Well, that's it done and dusted except for the gift wrapping. Christmas shopping 2019 is sorted.
My husband is hard to shop for (said nearly every wife ever) and the more Christmas' we spend together the harder the gift giving becomes. The first few years we were together I gave him things like dress shirts and stocking filler desk toys (you know, those endless motion toys, tension relieving squeezy balls), and games like Scrabble, Monopoly, Uno...I've progressed, finally hit the 'what to get the husband' jackpot last year - flat caps, sleeveless jumpers (aka vests to the American readers:), moleskin trousers and Tattersal shirts, wind-up lanterns, solar shed light... I dropped an 'old mannie' leather key pouch into his stocking, and a few similar small gifts, and really he did seemed quite pleased with his Christmas 2018 haul.
Oh dear - how to 'top' 2018?! I think I've managed it, actually, which surprises me when I look at the Santa Sack I've filled, and the carefully stashed 'big gifts' bag. The Santa Sack is his new preference for a stocking - suits me as I still can't bring myself to finish the needlepoint stocking I started for him years ago. I love needlepoint but something about that design is not inspiring. The Santa Sack, however, is one he unbeknownst to him picked out from an online catalogue - he liked it better than the other offerings and when he went back to what he was doing I ordered it. I've been filling it as things arrive in the post and will wrap everything Christmas Eve when he's banished from the living room so I can watch my Christmas movies in peace (and wrap Christmas presents).
The big gifts bag has been a bit more of a struggle to keep hidden - it's a single (twin) sized bed sheet folded in half length wise, seamed at the sides and a drawstring casing to keep it closed against accidental peeks (don't laugh, the man is in his early 60s and hovers at the front door hoping to catch the postie and couriers then claim he 'accidentally' opened the parcels).
I try to make a low-key big fuss of Christmas. He swears he's 'not into' Christmas - but he really is and I worked that one out after one year I took his word for it and really didn't make any fuss at all, you'd thought us Puritans for all the lack of Christmas Spirit that year.
He used to loath Halloween, didn't think Thanksgiving was worth his time, and when I married him had one - yes, one - Christmas 'decoration' to his name.
That decoration was a Christmas foliage 'pick' consisting of a few plastic holly leaves, a two-branched faux pine bough, and a reasonably attractive small red-gold plastic apple. I used it along with some bargain table Christmas ribbon and a sprayed silver twig fairy wand to gussy up a wreath I made from some honeysuckle vine he cut down from our back garden the first summer after our wedding. It's still our front door wreath.
We moved house to our 'retirement cottage' in September 2018. We've had Harvest Home (Michaelmas, 29th September) using all local foods for our meal. Although he made a great show of laughing derisively at my charity shop bought 'plastic pumpkins' (three stacked Jack'O'Lanterns) he is the one who made sure those went out on the front stoop last year and this year he is eagerly awaiting 'testing' his repair (it lights up and has a motion sensor activated 'Happy Halloween - hahahahahaha' announcement) on the night. We don't get Trick or Treaters but he loves those plastic pumpkins:)
He has acquired the Thanksgiving habit and has already asked me three times if I've ordered the Thanksgiving Bird yet - we order a huge fat chicken from the butcher as turkey doesn't hit his shop until mid-December - and I've reminded him I don't do that until the first week of November (we celebrate the day same date as the American one).
His favourite part of Thanksgiving is grumbling about the Christmas tree and decorations going up after his really favourite part is cleared away and he's snooping around in the kitchen for chicken sandwiches and leftover pumpkin pie. But he makes constant forays into the living room to check progress on the tree decorating ('That bird isn't sitting right...you need to move that red bauble...are you absolutely sure the cat isn't going to bat that glass church/nutcracker/toy soldier/Father Christmas off the lower branches?!') and he LOVES going in and out of the house to admire the lights I've strung. He hangs the wreath as soon as he's finished his Thanksgiving meal, he offers to help string the lights and hang the window displays knowing all the while I'm going to politely decline his help as we've agreed over the years his idea of stringing lights around in-out of the house doesn't make for a pleasing display - and since we've moved to this cottage he's much more interested in making a good display. (Our neighbours had rather spectacular displays last year, so good we did the walking tour and didn't bother with our usual driving tour down to Dundee.)
He's definitely into all things festive since we married and far more so now we've moved house - he's even made a guy for the town bonfire (Guy Fawkes Night, 'Remember, remember the 5th of November...').
He loves his birthdays (well yes, I do make a fuss, of course!) - he didn't used to.
All in, marriage has been good for Paul. We were talking about Brexit last night, and the way it looks as though between the actual climate and the political one, Winter 2019-20 is going to be harsh and rocky and wild. He made a point of saying if he didn't have the festivities to look forward to, if I'd not married him and made such a fuss of these celebration periods, he doesn't think he could have faced the coming winter as well.
I have always-always-always been a preparedness kinda gal, I plan Christmas and birthdays a year in advance, start looking for pumpkin pie filler in September, make sure the linens cupboards are stocked with plenty of blankets, and I make sure pantry-first aid-off-grid cooking supplies are well stocked.
He threw a wee strop when the kettle BBQ arrived last week and it took me a while to calm him down - pointing out the many uses a good quality BBQ has finally slowed to the strop to a few grumbles but what really turned the trick was unboxing the thing and waving the ticket under his nose - I paid a whole £16 for a branded top quality 'starter set' consisting of a brand-new in-box kettle barbie with a three piece BBQ utensil set and-and-and the heavy duty BBQ cover (yes, I won it in an online auction although really the seller should have put that thing on a reserve, I do feel a bit like a thief having got that thing for a mere £16 including post). He grumbled all the way to the Co-Op for BBQ coals, he grumbled while I put the thing together and loaded the coals in. He grumbled the entire 90 minutes wait for the coals to really get going and the transit oil to smoke off so I could start cooking, and he continued to grumble right up to the moment the burgers began to send lovely aroma wafts of grilling beef across the back garden.
He wants BBQ chicken next.
The beauty of a BBQ grill is never-ending, the equipment is not limited to only being used in high summer - I've BBQ'd year-round all my life. As long as the coals get started, BBQ on a kettle grill is seasonless, I've even barbied in the snow. BONUS - the power went down while I was smoking off the transit oil and I was able to point out to my husband we now had the cheap and easy where-with-all to boil water for cooking and cleaning EVEN IF THE POWER GOES DOWN.
I do think we're in for a 'wild and woolly' winter this year. Hopefully I've prepared well enough we can manage in reasonable comfort barring outbreak of armed conflict in our own wee lanes. I'd laugh but it would be a grim laugh - I've lived in countries at war and if ever a country looked and felt as though war could erupt, it is here in Britain with all the Brexit fever going on.
God help us, and God be with us - there are 5th columnists at Westminster trying desperately to kill democracy by stopping us leaving the fascist totalitarian EU, we've never needed God and all His angels more since 1939.
