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 The
View From Here
By Katherine Veno
Don’t want any hassle...
I want to sail through the holidays without any hassle. I want it to be
easy and breezy. This might entail cutting out a lot of holiday
activities and things I think I am supposed to do. I don’t want to be
expected to do things like I have always done.
Having given up Christmas trees and major decorating has lightened the
load, but I am a wreath-hanger for most any season. Just give me a
pretty wreath for any day and I will hang it on the front door and will
share wreaths with others.
I am also a bell-hanger. Show me a doorknob and I will put a bell on it.
The place always sounds like Rudolph and his team is at the door or
opening the closet. Bells take no time and are super easy. Pick it out,
take it home, hang it up, and I am decorated.
Sometimes I even wear some bells. Then there are bells on the cat, bells
on the horse, bells on the dog and bells on anything else I can find.
When the season is over, I just toss the bells in a box and lose it.
There was a time when I had to go to a Christmas tree farm and cut it
down, carry it home, try to keep it alive, decorate for hours and then
try to keep the cat off it. Most of the time was spent picking up broken
ornaments, sweeping up pine needles and wiping up the spilled water from
the tree base that the animals drank out of.
Strings of tangled lights equal much hassle for me. Unless the lights
are in a new package, and I have never touched them before, they are
guaranteed to be a tangled mess. I envy those who can decorate a perfect
tree. I saw a pink one the other day that had all the lights and
ornaments already in place. All you have to do is plug it in. I am sure
it would be easy until the cat chewed off some of it and got sick on the
carpet. I did not buy it.
When I was a little girl we would pile in the car and go see the lights.
Now we can go to a light theme park. It is dazzling. I have driven to
Marshall to see the lights. Now I am happy with looking at lights if
there are any nearby to see. I have a couple of strings of lights I got
on sale two years ago. So far they have not seen any active duty.
It is all part of the aging process, I guess, and the fact there are no
little ones around to entertain. If I get lots of decorations out, I
realize I have to put them away, and the hassle factor is just too big a
price to pay.
Still, I have some festive fall leaves on the door, and as soon as the
first of December passes, I will put a Christmas wreath on the door.
Just give me some eggnog and a good book by the window, and I will be
hassle-free.
 Escapades
of Emily
By Emily Gail Lundy
What not to wear...
A day has come I thought I would never
see. I am not too keen on buying new clothes. Oh, I need something to
wear when a dress or nice pant suit is called for, but it’s too hard to
find anything to fit or to define appropriate.
In a woman’s magazine, I read all the hints about dressing inexpensively
with a few outstanding classics. These helpful hints are for another
time, another country maybe, but not for women my age and size, who
still have to cover up in public.
One suggestion, that made so much sense it seems superfluous to mention,
said to buy to fit the biggest part of one’s body.
Of course that part can change, or there can be more than one part of
the body to fit. Going by this rule eliminates a one-piecer ever to wear
again. This usually has me looking at something loose with a jacket to
cover the arms. As one grandson said of my left arm, its bloody markings
made it appear I had been wrestling a tiger.
Another suggestion showed ways to wear a turtleneck, long-sleeved top
with summer blouses over it. First, that style won’t trick anyone, and
second, among women over 60, there are not an abundance of necks.
I had a daughter with a long, slender neck she despised. She wore her
hair long because of the neck. Finally she convinced herself she was one
of the fortunate ones, cut her hair, and let the neck show. I would pay
mucho money for a slender neck. A turtleneck hits me on the upper lip.
This daughter I speak of hates turtlenecks, because she’s
claustrophobic.
Another helpful hint, the only one I can follow, said the length of
skirts depends on the condition of the legs. A skinny, retired woman
used to fuss at my long skirts, saying they made any woman look bigger.
She knew I was overweight when she complained. What did she think I
could show off under that skirt? Fat usually travels, even jumps around
at times.
Then there is the new theory that older women should not dress mostly in
pastels. Wear wild, loud colors, some expert suggested. These clothes
are out there in my size, but why do I want to stand out in the crowd?
For a while, two of the teenage granddaughters thought Papaw would be of
good use on a mall trip for something new. Pawpa had rules: no tops with
vulgar mottos, no holes in anything purposely, the clothes had to cover
the midriff and the upper. And he will never understand jeans worn long
enough to rag out at the bottom.
Mine do this because the size of jeans I buy must cover the larger part
of the body. Why the waist is coordinated to the hip size I can not
understand, never will. Long live elastic.
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