The snow fort is waiting ~ December 28, 2000

David Heiller

Cοllin set out his plan shortly after arriving for Christmas last Friday. “What can we build?” he asked with a sly smile. He always asks that question when he comes for a visit, and he usually has an answer in mind before I can reply.

Α wagon. Stilts. A tree fort. These are past projects. What will it be this time, Uncle David?

“What are you thinking?” I asked back. Answering a question with a question is good strategy with an eight-year-old.

“How about a snow fort?” he asked with another smile.

I somehow knew that was coming. In fact, I had been thinking the same thing. But I let him lead the charge.

“Sure,” I said after a thoughtful look. “Where could we build it?”

“How about the ditch where Noah had his ice cave?”

“Good idea,” I answered. Funny, I had been thinking of that same spot.

“And maybe we could sleep in it,” he said.

“We could give it a try.” That was another thought that had been on my mind. Collin and I think alike, which is confusing to my wife. She thinks I am at least 14.

David and Collin after a fine day's
 project and Christmas dinner.

We looked over the spot and planned the attack. First, we shoveled the snow off the ground There was water under the snow in the bottom of the ditch, which is testimony to the insulating quality of snow. It wouldn’t take long for the slush to turn to ice. The temperature was four degrees below zero.

But we didn’t get cold. We were on a mission, and our important project was bigger than a little cold weather.

We made two sleeping benches, one on either side of the ditch. Collin wanted to lay down on his right away, but I told him that he had to let the snow harden for a couple hours.

For the roof, I suggested using some dimensional lumber from my lumber pile in the pole barn. We scrounged two 12-foot 2x6 boards and laid them on edge across the ditch. But that didn’t give us enough head room, so we went back for three more to lay on edge over these. I had to carry the boards, which were too heavy for Collin, who had somehow by now become my supervisor.

But the roof was still too low. So we went back for five more timbers. I carried them down and laid them flat on the other three. It looked plenty high enough.

Then we carried three tarps from the garage. We laid one on the benches. Two went over the top and ends of the fort. We shoveled snow on top and on one end. The tarps sagged with the weight of the snow, so I put another timber on top of the middle roof board and nailed it in place. Then I pulled the tarps tight and nailed a timber on top of each end roof board.

We carried three sleeping bags and two pads to the snow fort. I spread them on the benches. I told Collin he could use my bag, which is rated to minus 20 degrees. I would use the other two.

No matter what, David always told Collin 
stories in front of the fire before bed.
And there was ALWAYS a project.

For the rest of the afternoon and early evening, Collin was confident in his decision. He told everybody what we had planned, and he was met with no small amount of surprise, from his sister, from his cousins, from his parents, from my wife. You’re going to sleep outside with a weather forecast of minus 15 degrees? They thought we were crazy, although they didn’t come right out and say it.

But Collin grew quiet on the matter after supper, and during the boys’ turn in the sauna, with the temperature outside falling and the temperature inside pushing 150 degrees, his dad broke the news to me. Collin didn’t want to sleep in the snow fort.

That’s all right, I said to Collin. It’s not a problem. We’ll try it again some other time. My first instinct was to try to coax him into giving it the old college try. But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted him to lead the way, like he had done all day. You have to have your heart into winter camping for it to be a success.

I knew he felt bad for changing his mind, but I know it’s hard to camp out too close to home. The thought of a soft bed in the summer, or a warm bed in the winter, just 100 yards from the front door, is too hard to ignore.

And yes, a part of me was relieved when Collin changed his mind. It would have been fun to try, but it was fun to sleep inside too.

The day had been a great success anyway. “Process, not product,” as they say. The process had been great, for Collin and for me.

And the snow fort is still waiting...

2004 Christmas letter to Grandma ~ December 22, 2004

David Heiller

Dear Grandma,

The big week is here. The tree is up in its new spot in the new house. It’s small, only about five feet tall, so I put it on top of two bee boxes, and Cindy put a tree skirt around it. It looks great, like it belongs there, and it has three presents under it.

We went out and bought a tree this year, the first time for as long as we can remember. No fir trees on our property down here.

The first Christmas in the new home.

Christmas different this year, Grandma. The kids are gone now. When they were little, it seemed like they brought Christmas with them.

The concerts and school artwork and Sunday School pageants, even our trip to the woods to cut the tree were all a big part of the Christmas feeling.

I miss their excited talk about the presents under the tree. They would shake and rattle them, with an occasional word of warning from Cindy or me. “Careful with that one, Noah.” “I wouldn’t squeeze that one if I were you, Gol.”

