The ruins

Am listening to an audiobook by Scott Smith called The ruins.  Everything is ominous.  A bunch of friends are in Cancun and they go on an adventure to find the missing brother of a guy they ran into.  The story is fraught with confusion and dread.  The Americans are traveling with a Greek who speaks no English, and a German, the brother of the missing guy.  They run into unfriendly Mayans who speak no English.  There are flies and snakes and unhelpful people and secret paths and it is all making me very nervous;

Speaking of The ruins, I feel like a bit of a ruin myself.  Think I am going to have to make an EFFORT to lose weight.  I can't think of another way to stop the inexorable march of time.  I am feeling decrepit.  I look around at some of my women friends who are over 70 or over 80 and they look great.  I feel like crap and feel like I look the same way.  I have tried exercising and I don't feel any better.

Finished another library book, Started early and took my dog.  I love that title.  The book is by Kate Atkinson.  I found it enjoyable but very confusing.  Many characters moving around.  A  murder, a snatched child, a social worker, a detective, many car trips.  From the flap I learned that the author has written several other books featuring the same former private detective Jackson Brodie.  I liked this quote, "Now, like so much else in Jackson's world, videos were obsolete".  I liked the Britishness of this book.  "He came to the end of every day feeling as if he had failed somehow.....He lived his life in a state of guilt, every day waiting to be found out.  He wasn't even sure what it was he had done".  "Speaking truth to power.  That was what the Quakers said, he'd had to arrest a few in the eighthies, peaceniks, yacking on about "direct action" and Cruise missles.  For people who worshipped in silence they seemed to talk a lot."

I heard the patter of tiny feet

My nephew's feet are not so tiny any more. He wears size ten. But I heard someone walking around so I thought I had better get up. Don't want to miss Christmas. It is 8 AM and he is the only one up.

We had a white Christmas. Well it snowed for awhile last night! We drove around looking for the luminaries which they put out all over Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Interesting and beautiful Christmas Eve custom. The more people you can talk into doing it, the more lovely it is. Take a white paper bag, fill it with two trowels full of sand. There should be enough sand to get a white teac candle to stand up. Place the bags every three feet in the street or on the curb or the grass. Light the tea candle when darkness falls. The lights will burn for hours, even in the snow!

Learned about another interesting Holiday custom last night.  In Oaxaca, Mexico, they have a festival called Noche de Rábanos (Night of the radishes), held on the 23rd of December.  This is one of the rare sculptures where you can actually identify a radish.  And these radishes are GIGANTIC.