It's an odd day, isn't it? Around here the schools are closed, and I believe PenguinRandomHouse is shut down, too, for the regular two-week all-publishing-houses holiday. My son arrives from Chicago on Thursday. The post office just dropped off two Christmas gifts I'd ordered as well as Cookiepalooza, a box of assorted cookies my friend Rae sends us every year. We love Cookiepalooza; we all have our personal favs. (Meanwhile, Rae, if you get a book that doesn't look like it's from anyone, it's from me. Amazon didn't allow gift messages this year. And I KNOW I shouldn't be ordering from Amazon. Truth is that I'd bought six copies of my dear friend Betsy's new book, Reader I Murdered Him, all planned as gifts, and then I spontaneously gave two to Katherine Paterson and Stephanie Tolan when they were here, so I had to replace them, and of course I didn't think of it until last minute. So.
Our house is absolutely transformed by Christmas decorations, courtesy of my husband, who gets more artistic with every passing year. Our outdoor lights are lovely, too. Some of the trees we used to decorate have gotten too big for that, so last spring we planted a lot of new evergreens (really!) so that we still had plenty of appropriate light-bearing trees. The Santa Duck is up on Weaver Pike, with a new improved stand apparently sponsored by Lowe's. I love the Santa Duck. Everyone does. Also, I need to shout out to the person who lives in the house across from Tennessee High in one direction and Tennessee Middle in the other. They've got a Grinch in their yard and he's taking down the Christmas lights--there's a tree laying sideways on the lawn and another drooping from the edge of the porch. It's inspired.
Meanwhile, at ALI, we're giving out books for Christmas: 500 to Bristol, Virginia, schoolchildren; 75 to the YWCA after-care program; 77 to Bristol Faith in Action; 80 to children who came to the Holiday Open House on State Street; several dozen to an organization in Johnson City who needed last-minute donations for kids aged 0-16. Our regular program is for kids ages 9-12, but we were really lucky this year in that both Books-A-Million in Bristol and Barnes & Noble in Johnson City did book drives on our behalf, so we had absolutely beautiful books for all ages to share. We got a bunch of toys and stuffed animals, too--most of those went to Isaiah House, the transitional place for kids awaiting placement in foster care. If you gave a book this season, thank you so much. (If you didn't--there's still time!) This year we have so much to be grateful for, but tops on our list is the connections we've been able to foster with so many area organizations this year.
Happy second night of Hannukah to my Jewish friends. I will be Team Sour Cream until I die.
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