can whip up that 6.5 dozen for next week’s fundraiser. Last year, I just pulled out 6.5 dozen of the ones I had made according to the HGP schedule and calmly dropped them off on the way to work.

And tomorrow I have two brunches to attend before I go to work.  I will be fitting present-making in around these events. I toyed with the idea of taking my soldering iron to work with me, but have rejected it.

So I can sympathize a bit with the Stage 2 shoppers. I am reminding myself that I have done everything I absolutely have to do, and the rest of the things can be dropped if need be. It is easy to be sort of infected by the Stage 2 shoppers and the holiday magazines and stuff, so this sort of self-reminder is essential.

And I will be singing “The Winds Through the Olive Trees” and possibly waltzing about a bit as I do so.

I was musing yesterday on the points made in Stumbling On Happiness. One thing that particularly struck me was — well, I have to encapsulate a bit of background here.

It turns out that one of the most accurate ways to predict how we will feel about something is to ask people doing that thing how they feel about it. “D’Artagnan,” we should say, “how do you like being a musketeer?” We are no good at remembering how we felt or predicting how we will feel, but we are good at identifying how much we enjoy something at the time. And, when people are forced by experimental design to predict their own reactions based on the reported reactions of a randomly-chosen person who is actually doing the thing, they are far more accurate than when they make a guess based on information allowing them to imagine their own reactions.

Now here’s the thing I thought interesting: even when people are acquainted with research demonstrating this, they still choose the less-accurate method of imagining their own reactions. And that is because we are all convinced that we are so special and unusual that we cannot go by others’ reactions to things. We, we think, are different.

And we aren’t.

Gilbert proposes that the reason we think we are different and special is that our experience of our own thoughts and feelings has a richness which our experience of other people’s thoughts and feelings doesn’t have. What with our not having any first-hand experience of other people’s thoughts and feelings.

A friend’s son is experiencing deep misery during graduate school. All of us who have been to graduate school can say, “Well, of course. Everyone experiences misery during graduate school. It will go away when you finish graduate school. Relax” But to him it is a special and unique experience, a particularly deep misery, nearly intolerable. Being told that it is a normal feeling and part of the human condition doesn’t help.

And in fact, being told that one’s teen angst, early marital difficulties, loneliness when out on one’s own for the first time, dissatisfaction with one’s first job, midlife crisis, or irritation at aging is perfectly normal and everyone feels that way is not comforting.

Last night at choir practice we sang a song which sounded to me like Christmas on the Pirate Ship. You can hear it by clicking on “Followers of the Lamb” on this page. However, the words are new and not hanging around on line anywhere, so it cannot be the song of the day in spite of its very catchy and piratical tune.

Instead, I offer you a really pretty and easy tune. #2 daughter and I will be singing “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem” at the Christmas Eve service. This nice gospel song by South Carolinian Adger Pace has been recorded by Emmylou Harris, Patty Loveless, Chanticleer, the Stanley Brothers, and a bunch of other folks since Pace wrote it in 1940. We will most likely be doing it as an a capella duet, but it sounds great in six parts with a fiddle and other bluegrass instruments, and please invite me if you plan to do it that way in your parlor.

This book, Stumbling on Happiness, is the one I mentioned before as one that I had just peeped into before wrapping it as a gift for someone interested in psychology. I keep up on the research about happiness pretty well, and hadn’t expected to learn much from this book, but as you know (if you have read my blog much) I really like books about science written with wit and verve. This book was reputed to be such a book, and it seemed as though it would be a good gift.

I had to read the whole thing. Gilbert is not running over the current knowledge on happiness, though he does include all that. He is saying “We know lots about happiness, we have amazing freedom of choice, so why do we screw up our lives all the time?” And, in particular, he explains — with wit and verve and I might even say charm — the things about human psychology that cause us to be wrong with such stunning frequency. This is a very enjoyable book.

Today’s song is “All My Heart This Night Rejoices.” Here is the sheet music. This is another stunningly gorgeous tune, and if you can gather up a little SATB group to sing it in parts, you should. You could also listen to it, as it has been recorded by Robert Shaw and his crew.

See, this is why I have a different experience of Christmas music. There are so many beautiful pieces of music for this season, my feeling is that I only have about a month to enjoy them all, which mostly means that I only get to hear or sing this masterpiece once a year. You may feel that way about mince pie or Buche de Noel. We rarely hear people saying “Oh, I hate Christmas food! They start serving it so early!” Well, this is how I feel about Christmas music.

“All My Heart” has angelic visitations in it again.

“All my heart this night rejoices,
as I hear,
far and near,
sweetest angel voices;
“Christ is born,” their choirs are singing,
Till the air,
everywhere,
now with joy is ringing.”

Here is a version with a lot of verses, since you will doubtless want to sing this for a long time.

I don’t know whether I’ve ever told you about the angelic visitations at our house.

It was when #1 son was about three years old. He was bothered for some days by angels, who, he would tell us crossly in the morning, kept waking him up. He was completely serious, not playing around, and he now has no memory of it at all.