They would count the presents too, to see if they each had the same number. They almost always did, thanks to Cindy, who could keep track of such things. I was lucky to know what they got. It’s a guy thing. Maybe Grandpa was the same way.

Cindy is still doing her part. The crèche has a new home on a table in the living room, and there is holly on the stair railing. And she has made hundreds of cookies, many of which have found a home with me. (She got up at 5 a.m. last Saturday to bake. That’s as sure a sign of Christmas as any.) Your chocolate cookies are still my favorite. It was nice to see your once-familiar handwriting on the recipe card on the counter.

But I am seeing and feeling the Christmas spirit, Grandma. It seems like every day for the past couple weeks, I have taken a picture or written a story about some good Christmas deed. Students gathering items for soldiers in Iraq. Groups donating to the food shelf. The huge Care & Share effort to distribute gifts to children in need in the county.

And in all those cases, I sense that old saying, ‘‘Tis Better To Give Than To Receive.” A lady at the Care & Share gathering told me something like that. She said this was good for the kids, but it was good for the community too. Good to give, to come together and help your neighbor. Even if you don’t know who you are helping. Maybe that makes it even better.

One of the recipients of a Care & Share gift came into the office last week to pick up a late donation. I sat in the other room, and could feel the woman’s excitement and gratitude from there. It was a new jacket for her teenage daughter. The price tag was still on it. It would fit perfectly!

The girl had never received a new jacket in her life, the mother said.

Jill was gracious as usual, and deferred the thanks to the whole group, which of course was true, although without the Jills of the world, there would be no Care and Share. But that’s the subject of another letter.

Anyway, the glow of good will in The Argus after the lady left lasted for about a day. You could almost feel it radiate like a heat lamp, or like the light from a Star in the East. It just sort of summed up Christmas for me.

So that’s it for this year, Grandma. I will try to track down an orange to eat on Christmas day, in honor of your favorite story about getting a Christmas orange every Christmas, how fresh and good it tasted. And I’ll have a few of your cookies too!

Love, David

Trying to solve a Christmas mystery ~ December 24, 1987

David Heiller

Gremlins Come Out at Christmas, the newspaper headline read. Santa’s Elves Discovered in Birch Creek Farmhouse?

DENHAM, [A.Ρ.] A set of strange occurrences have set the scientific world abuzz in this rural Minnesota community.

The David and Cindy Heiller household has been the site of several baffling mysteries that may be related to Old St. Nick himself.

Christmas tree ornaments have been found lying underneath the white spruce that they cut two weeks ago. The ornaments were hung several feet of the floor by the homeowners themselves. Several defy Newton’s Law to rest on the floor at the end of every day.

Look! A clue!

Tiny stars which Cindy Heiller stuck above a cut-out of a horse and sleigh on the kitchen window have been moved down into a crooked line above the sleigh. “They’re just sticky things you put on windows,” the baffled Cindy tried to explain. “They don’t move by themselves.”

The family’s nativity scene, with its ceramic Wise Men and cattle, has also been disrupted. The figures are often found arranged in different numeric patterns, shaped into a six or a seven, like something you might see on Sesame Street. Experts have yet to explain the significance of the numbers.

And Christmas cookies have been disappearing almost as fast as they come from the oven.

Several area Santa Clauses have been asked about the puzzle. Walter Price, speaking on behalf of the Willow River Santa, offered only “Ho-ho-ho.” Cindy Nelson, the personal secretary of the Askov Santa, put her finger aside her nose and disappeared up the Partridge Cafe chimney.

The Heiller family dog, Binti, has been seen drinking water from the Christmas tree stand, but couldn’t have lifted the ornaments from the tree, experts say. The family cat, Miss Emma, has been observed examining the nativity scene at close range, but doesn’t know her numbers, much less watch Sesame Street. She has been seen on the counter next to Christmas cookies, but is not big enough to carry them away.

 "Baby Tato"  and little Malika

David Heiller said he knew nothing, although he admitted to eating “one or two” cookies. When asked whether his weight had risen above 205 pounds, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment and swore at the First.

The Heillers’ two children, Noah and Malika, have been no help to authorities. Malika, a.k.a. Mollie, even added to the puzzle when she displayed two Wise men and the Virgin Mary in her purse. She admitted they came from the “King-Gum”. The figures were found next to a potato, a.k.a. Tato, which is now quite long in the tooth since it came from Nolan’s cellar a month ago. Asked to comment, the two-and-a-half year old  recited the words to Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

Noah, more eloquent at age four and a half, fell back on a line learned at a recent Sunday School pageant. “This is Joseph, this is Mary,” he said, making figures with his fingers. “Can I have another cookie, Daddy?”

