Christmas is almost here...yikes

My son is home from college. :-)
On his first day home Weds, he put up the Christmas Tree.
Normally the tree would have been up at least a week ago, but my hubby decided to shampoo the carpet in the living room.
The carpet was too wet last weekend to put up the tree.
I'm happy that he did the carpet, but I would have preferred that he clean them at a different time other than 2 weeks before Christmas.
Messed up my time table of things I need to do before Christmas.
But the carpet does look a heck of a lot better.
So I should just be happy.

Thursday, I took off my last 4 hours of personal time from work.
I had one day left so I divided it into 2 half days so Sparky my co-worker wouldn't get too stressed out. The other half day was the Friday before last.
My son & I went out for lunch to Ruby Tuesdays.
I asked him if it felt weird being home again.
He replied that the atmosphere and energy at college is very different than at home. Home, he said, seemed to have too much negative energy.
Ok, hubby and I do tend to get depressed.
Hubby especially around the holidays...Christmas has become to commercialized for him...he's right......but lets not be a glum bum and drag everyone down.
Sometimes I wish I could move away from here too.
We finished lunch and did some Christmas shopping.
He tried on a fedora and it looked real cool.
There weren't any mirrors in the men's department so he could see what he looked like so we had to go over to the ladies dept as there are always mirrors over there. May explain why some men wear clothes that do nothing for them because they can't hold the garment up to them to see how it looks before buying.
Son liked the hat so I bought it for him as one of his Christmas gifts.
He said that he will definitely wear it around campus.

Remember when all the men used to wear hats.
The pews in churches even had clips so that men could hang up their hats during service.
I think it was JFK that made it fashionable for men to not wear hats....which put a lot of hat makers out of business....Milliners, made women's hats, but did they also make men's? or where they called something different?
Glad to see hats slowly making a come back. There are a lot of bald heads out there that need covering.

Yesterday's morning commute was fine. They predicted that the winter storm coming from the mid states would arrive at 8 am.
10 minutes to eight it started snowing...and snowing ...and didn't stop till 4 pm.
The ride home took twice as long. But the disability was pretty good. The president of the place where I work called around 4 and said the roads were getting icy and if anyone wanted to leave early they could.
You didn't have to ask me twice.
I clocked out at 4:15...After going to the bathroom (why pee on your own time when you can get paid for it) and getting my boots on and long winter down hooded jacket ( I looked like an LLBean ad)
It took me 20 minutes to get the car cleaned off and drive able.
The front had a foot of snow on the hood and I was glad that I remembered to put the little snow shovel in my car before i left in the morning. I just scooped it all off. The rear didn't get very much snow...must have been the way the wind was blowing.
But it was coated on both sides with ice.
I let it thaw out with the defrosters going full blast for a while as I went and scooped snow off the front of Elly's and Spark's cars.
(Sparky decided to stay and let her best bud Bambi the receptionist leave early as she had a longer commute and Sparky didn't want to get home before her husband as she would have to snow blow the driveway then)
Elly came over had helped me chip off some of the ice.
Everyone helped each other.

When I got home the drive way was shoveled. Daughter and son worked together and my father did the end of the driveway with his snow blower.
(Did I ever mention that my folks live across the street)

My daughter had the day off yesterday so she finished decorating the tree and the living room. (snow day for all the area schools and she is a long term substitute teacher)

I was happy to see all that my children had done. I would have been highly disappointed if they hadn't done the drive way and left it for hubby to do . Hubby has a 44 mile commute (one way) and after driving in the snow I knew that he would be exhausted. I was tired and I only had to drive 12 miles in it, so I can imagine how he must feel after that drive.
He was thinking of taking the day off, but then his co-worker, an older woman whose husband died this year asked him for a ride. So he, being the nice guy that he is, picked her up at a convenience store about half way into his commute. She is a nervous nelly about driving in the snow, so at least hubby had company on the trek ....and extra weight in the car!

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday...whether it be Christmas, Hanuka, or Kwanzaa.
Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with you.