Xmas wrap up, Supreme?

It’s a little bit old news now but here is my xmas recap. My Xmas 4 day reprieve was quite enjoyable. On Christmas eve I went and picked up mom after work and we had a nice ham dinner that Ali prepared flawlessly. I had the pool heater cranking full bore since Wednesday night and the water was up into the 90’s. As I pulled the solar cover off Christmas Eve night, the steam poured off. It felt great, like a big hot tub. In the pool, Christmas Eve, years ago I would have never imagined that scenario. I was pooped and we went to bed.

For most of my life, sleeping on Christmas Eve has been a tough thing. It was very normal for me to wake up between 4 and 5 am, wide awake, anxious for the fesivities to begin. This year was different, perhaps another sign of aging, I didn’t wake up till after 6 and then fell back asleep until 7. That has NEVER happened. It’s weird because I was still looking forward to everything yet I didn’t feel the urge to get up. So everyone got up around the same time, we made coffee and started opening stuff. Since everyone ships gifts to us, we wind up having quite a few to open. We prefer to do it in an orderly fashion where one person opens up something while others watch and then rotate to the next person as opposed to an all out tearfest that is done in 5 minutes. I bet we were opening stuff for over an hour. I felt bad because my mom was a spectator for much of it but she said she didn’t mind. I got lots of cool stuff, mostly off my Amazon.com list. I got satellite radio accessories, dvd’s, games, gameboy accessories, tools, gift cards and many other nice things. Ali’s big gift this year was supposed to be the pool heater but I surprised her at the end with an envelope that had a riddle in it that pointed her to find a set of diamond earrings I hid on the Christmas tree. She was very surprised. I can tell she is very proud of them, that was the reaction I was hoping for.

My Mom stayed until around noon and then I took her home. Christmas night my volleyball partner from down here came over from the east coast with his girlfriend. We ate, drank a lot of beer and goldschlager, swam in the pool and played some Texas Hold Em video game they brought. I crawled into bed at 2am. They hung out till early afternoon on Sunday and then headed back. The rest of Sunday and my day off on Monday were spent putting some gifts away, installing others and playing with the rest. It was a very enjoyable 4 day holiday.

My in-laws drove down here and arrived yesterday. When we went to see them after work, Ali was shocked to be greeted by Pop Pop as well. I knew he was talking about coming down but it wasn’t a certainity. Ali had no idea. She was dumbfounded. Pop Pop always crowed he would never come to Florida, it was too hot and he refuses to fly. At 91 years old he isn’t a big fan of anything outside his routine. However he decided to step out and travel the farthest away from home he has EVER been. It’s very cool to have him here. On the way home last night Ali said she couldn’t believe she was sitting at a reataurant with her grandfather in Florida. She never thought it would happen. A small after Christmas miracle.

Wow this entry has been very upbeat, abnormal for me huh? Well let me add a downer by mentioning the disaster from the tsunami. The numbers of dead are rising by the hour and the descriptions of the events that went down are beyond tragic. Huge, horrid events like this make me seriously doubt the possibility of a supreme being. What could be the purpose of such a tragedy? What better good was served by 10’s of thousands needlessly dying. I suppose a priest would tell me that God works in mysterious ways, and you just have to have faith. To me it is just another way of saying “I need to insulate myself from the possibility that there is nothing out there protecting me or the world. There is no sense to why certain things happen and to think that a GOD would want some of these terrible events to occur is unfathomable, so I choose to ignore the incongruity of it all” I wish I could explain the tragedy as GOD’s will and go on from there but I can’t get past square one. 911 brought out the same feelings.