The Pine County Sheriff’s Department is investigating the case.

“Don’t look for any answers soon, a sheriff’s spokesperson said, “Nobody panic. Just relax, enjoy your family. Sing a few Christmas carols. Dance around the tree if you’re Danish or so inclined.

“Oh yeah, have a Merry Christmas too.”

Some thoughts on snow and Christmas ~ December 15, 1994

David Heiller

A friend called from Texas last Thursday, December, 8. She complained about the weather. It was 90 degrees, and everybody was suffering from the heat.

“Gee, that’s too bad,” I said. I didn’t mean it, and she knew that from my tone.

“What’s the weather like there?” she asked. I looked out the window. It was snowing hard. The wind was blowing too.

“Pretty nice,” I said. I meant that.

Things will even out for her. There will be days when it is 35 below zero here, and it will be 70 degrees there. She will get the last laugh.

But I wouldn’t trade our winter for Texas even if I was retired or independently wealthy or both.

We drove home through a nasty blizzard on November 29 this year. Twelve and a half hours from Chicago to Sturgeon Lake, through rain and sleet and ice and finally, close to home, a blizzard.

It was hard, and dangerous, and a few people thought we were foolhardy.

I don’t think so. That’s winter here. Sometimes you take chances with it. In a perverse way, that’s one of the things I like about winter.

We don’t face saber toothed tigers any more. Most of us don’t even climb mountains or shoot rapids. But by golly we can drive through a snowstorm.

When you take a chance and face adversity and win, it makes you stronger. That’s an old-fashioned idea, but that doesn’t make it any less true. You only have to read accounts from our forefathers who settled this country to know it’s true.

We have some old family pictures taken in about 1960. Our car is parked on the other side of the street. It is almost completely covered with snow. That’s where Mom had left it.

She had come home from Minneapolis on the train with my sister that day. When they got to LaCrosse, a snowstorm had hit.

It was 13 miles to home. The last seven miles she followed the tire tracks of a Brownsville man who had chains on. The highway was closed after they got home.

Noah outside the front window.

She got to Brownsville, then pulled over across from the house, left the car, and trudged in with Lynette.

You mark the passage of time with storms and experiences like that. I’ll always remember driving home through a blizzard on Thanksgiving eve, 1983. It was the day of my Grandma Heiller’s funeral. We made it, barely, and my wife and I still talk about it as the worst weather we’ve ever driven in.

And who can forget the Halloween blizzard of 1991, five days after the Twins won the World Series? Three feet of snow in one storm.

The first snow is hard. Breaking out winter coats, putting on boots. Finding the ice scraper under the car seat where you threw it last spring, and scraping ice off the windshield. Warming the car up in the morning before you get in. Hauling in firewood. Shoveling snow.

For a few minutes, you wonder why you put up with this.

Cross country skiing is one of the things that make 
us love winter, though in later years 
we became avid snowshoers.

But then something clicks, and you accept it, and even start to enjoy it.

You break out the skis or snowshoes or snowmobile. Throw an orange in the backpack, and sit on a log in the woods with your kids and wife and dog, and eat that orange. Man is it tasty! Your mouth waters just peeling it.

And there’s no feeling like early December, after the first snow, when the sun is shining and the house is bright with its soft light, and you know Christmas is just around the corner.

Christmas without snow just isn’t Christmas. It’s basic to our nature. Mom, apple pie, baseball, the Vikings, and a snowy Christmas.

I spent two Christmases away from snow in Morocco. I remember walking under the brightest moon I’d ever seen on Christmas Eve and thinking, “Jesus was born 1,977 years ago, about a thousand miles due east, and maybe a night like this.”

It was warm and dry and shepherds were watching their flocks up in the hills. Oh it, beautiful, and oh it was lonely. Partly I missed my friends and family, and partly I missed the woods and the river and ice skating and snow.

If there’s one problem with the Christmas story, and I did say if, it is that Jesus was born in the desert. He should have been born in Αskov or Willow River or Finlayson, or even Rutledge.

Not only should there have been no room in the inn, it should have been 20 below zero. That stable would have really been cozy, with ox and lamb blowing steam into the air like dairy barn at milking time.

And it should have been snowing outside, big white flakes that would float down like feathers.