The interesting thing to me is that, of all the possible explanations for this that we considered at the time, the possibility that there were angels visiting him was not even on our radar screen. I have since met people who do not find it as difficult as I do to entertain mystical thoughts, who point out that we had to take this child to the emergency room with asthma when he was a baby, that angels would be excellent at making sure he kept breathing in the night, that they could have been there to save his life, etc.

All I can say is that we never thought of that at the time.

I went for a neighborhood walk yesterday, thus saving the driving time to and from the gym so I could get some errands done.

The truth is, winter is ugly around here. We get beautiful fall and spring, and summer is not that bad, especially if you are just looking at it through the windows from an air-conditioned room, but winter has little to recommend it.

Here’s a nice mysterious-sounding song to cheer you in case you also live in a place that is ugly in winter.  ”The Angel Gabriel” is a popular Advent hymn in the higher churches. American churches, for those unfamiliar with the system, can be placed on a continuum from high church (Catholic is the highest) to low church (Pentacostal might be the lowest). High church style Protestant hymnals such as the Episcopal and Presbyterian ones normally have this song. Low church hymnals don’t usually have any songs about Mary. I used to attend a church where a song we were singing which included the words “Hail, Mary” was changed to “Oh, Mary,” after a protest from a member. It totally spoiled the song. It sounded like “Yo, Mary.” Since we’re talking about music here and not theology, I leave all disputations on this question entirely to the reader and move on.

The song is about an angel (Gabriel, natch) coming to visit Mary and clueing her in that she would be the mother of God. This is a pretty dramatic scene.

Ozarque has been having a discussion about angels over at her place. She doesn’t want them speaking casually in the vernacular (I think Ozarque would never have fussed over the words “Hail, Mary,” because angels ought to speak impressively, and “Hail” is distinctly more impressive than “Oh,” which ought to be followed by ”by the way, sweetie.”)

The angel Gabriel in this song appears with his eyes aflame. Mary is pretty relaxed about it. She bows her head meekly. This is because the words were written by an eminent Victorian. Modern songs about Mary tend to present her as brave rather than meek.

The eminent Victorian in question is Sabine Baring-Gould, a folklorist and expert on werewolves who is probably best known for writing “Onward Christian Soldiers” to a tune by his friend Arthur Sullivan, of Gilbert and Sullivan. Sullivan never intended to be famous for his comic operettas and that one now-controversial hymn. He thought his opera “Ivanhoe” and other serious works would be his claim to fame. Baring-Gould never, I am sure, expected that the little poem he wrote for a kids’ processional would be the thing he was remembered for. It just goes to show.

Anyway, the tune is “Becancon” (I don’t know how to put the little tail on the c there), an old French tune and a very good one, too. You can do terrific things with dynamics on this song if you have a choir. If you don’t have a choir, you can just belt it out. In fact, the tune is perfect for drunkenly shouting as you lumber three abreast holding one another up after a party. Not that I recommend that you do that. It would also be good for ice skating. It would sound very good on a violin.

Sting recorded it, and so have a number of choirs and classical musicians of various flavors, mostly under the name “Gabriel’s Message.” Why it tends to be recorded under one name and published in hymnals under another I do not know.

I did go to that ornament exchange party last night. I took one of my tree charms and came home with this nice little retro santa. It follows as the night the day that I have not reconstructed the lost fact-checking assignment, cleaned my house, or made any further progress on Christmas presents. I have three parties coming up this weekend, plus working an extra half day, plus making 6.5 dozen cookies for a fundraiser. I haven’t prepared for tonight’s class, either, and the grocery shopping we did over the weekend has evaporated — or possibly been gobbled up by the teenage boys who are eating me out of house and home.

I must go make some more food for them.

If you keep a list of things to do before you die, you may want to add one: teach the Song of Songs to the senior high Sunday School class.

Fibermom: “Okay, does everyone have a Bible? Find the Song of Songs. This is the sexy part of the Bible.”
“Woo hoo!”
Fibermom: “There are some questions on page 21 of your student book, but you can just skim through the Song of Songs and see what it tells us about the body. This is the scripture section of the Wesleyan quadrilateral we’re doing here, so we want to know what the Bible says about our physical being.”
“Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes!”
“EEEEuuuw!” “EEEEK!” “Dude!”
Fibermom: “Here I have a copy of Cosmo Girl. You can see on the cover that they want to tell us 407 Ways to Be Your Hottest and How to Let Your Guy Know You Want to Smooch. Do you think the Bible is going to help us with that kind of thing? Let’s see… ‘Your hair is like a flock of goats bounding down the slopes from Gilead.’ Do you think that would do it?”
“EEEEK! ‘Your waist is like a mound of wheat!’ Hey, Annie! Your waist is like a mound of wheat! Snort!”
“His lips are lilies distilling liquid myrrh! EEuuuuw!”
“Dude, this guy is really into breasts. Look. It says ‘breasts’ four times in this chapter!”
Fibermom: “Right. Well, the thing we are looking for is this: what does this tell us about the scriptural view of the body?”
“Your breasts are like two fawns. I mean it. He keeps talking about breasts.”
Fibermom: “And of course no one nowadays is interested in breasts at all….”
“EEEEEK!” “Woo hoo!”
“Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon.”
“Your rounded thighs are like jewels.” “Eeeuew!” “Woo hoo!”
Fibermom: “Does the Bible tell us that the body is disgusting? That we should be ashamed of our bodies?”
“No. We’re made in God’s image.” “The body is awesome.”
“Your navel is a rounded bowl. What’s a navel? 
“Belly button! EEuw!”
Fibermom: “Right, but check out 8:6. Is this saying ‘You’re so hot, you look like Christina Aguilera, let’s smooch’?”
“No, it’s about love.” “It’s beautiful.” “I’m totally gonna read this at my wedding.”
“My breasts were like towers. This thing is full of breasts.”
“He’s gonna go home and read the whole thing!”
Fibermom: “He’s going to go home and tell his parents that we talked about breasts in Sunday School.”

