Time is passing by so fast. It’s hard to believe that
December is almost half over and I just went to my second holiday party of the
season. The gods of Michigan Snow are being kind to little old me who has lost her
stomach for driving in Winter Wonderlands. The temperatures are bone-chilling
cold, the landscape is covered with snow but the roads are down to bare
asphalt. The worst place I have to drive is on my own driveway that, for
reasons I can’t explain, is the only one on the entire cul-de-sac that is still
snow covered. Not a lot of snow, just enough to make going to the mailbox akin
to standing at the top of a ski slope wondering if you’ll make it to the bottom
without falling. I put on my boots with ice fishing cleats attached and I use
my husband’s old, four-footed cane for the trek. I also go to the mailbox in
the late afternoon when people are coming home from work. In case I do fall, I
figure I won’t have to lay there long before someone would drive by and take
pity on me. My momma didn’t raise any fools.
My second Christmas party of the season took place out in
the boondocks which means the weather often prevents me from going but
this year when twenty of my Red Hat Society sisters gathered at an upscale
restaurant to order off the menu, I was one of them. This group, without
exception, always orders dessert at parties so it gets pricey. I
could not believe they have desserts listed for as high as $9.50. Still, we all
went home with a box with half our entrées inside and the taste of brownie,
hot fudge sundaes or crème brulee on our lips.
We do a $10 gift exchange that are distributed using the
Right/Left game so you don’t know who will end up with what you bring. Two
other groups I belong to have the bring-only-consumable-goods gift rule and
I’ve suggested that rule to the Red Hatters. We’re all in our 70s and 80s and
who needs more jewelry, scarves, candles or décor do-dads, but the suggestion
falls on deaf ears. This group likes bling. Wouldn’t you know it, the gift I
got at the party was a watch with exchangeable bands that I’ll never wear.
“You spent more than $10 on this,” I said as I thanked the woman who bought it.
She smiled and said, “I just buy what I like and I don’t care about the price.”
I spent July e-Baying collectible watches out of the house and I’d re-gift this one if I could, but I can’t think of anyone who'd wear it. Google
priced it at $25. For a fleeting moment it made me feel cheap for only spending $11 on my $10 exchange
gift. I’m thinking of wrapping the watch back up and leaving somewhere for a
stranger to find. Well, except I couldn't leave it at an airport, school, mall or theater where someone would call the bomb squad about a ticking box.
Even with consumable gifts you don’t always welcome the gift
you get. Last year a diabetic got a box of chocolates in an exchange and at my
Gathering Girls party I went to recently I gave an assortment of
teas along with a King Arthur gingerbread cake and cookie mix arranged in a cute snowman box and the next day
I got a text asking me if I had the original tea boxes and receipts. Unfortunately,
the recipient doesn’t drink tea. At that
party we used the stealing game to distribute gifts but our game ended before
she got a chance to ‘steal’ a gift she liked better than the one she opened. Oh, well, her family does
a gag gifts exchange---things like toilet bowl brushes---so hopefully, she can
re-gift the tea. If not, Goodwill probably benefits after the holidays from a
lot of gifts that missed their marks. Even Donald Trump Jr. was joking on TV
recently that his father re-gifts to him a lot of monogrammed gifts that are
given to the president.
Change of topic: I probably shouldn’t bring this up but I
feel like we’re getting early Christmas gifts with the high profile sentences
and pleas that came out of the courts lately. (Spoiler Alert: Trump
supporters should probably quit reading here.) So far the Mueller investigation
has brought 36 indictments and he’s getting closer and closer to wrapping things
up. To see some of the president’s lies and cover-ups finally being exposed in the
courts gives me joy. Trump’s fall from grace, I predict, will be swift once all
the redacted areas in the court filings get revealed over the next six months of
trials and additional indictments. I personally think Donald Jr. is going to go down hard with some prison
time and his father will stand by while the bus he’ll throw junior under runs
over him. And the only reason Ivanka and Jared haven’t been charged in an
emolument clause case is because they aren’t getting salaries while working in
the White House. But I think the domino's of justice will eventually take them down,
too. If you think I’m wrong about all this, don’t tell me until after the
holidays. Let me live in my cocoon of believing the Rule of Law is coming
back to the White House. Do I want to see Mr. Trump get impeached? That’s a question
with a complicated answer but the bottom line is, we need to wait until enough wrong doing has been proven in court that even the hardcore Republicans in the
Senate are calling for his head. Now, if you ask me if he deserves to be
impeached my answer would be a resounding “HELL, YES!” ©