Those of us who want to rewrite history, who love snow, will sing a different tune in about two months. We’ll wish for spring in February and know it is two months away. We’ll hit a few 40 below nights and remember why some of our friends do go to Texas and Arizona for the winter.

But that’s about the time those folks are thinking about heading home to Minnesota. Home, where it snows.

Some priceless Christmas gifts ~ December 20, 1990

David Heiller

Christmas is a time of giving. Sometimes the gifts are worth money. Sometimes they are worth much more.

Take the gift of a phone call home. I called my mother last week, without really planning to. I’d just received a letter from her, and had written recently too. But I needed to talk to her.

I didn’t have much to say. Our Christmas plans, when we could meet in Minneapolis. She talked about the weather in Brownsville, the big snowstorm they had. Noah took the phone, and told her about his deer antler quest, how Grandma Marge at school had promised to bring him one. Then I took the phone again, lingering on small talk, until we said good bye.

After I hung up, I felt better. That calm old voice from home carried with it some inner strength that I needed. Now I realize that phone call was an unknowing gift from Mom.

How about the gift of a walk in the woods? We tramped down an abandoned township road on Saturday afternoon. Binti lead the way, sniffing for squirrels, criss-crossing into the woods on either side.

Binti was moving slower, but never 
turned down a walk, or a Christmas cookie!

It was a joy to watch her, because she’s 11½, and spends more and more of her time in front of the wood stove. She’s stiff in the rear, and almost totally deaf, but there she was, the old Binti, tail wagging, nose to the ground but always keeping us in sight with that radar that dogs seem to have, always knowing where they are and where YOU are.

I must have gone soft on the walk too, because when we stopped for a cup of tea and some cookies, we handed one to Binti. I repeat: WE GAVE A CHRISTMAS COOKIE TO OUR DOG. Never in Binti’s long history has this happened. She seemed to know it too, because she had the cookie chewed and swallowed before we could blink, like she didn’t want us to change our mind. Maybe she knew it was a Christmas gift.

Walks have a lot of gifts, like seeing a couple of deer take off from their snack of poplar bark, bounding across the trail in front of you, then watching a seven-year-old boy leave a slice of apple at that spot, for the deer to find as a treat.

Having that little boy’s hand fit like a glove into your hand as you walk, looking at tracks and searching the ground for the elusive deer antler. These are all great gifts.

I mostly did a ridiculous number of cookies myself,
but when I could get together with my friend
 Carolyn, we made sandbakkels. David loved them!

Cookies are, too. Cindy has been baking almost nonstop, with the help of us kids now and then: Santa’s Thumbprints and peppernuts, Russian teacakes and sugar cookies, rosettes and chocolate cookies.

The cookies seem to grow endlessly on the counter, row upon row, filling Tupperware and freezers and kids and dads. When I got up last Saturday morning, and saw a counter full of peanut blossoms, I thought for a split second, “Not more cookies!” But in the next instant, I came to my senses and realized, “You can never, I repeat, NEVER, have enough Christmas cookies.” Cookies are a Christmas gift, all right.

These are a few of those Christmas gifts that are worth more than anything you can find at the store. You’ve got your own special ones too, and I hope you enjoy them. Have a merry Christmas.

Bring on the tree, and Christmas ~ December 13, 2001

David Heiller

It hit me in the early morning hours last Sunday that it was time. I had tossed and turned for a couple days over it, waking at about 4 a.m. and then not really falling asleep again.

Momentous decisions are like that, and this was a monster.

It was time to cut the Christmas tree.

Poor George Bailey
 eventually found his cheer.

I hadn’t been ready before Sunday morning. The spirit of Christmas was taking its own sweet time to arrive for me, as usual. I had grumped around the day before, as we dug out the decorations. Why do we have to go to all this fuss? What’s the big deal? George Bailey would have been proud.

Cutting the tree helped change that.

We always cut our own tree from the woods near our house. It’s not the same as going to a tree farm. Those trees are different. They are full and shapely. They could pose in the center-fold of TreeFarm Quarterly. Most important, they don’t lose their needles.

Our trees are regular trees. They look like your friends. Not perfect, but solid, and with a good heart. Maybe a little lumpy, and their hair thinning. That’s our tree.

Four-year-old Claire reminds us that even
 the most lop-sided tree can inspire dancing!

Timing is everything when you cut your own tree, because of the needle factor. If you cut your tree early, it can look pretty bare by Christmas. There is no worse sound than when you brush up to a fully decorated Christmas tree on Christmas Eve and hear needles tinkling to the floor by the hundreds. One wag of a happy dog’s tail can denude a tree like that. I speak from experience. Spruce trees are the worst.

