Bundled

I am in my heaviest coat - Sherpa-like - and am absolutely freezing.  Just opened the email from PG&E and our heating bill this month is more than double what it was this time last year.  Guess I should be glad that it's colder - much colder - 'cuz there's snow on the Sierras and that's a very good thing.  We're freezing here in Tracy so yeah!  Hot tea all day, warming from the inside out.

I've been a lazy-bones today.  Just enjoying a low-key day of not much and it's lovely.  The boys are playing their new games and it's been a quiet, relaxing day - plenty of leftovers to nosh on and not much inertia required.

Though I should go do some more cookie icing and get another batch in the oven.  The 'border' and 'flood' technique worked pretty well, but I will make my border icing a little thicker next time.  And I'm not sure how to make the icing really 'bright white' - King Arthur used to have white food coloring but I can't find it so I have to settle for slightly off white borders.  Guess I could throw out all convention and line the trees with red borders and then green?  I'll give it a try.  The cookies are a lot of work but they are delicious and they disappear pretty quickly once they are iced.  So someone likes them.

Whenever B. is home, I think he ends up feeling 'down' a bit.  Home is home and he longs for it when he's not here - but when he is here, it seems like he's out of sorts.  Picks 'fights' about stupid things - like last night, he pronounced that he wants the art work that is in the upstairs hallways taken down - all the pictures he (and H.) drew as kids that I had lovingly framed.  He 'can't stand' the clown he drew and it must be gone, now.  'I'm not a kid anymore'.  Right.  I know.  He says 'there should be pictures of now - of me now'.  I have some pics he had done for Mom's day so I will try to get one framed and up on a wall somewhere.

When I framed all that art work and put it up, a professor at the college I worked at said 'that is the most amazing thing for kids' self esteem - to see their art work importantly displayed in the home they share with their parents'.  So I've kept it up 'cuz it's something I love and cherish.  If I take them all down, what will I do with them?  I'm not even sure I can 'unframe' and reuse the frames for anything else without taking it all to Michael's and paying to have things redone.

B. is transitioning into being a man vs. a young man or boy and I think it shows.  That struggle with wanting to stay where you were while simultaneously detesting everything about where you were AND where you are. Feeling 'lost' and/or in the middle of wherever and not being entirely sure about any of it.  There are moments with him that are pure joy every time he's home - but more often than not, there are moments when he's here that are just challenging.  Him challenging everything.  Every little thing.  It's exhausting.  I love having him home - but this time, I'm grateful that I still have some days off post-visit.  I need the break -

(Nothing in this post detracts from a perfect Christmas and many, many lovely, love-filled, fun-filled moments with that young man.  He is a stellar person....even when he's driving me bonkers).