For a day devoted to peace and calm, it has been anything but. At work one of my patients went bezerk calling me and the a few others many nasty things not at all in the spirit of the season. I was nearly late to service. Between being unhinged from work and my performance anxiety I developed a panic attack in as we played our opening tune, which marred most of my performances. Soon into the service the young man to my right in the bell choir suddenly fell back in some sort of faint. I had to quickly rule out hypoglycemia, seizures, hypotension, and drug induced psychosis. Turns out he was having his own panic attack. The poor boy was eventually hauled away and we finished the service at least on the same beat in the same key.
Christmas can be such a stressful time.

Someone and I were too tired to make the scheduled Christmas Eve menu of salad, salmon linguine and hummers. We ended up eating leftovers, of which we have plenty.

For some time I’ve fancied trying to make home made beef jerky. I’ve never jerked meat before. We bought a brisket a few days ago and I never had time to initiate it until tonight. The meat was getting old; it was tonight or throw it out. It is harder to jerk old meat. Before I started jerking, I had to beat the meat and cut it with the grain. If you’ve never handled raw brisket it is enough to make one turn vegetarian. I concocted a marinade consisting of soy sauce, dark corn syrup, brown sugar and various spices. 3lb of thinly sliced meat is marinating for the morrow when it will be slowly dried in a low temp oven for several hours. It promises to be a frightful dripping mess, which is too bad as Someone recently cleaned the oven. Bad timing this. Who knew jerking creates such puddles.

But now things are finally at peace. I’ve lit the reindeer candelabra, which I only do on Christmas eve and Christmas day proper. The Christmas tree is lit. I am finally sitting still. I pause to think of everyone I know, near and far. I say a prayer and wish them all a Merry Christmas.

Later on I will allow myself a Christmas nip, either “Santa’s Pole” or some home made Ur Spo Co Co (with a dash of peppermint schnapps).

I hope everyone has a good night’s sleep and may Santa bring you something marvelous.

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