Decisions, decisions!

These kinds of thoughts flickered in the dim dawn light on Sunday, until I sat up and announced the time had come.

A couple hours later, we headed into the woods: wife Cindy, son Noah, friend Kendra, and me. I had seen a good balsam tree last year, so we looked for it first. I thought it would jump out at me, The Perfect Tree, relatively speaking. But it didn’t. I might have spied it, but it didn’t look any better, just another year older (like those friends I mentioned earlier). We kept walking, through thick brush, over deer trails, looking at this tree and that.

Our back woods trees were generally quite nice. 
A hole? A good place the the bigger decorations!
A flat spot? Oh yay! It will slide closer to the wall!
The needles ALL fall off in the first week? 
Well, it  makes for a good fire-side tale anyway!

“We could cut the top off that one.”

“It’s too thin. How about that one?”

“It’s got a big hole in the middle.”

“That one isn’t bad.”

“It isn’t good either.”

Finally Kendra spotted a nice one. She called us over. We circled it warily. It would do just fine. But it wasn’t quite right.

We kept moving, eyeing dozens of more trees. None came close to Kendra’s.

Then I spied the winner. It’s funny how you know something is right when you see it. That was how I felt. I called the other jurors over, and they agreed. It had that extra special look, as symmetrical and full as a balsam tree in the wilds of northern Pine County can be. And it was right next to the logging road, so we wouldn’t have to drag it through the thick brush.

Noah and Grace: under the tree, a pleasant place to be.

Then I spied the winner. It’s funny how you know something is right when you see it. That was how I felt. I called the other jurors over, and they agreed. It had that extra special look, as symmetrical and full as a balsam tree in the wilds of northern Pine County can be. And it was right next to the logging road, so we wouldn’t have to drag it through the thick brush.

I cut it down, using an old cross-cut saw that only gets used for this occasion. I felt a pang of regret cutting the tree, but it passed like the wind. There is no shortage of trees in our woods, and this tree would not go to waste in the spiritual sense. Quite the contrary. It will enrich our Christmas, just as it did our lives last Sunday morning when we cut it.

Noah, Cindy, and I carried it in, while Kendra carried the saw. The sun shone on the ground that was sprinkled with frost. The woods were sparse and brown, yet with a special beauty that only comes this time of year. Cindy pointed out an old maple tree that had partially fallen down several years ago. It used to be the best maple tree for giving sap, Cindy told Kendra. It succumbed to old age, and I cut it up for firewood. Waste not, want not.

When we got to the house, our simple job was over. I wished it could have lasted longer. We had missed church because of it, but we had gained a beautiful tree, and something less tangible but just as valuable.

The spirit of Christmas had returned for me. It’s all downhill from here.

A 2000 Christmas letter to Grandma ~ December 21, 2000

David Heiller

Dear Grandma:

Christmas is here already, so I’ll give you my annual update and send it with Gabriel.

We are burning a lot of propane, Grandma. It’s been a cold January, and we are still in December. Snow too! A real winter, after three of the pretend variety.

We have a lot of birds at the feeders. We even had a starling the other day, a big galoot that had Noah asking, “Should I get the .22, Dad?” He still remembers how you hated starlings. Either that or it’s in his genes.

Noah was a bit older than this in 2000,
 but the idea is the same.

I put the kibosh on that. If I spread the table with food, then all the guests should be welcome. You would take exceptions with the starlings, if memory serves me right.

Mollie is going to sing at Church on Christmas Eve. That will make the service even more special, and it’s always special, the candlelight service, going way back to Brownsville with you by my side.

It feels like Christmas, and that can be both good and bad. I hope that’s not blasphemy. Christmas is never a smooth time for me. It’s a roller-coaster of joy and tension. Sometimes I feel like George Bailey. I want to kick over the presents and throw a book at the wisemen.

It can create some difficult moments between Cindy and me. We can clash over Christmas. It happened on Saturday. I’ll spare you the details. But we worked it out.

We always seem to break out of the fog of getting ready for Christmas. The decorations get put up. Cindy gets the house looking beautiful, full of lights and garlands and angles and can­dles, and I wonder how I ever could have objected to any of it. The presents get bought and wrapped. Company comes, and children. The wall fills up with cards from friends and relatives.

It’s a time of wonder, and a time of being thankful.

Kids wonder about the Santa guy. Adults wonder about this Jesus baby.

