'Twas Two Nights Before Christmas . . .

. . . but I will spare you any more of my rhyming this month. After missing my flight Wednesday night thanks to the transit strike and spending the night in a motel near LaGuardia Airport, I'm home now in Missouri, eating and resting and happy. My mother is watching the Fort Worth Bowl in the family room; my father is trudging up and down the stairs to the basement to get wood for the fire, and my sister and her excellent fiance are wrangling over Five-Minute Fudge in the kitchen. All my Christmas shopping is done (I got my Dad a radio transmitter for his MP3 player -- which indeed has "Hey Ya" downloaded to it, sitting oddly among Dan Fogelberg and the Doobie Brothers). Melissa (my sister) and I went to Target, Kohl's, and Hy-Vee today and ran into five former classmates and three people we knew from church, so I really knew I was back in small-town-suburban Kansas City. (Lis and I were also greatly amused by the margarine selection at Hy-Vee, which included "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!", "Best Thing Since Butter", and -- most ominously -- "Could It Be Butter?")

Obviously I am descending into minutiae here, but it's all the homey minutiae that add up to contentment: my sister's snarky, hilarious remarks and imitations; Joe (the fiance) talking over the Chiefs' chances tomorrow with my dad; my mother's endless lists; cards from long-distant family friends, and getting caught up on their stories; the steady thrum of the wood-burning stove; the Christmas tree with all our treasured ornaments on it; even unloading the dishwasher, which has been my primary chore since I was six years old. Here's wishing you all similar contentment (though not similar chores): family; friends; good food and entertainment; peace, health, happiness; and of course presents galore.

And God bless us, everyone!