Saturday: Peaceful ending + blogger comments not working in the US?

My friend Martha emailed me and told me

she has tried to comment on my blog this week

and it has not worked and others have had blogger comment problems.

I just tried commenting on a blogger blog and I too had problems.

If you are trying to get through to me via comment and can't my apologies.

I will do what I can to look into this.

(email works too).

Oh, and while I am thinking about it:

ElizabethD, your letter has not come yet BUT I have not lost hope.

My sister's Christmas letter was mailed beginning of December from 

Western Michigan and just got her this week.

I am not yet worried about it because I am still getting things that

I had been waiting for...

including, as you may see, a gift that was supposed to arrive on 

my birthday but actually came tonight, a lovely card and a bag of chai tea! 

I am exciting to try to tea very soon!

(Since it came at night, and it is a black based tea (i.e. caffeine) I have

to wait to try it until morning hours, as I start drinking decaf tea about 2 PM

so that I can sleep at night :) 

So tonight was better than parts of today.

Fun fact: since I know each of my regular commentators, including

Granny Marigold, Peacocks and Sunflowers, and Kassianni,

I feel like it is old home week as each of you I either know because I met you

years ago in BC or you are currently living in BC Canada now.

So that's fun :) 

And P&S - yep, you are right about the cookbook.  

It's Jean Pare's Company's Coming: Muffins & More cookbook.

Granny Marigold, I too have both the More with Less cookbook you mention and 

Jean P's Muffin cookbook.  Actually I wish I had MORE of Jean Pare's cookbooks, 

what treasures they are! The older I get, the more I want the 'good home cooking' from

decades ago.  Just looking at these titles makes me want more of them! 

Though their website does not have the Muffins and More cookbook on it,

so it's clearly incomplete.... if you were a Jean Pare cookbook lover,

I would be happy to hear what ones you loved the most... 

Not that I have tons of room for more cookbooks, but, well I do love them.

:)  I am hoping to try another recipe or so from this Muffin cookbook...

of course the cranberry muffin recipe I changed by

switching out the milk for orange juice... :)

***

I was feeling discouraged for many reasons today, just one of those days,

and vespers (confession before!) really turned things around and then our beloved

candle desk man, who is now in his 90s and is unable to come to church because

of his continued health problems (he was our priest's right hand man for 35 years...,

the first one to come, the last one to leave)... well he called me up tonight,

he got our Christmas card in the mail... and boy did that conversation bless me.

He always saw me and loved me, by saw I mean he really noticed.

I never feel fully seen or understood where I live now.

Most of the women I know locally, they all work and many of them at very 

high-powered jobs.  I pretty much retired when I married my Husband;

I did work as a librarian for years but now I don't.

A lot of people I know here, they never really cook or bake, they are too busy, 

it's not in their DNA or the job-profile really, as it were.

But our candle-desk man, he always understood that I am always

busy, always here-and-everywhere, going to 2 churches, baking for both 

churches, keeping house, baking for us, baking for gifts,

quilting, knitting, writing, reading, taking pictures, blogging, walking etc. 

I actually, in someways, do less than before; 

I don't run the Sunday School program or teach there;

I am not really sewing much right now.  But with the pandemic, I am on for 3 meals a day

and a Husband who is always here.  My home life, to say the least, has changed dramatically

in terms of work and being 'on' all the time.  And my Husband's life has changed

dramatically too; he works from home, has to share a 3 bedroom condo with me

24x7 instead of working at the office at least 3 or 4 days a week.

A lot of people here I don't think would understand how much I do work,

or how much work it is to have baking days or to do a Christmas day with all it's 

'Christmas magic' of beauty, festivity, food and colour...

My Mom gets it, a lot of you get it.  But here, esp. locally, well, not really so much.

But that's OK.  I get it.  It's hard for someone who works a crazy

many-hours/day job to understand the life of a housewife who has

a penchant for epic baking for St Nicholas day, Christmas and Easter/Pascha,

and whose life, in it's own particular way, is demanding and draining.

***

So, dear BC friends: I am so sorry your churches have been closed since end of November.

How disappointing. 

I know Ontario has just done this recently, and I know England is going through this

and I think Holland too from what I gather from looking at a Dutch tea shop's website... 

It's just a plain hard situation.

This pandemic is hard.

My Mom is the youngest of 8, with 3 older sisters; one lives nearby to her,

the other 2 are in Ontario and this is the first year in many that they did not

get together... it's hard.  

***

So, I remembered the words, the song,

Away in the Manger...no crib for a bed...

and realized that even if I have to be outside for Christmas,

I would merely be experiencing a sliver of what Christ did on Christmas day.

No room in the inn; no comfortable place to be.

Born in a stable, a cave that foreshadows the cave that he was buried in;

He came to die and I need to follow Him and the quiet way that He calls us to life.

The lovely carol Away in the Manger spoke this to my heart so beautifully,

I was very grateful.  

***

Christmas is still going to be hard though because a lot of it

will be so different. 

***

But it can be OK too and God, He can break through any cloud

and bring some sunlight to us.

May it be so.

May God bless us, save us, help us, have mercy on us!