Husbands are thankful for their wives, for their wisdom and patience and skill and beauty. And vice versa.

We count our blessings this time of year too. I was talking to Don Benrud after church on Sunday. He had a bad illness this year. He almost died. He lost his hearing in one ear from it, and now has to live with a constant buzz in that ear, and problems with his equilibrium. But he told me with a smile that he really doesn’t have it bad at all. It’s nothing compared to what some people have to deal with. I could see that he meant it. He was counting his blessings, and it gave me courage to see his courage.

David with his Grandma Schnick and his sister, Lynette.
 He always missed them both.

One of my great blessings was having you for a grandma. You’ve been gone for 11 years now. But you are still alive in my heart, and I know you always will be.

How many kids are lucky enough to have their grandma live upstairs? That was the greatest gift of all. You were like a lantern in the window, always there with cribbage board and longhorn colby cheese. Always brimming with stories about the good old days. Yes, the time you got an orange for Christmas, when you were a little girl in Nebraska, and how sweet and good that orange tasted! Always full of love.

So it’s another Christmas, Grandma, another good one. Thanks for listening. You are still a part of it.

Love, David

Eating your way through Christmas ~ December 16, 1993

David Heiller

The scale in the corner of our friends’ house stood there like the dashboard of a 1958 Studebaker, big and solid with a face that wouldn’t give away a good poker hand.

I stepped on it Sunday night, and the needle rose like the speedometer of a hot rod Lincoln to 220. I stepped off, then on again. 220.

The Beast

“Is this a good scale?” I asked Kevin, trying to keep a calm voice.

“Yeah, if anything, it’s a little light,” he said. Gee thanks, Kevin.

I’ve been avoiding scales lately, like a sinner avoids a church. It’s Christmas, and if Christmas means anything, it means gaining weight.

I had dropped 10 pounds off my 220 pound body over the past three months. In fact, the scale even hit 206 a few times.

That may not seem like much to John Domogalla, who can drop 100 pounds just by not eating after six p.m. But to me, it was a major mid-life victory.

And now, stepping on The Scale That Doctors Recommend, I see 220 again.

Ah, Christmas.

It’s a time when people my age pat their stomachs and laugh nervously and say things like, “Υup, every year, I gain another five pounds at Christmas.”

Carolyn and I making sandbakkels. 
These delights are best when made with a friend, 
and when consumed by an appreciative audience.
 I always had that with David!

It’s a time when wives get together and make sandbakkles, which are sugar and butter mixed together with a little flour thrown in to give it a brown color. The wives are expected to make cookies like this, and the husbands are expected to eat them and a good husband always lives up to his expectations.

It gets better. Chocolate cookies from my Grandma Schnίck’s recipe. I have to eat those, otherwise Grandma will get mad up in that Great Kitchen in the Sky.

Sugar cookies with frosting and sprinkles. The kids help make those, so I have to eat them or I’ll disappoint my little children and scar them for life.

Russian tea cakes. Have to eat them to be politically correct.

Hazel Serritslev’s peppernuts. Grab a handful; shove them in your mouth like a squirrel with sunflower seeds. Take a big swig of milk, swish it all around, and start chewing. Danish heaven.

Peanut kisses. They go great with a cup of coffee in the car on the way to work.

Don't forget the annual cookie decorating
 jamboree with the nieces and nephew!

And that’s just the cookies. There’s staff dinners and suppers, church potlucks and parties, and dining out at your local restaurant.

And don’t forget the bowl of mixed nuts on the counter. Filberts, English walnuts, pecans, almonds, and (last, but not least), Brazil nuts. Boy, are they fun to crack. Once you crack them, it’s a shame not to eat them.

I could go on, but you get the mid-drift. The scariest part is that Christmas is still nine days away. And New Year’s comes after that. Look out for the food that’s coming. It will hit you like a midnight freight train.

Thank goodness we have a more generous scale than our friends’. It’s digital. The numbers can’t seem to make up their mind. Cindy steps on it gingerly, like a cat sneaking up on a mouse, and it gives a kind reading. It’s amazing how that can make a woman smile. I clomp on it in the morning, half-asleep with a stiff back, and it gives a blunter answer.

It said 214 Monday morning. I stepped off, then on again. That sometimes shakes a couple pounds loose. 214.

But it wasn’t 220! Heck, that wasn’t so bad. I had lost at least six pounds overnight. And I was holding my boxer shorts in my hand. They weighed at least two pounds.

Look out peppernuts, here I come.