The Happiness Thread

Where'd you get a perfectly spherical lemon?

 

A week and a day from mothers funerals.

I have been able to avoid X which means that stress level is slowly getting a bit down.

I have not been able to creative writing but I have been able to study things related to writing and some topics.

Kids are decorating our Christmas spruce. Wife is baking... (I don't know the English word) ... these.

https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joulutorttu

Some with plump marmalade, some with apple-cinnamon marmalade, some with blueberry marmalade.

I have slept ok. Heart seems to be ok - considering the stress level.

Snow is beautiful.

Christmas preparations are ok.

After 2-3 months it will be possible to cut all connections to X. (I hope.)

 

Beyond calling them pastry puffs, there may not be an established English word for those. But they look tasty.

 

From a physicist living in a vacuum.

 

They are.

My wife bakes them with quark-butter dough.

We eat tons of them around Christmas in Finland.

(And almost every household bakes (?) a complete ham to be a small part of Christmas table.)

 

I don't get a stocking any more. Last year was my last.

My favourite story about being Santa comes from my former German teacher who got her son a guitar many years ago, left it outside his door, and knocked it over as she was making her getaway...

 

Is this a specific Christmas tradition that penalizes maturity?

 

Mum's decided that Santa doesn't come for people who've left school.

I think it was supposed to be last year, since I was eighteen, but she hadn't warned me and obviously that's not something you want to find out on Christmas morning.

 

I could see why she wouldn't warn you, It's not really the kind of news that would be an incentive for good grades.

"Listen, Darling, I thing we should have a talk. See, you're forty-two and still haven't finished primary school--"
" But, Mooom. SANTAAAA!!!!"

 

Keeping back isn't such a thing in Britain. I think it mostly happens when someone missed a substantial portion of the year, due to illness or moving schools (one girl in my year was two years older because she'd been kept down due to moving house frequently). But I was eighteen when she told me it was my last stocking.

I cried when she told me Santa wasn't real. I was eleven and I think I already knew, I was just clinging to the belief because I didn't want to grow up.

 

You don't have the math required to understand the answer to that question.

Clicked through to the English Wikipedia page and it seems the name is the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joulutorttu

Wikipedia has its flaws, but it's a pretty powerful translation tool.

 

Joulu = Christmas
Torttu = Kind of pastry.

These are good. So if anyone is interested in baking...

 

I'm 39, and my brother's 35. This was our first year without stockings. We have dinner and exchange presents every year, even if we have to schedule it a week or two early. After presents, my mom would bring out the two stockings she made when we were babies and the two she made for my son and his when they were born. (She made stockings for my brother's wife and my kid's mom too, but neither of them is invited these days.) Last year she sent them home with us. She did stocking for the grandkids last night, but they were store bought. My brother went and got himself one of those blended families, so there were suddenly five kids instead of two, and no candy for the grownups.

ETA: By the way, is your name really Esther? My mom's name is Esther. I love that name.

 

I like it too. My name isn't Esther, May, or Rose, and the names don't have any personal significance. They just sounded good together.

 

And secure your faucets.

 

Yeah, yeah...

Now it is Christmas time, so we'll believe that ZZ Top was NOT singing about you.



And if we don't, we will not tell anyone and we pretend that we do.

Merry Christmas, alias Esther May Rose!

 

Over the fucking moon.

Mrs. A and I exchange presents on Christmas Eve because we can, and we're a few time zones ahead of most of y'all.



This is the watch the JR runs on.

 

Free from the drudgery of work until the 4th. Free at last! Now what am I gonna do with myself?

 

I made a Christmas stocking for CT this year.



Last year I made one for Hope.

 

Esther is my go to placeholder name for any vaguely Jewish female character I have in a WIP. After that it's Leah, Miriam, and Hannah.

 

It's one of my great-grandmother's names, but AFAIK we don't have any Jewish connections.

 

At 55, I still do stockings.

And I use Leah in my story.

 

I'm quite fond of the French Lea, with an e acute that I can't type here.