After this invigorating experience, I went home to find an email telling us to wear “party clothes” for our performance, so I was very pleased that I had done my shoe shopping. It was fun to dress up and get compliments, and novel to be the one the other women clustered around with cries of “Cute shoes!”

However, once I got home I was in my pajamas and slippers in about five minutes.

I then made this sweet little kimono brocade daffodil pouch from the book Omiyage. #1 son says that it irritates him because it is so pointless. He feels the same way, he says, about teacup poodles.

I htink it will hold tiny things, or maybe hang on a Christmas tree. It was not hard to make (it does seem to be the easiest one in the book) and didn’t take as long as I expected.

The song for the day is “Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates!”, one of the great post-Renaissance German tunes. It took a couple of centuries for it to settle into its current form, so post-Rennaissance is about the best I can do with a date.

It is a bracing tune, and the words pretty well cover what we are supposed to do during Advent:

“Fling wide the portals of your heart;
Make it a temple, set apart
From earthly use for heaven’s employ,
Adorned with prayer and love and joy.

Redeemer, come, with us abide;
Our hearts to Thee we open wide;
Let us Thy inner presence feel;
Thy grace and love in us reveal.”

I have to decide whether to go to an ornament exchange at Janalisa’s tonight in spite of unfinished Christmas gifts, un-checked facts, and a still-messy house. Also I have errands to do and must get to the gym, and have a long list of stuff to complete before work. A bracing song is definitely what I need today.

A Holiday Mixer

Courtesy of Juliepersons and Kali Mama.

A Xanga Holiday Mixer   

The idea of this mixer is for Xangans to meet each other.  Have you ever been reading a friend’s blog and thought of another xanga friend whom they might enjoy knowing?

 I do, but rarely mention it to either party. 

To play: leave me a comment and I will message you privately with a blog I think you would enjoy.

My only request is that you post this on your own blog and let others play the game, as well.

Anyone in?

Bring on the nog!

I completed the table runner, and here is an impressionistic photo of it, rather wet and wrinkly from being washed.

It is the first day of Advent. You will be lighting a purple candle and singing “O Come O Come Emmanuel”. If you are observing Advent, that is. If you click on the link, you will find the most important advent hymn in English and in Latin. People have been singing this in Latin for nine centuries, but I mostly only hear it in the English translation of John M. Neale, who also cut it down to the five most familiar verses. Many churches sing this every Sunday in Advent, and many Christians meditate upon it throughout the season.

Advent is for preparing for Christmas spiritually. Even if you don’t observe it, you might benefit from this practice. Are there relationship issues that keep you from enjoying your family at the holidays? Do materialism and covetousness mar gift-giving for you? Do you wish you did more for charity or for your community, but find it hard to get past the natural selfishness that keeps you from it? Do you continue to measure yourself against magazine pictures that make you feel inadequate at this time of year?

I didn’t mean to pry. I’m just listing some of the things people include in their soul-searching at Advent.

At the very least, it is four weeks of peaceful contemplation, which we sorely need when surrounded by the madness of secular American Christmas.

I have to say that I rather enjoyed yesterday’s shopping expedition. People are still happy and bustling about cheerfully, and #2 son came with me. He’s a fun guy. He is not helpful on the subject of shoes, but he is fun. I followed knitsteel’s advice and bought silver (matte fabric, not metallic) pumps with a circular ornament nearly matching the buckle of the jacket.

But we were distracted in our grocery shopping. We did get fruits and vegetables and such, but we also bought German cookies and forgot cat food, because there was this general air of festivity that was more compatible with imported sweets than with cat food.

I had only a moment of “Eek! Get me out of here!” when walking into Target to pick up my prescription, and otherwise was able to enjoy the decorations and then actually go on to two more stores and the post office before packing it in. The happy calls of ”Merry Christmas” and the holiday music were fun, and I was thankful that I only had a budgeted amount of money with me, because it would have been easy to disregard the fact that I have finished my Christmas shopping and get sucked into the jolly shopping melee.

Lots of people work very hard to create this phenomenon, of course, but for me it was a positive thing, indicating that I really have Overcome my Agoraphobia to a significant extent. I wasn’t even very bad about the wintry roads.

Not enough to make it up to the Thousand Villages market at the top of Mt. Sequoyah that afternoon, though. I had intended to take the boys up to finish their Christmas shopping, but that will have to wait for another day.