st. nicholas and other matters

As I lie here, nursing a foul headache and a throbbing thumb, I can hear Elphine squishing the packages in her shoes by the front door. She has been up since 4:30, blast her. Indeed, she nearly caught me fussing over the shoes. I heard someone rumbling round upstairs (her) and shoved my bag of candy into a bookshelf and went back to bed and a minute and a half later I heard her crinkling the paper. I thought she was a baby come down to eat the chocolate and got up to yell and found her there, worshipfully kneeling before all that The Lord has done for her.

I managed to snap a picture on my way out, but it wasn't the arrangement I really long for. 

Last night they all wrote notes and discussed the existence of St. Nicholas and his relationship to Santa.

"There is no relationship," I said. "Santa is some kind of fairy or elf and St. Nicholas is a bishop."

"Is he too old to come?" Gladys wanted to know.

"Maybe he died and God lets him out of heaven to come here once a year," postulated Romulus.

"Go to bed," I said, "or nothing good will come to you."

You can see the light in her eye here--Elphine. She looks determined and, if you don't mind me saying, slightly crazed.

Anyway, back to the headache and the throbbing thumb.

The headache is from waking up at 3:30 to do the shoes because of none of the children going to sleep right away and so not being able to do it at a reasonable time like 11pm.

The thumb is from trying to beat my way into a can of tomato whilest cooking for Shepherd's Bowl.

Here I am trying to be tell enough for the pot and the stove, adjusting the flame from atop my ridiculous stool.

The soup

compared to the ghastly flesh colored satanic brew of last time turned out pretty well. Onion, garlic, carrot, green pepper, broccoli, cabbage, chickpea, lentil, ground beef, tomato, peas and curry powder are a better way to go than revolting ground turkey, kale and potato. God had mercy on me. The soup was delicious. Not delicious like any of the soup that Matt makes, but hearty and edible.

And so we come to the end of a long week. 

What with the basement slowly being emptied out, and that moment in every Homeschool Person's Life when you have to clean out the school room or you will die, and the beginning of Advent, 

[All the Prayer Cards required for three levels of Cstechesis--all the old ones mended and freshened and new ones made.]

and the sudden pressing need to eat lots and lots of salad as a way of recovering from all the pie and turkey and bread and pie.

Today I think we're going to make ugali and sauce in the afternoon and in the evening Matt is speaking at Intervarsity on the relationship between the old and new covenants. And tomorrow more basement. And a birthday party. Thus and so is December. You think you're going to sit around drinking eggnog and decorating cookies but really you hurtle through the month from one event to another eating other people's cookies and telling yourself you'll get back on your diet tomorrow. Oh...and I need to aquire unto myself a donkey costume for the pageant.

Have a great weekend!