I was so busy feeling sorry for myself last week when I wrote, I completely forgot some of the good things from the week.

We had our annual Siblings Christmas with dinner and the St. Louis Symphony which lucky for us was playing at Lindenwood’s Scheidigger Theater, a whopping mile and a half from our house! The Symphony was wonderful, but our meal at the local nostalgic Pios Restaurant was a little less so. The Pio’s Restaurant has been a staple at the same location since 1954.

It has a great history and people love it. Unfortunately for our group of five, we were seated toward the back of the restaurant…next to the door of the bathroom…next to the kitchen…next to an open trash can (well, it was behind a small wall). We made the most of our location by getting to talk to the different people who came to use the restroom and seeing who could kill the most little flying gnats that buzzed our drinks while we were waiting for our food.

So on this final week of Marathon Month, my brother treated me to “It’s a Wonderful Life–A Live Radio Play” at the Repertory Theater, and what a treat that was. The grounds were beautifully decorated and the play itself was awesome.
It’s been years since I’ve seen the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” and I’ve never been a big fan of it. I don’t know why, there’s just something about it. Maybe it was the gloomy subject matter, maybe it was the black-and-white format (though I usually enjoy black-and-white movies), or maybe I just didn’t like it. This play was presented as though you were in the recording studio watching the actors put on the play for a radio audience. It was truly mesmerizing and I enjoyed it immensely. So the Grinch went away for the evening.

I thought, hopefully, that the Grinch was gone now and I would begin to feel the “magic” of the season. But, who am I Am I kidding? The closer to Christmas the more the Grinch came out.

I’ve wanted to see Nutcracker for a long time. Each year I say I’m going to see it and each year I don’t get around to doing it.  So this year, I did it. I bought tickets for the Great Hunter and me to see the “NUTCRACKER! Magical Christmas Ballet!” at the Fox Theater.

I bought the tickets for the afternoon performance because…we’re old and we don’t go out much at night and besides, the Fox Theater is in…St. Louis, crime-ridden, car-jacking, thug-shooting capital of the world. Well, not really, but to those of us in the suburbs, it seems like it is.

Even though the Great Hunter puts up a stink when I tell him he needs to take off work for something, he and I both know that since he is one of their best employees, they will do anything to keep him happy.

Driving on the way to the Fox, I told GH that we were going to his daughter’s house on New Year’s Eve afternoon. She lives about 45 minutes away and we haven’t been invited to her house in over ten years. He looked at me and declared he wasn’t going because he was going hunting. Say what? Our subsequent “discussion” did nothing to make warm, fuzzy Christmas feelings and the Grinch was back with a vengeance. You could have heard a pin drop the rest of the way to the theater. He surprised me later by saying he would wait to go hunting until two weeks later. Good choice. That dog house might be cold this time of the year.

For Christmas lunch, I decided this year I wanted to do a “Mexican Fiesta”. Why? I like Mexican food better than ham and Feliz Navidad sounds a lot more catchy than Frohe Weihnachten.

The Grinch came to visit again on Christmas Eve. I was up early and started on my “to-do” list of everything I had to do for Christmas day. You know, the cleaning and cooking and baking, etc. I had GH’s favorite pecan pie and a cake in the oven by 7:30  I asked the Great Hunter what he had planned for the day and he said just to wrap some Christmas presents.

The moles have been tearing up the backyard for weeks and although I’ve mentioned to him several times that “we” need to do something about it, it hadn’t happened yet.  I found some mole pellets in the garage and asked him if he would put them out in the yard to see if we could kill some of those little flockers. He said he would. Later while I was vacuuming, I asked him when he was going to put out the pellets. He looked at me and said, he was waiting for me to help him because he didn’t know how to do it. Say what? Stop the vacuum, look at him in bewilderment. My answer, look on you tube, that’s what I did.

Needless to say, the GH figured out how to do it and was once more in my good graces and out of the Grinch’s path.