Christmas as A Child: YES, Norman Rockwell for Real

I am busy actually STARTING my Christmas Eve preparations and I am also painting. I'm hoping to get back into my blog world before Christmas--I have several pieces started--but I am not really sure I will.  But it is NOT for any bad reasons. I miss writing and I miss reading! Still, sometimes I have to oh, go ahead and LIVE my life so I fill the well, so to speak.

I first published this one in 2009, and it explains why I really am an all out, absolute, completely wacko Christmas nut. Not in the sense of buying new decorations or oodles of presents; I love the peace, the music, the silliness, the love that has always been mine for the giving and receiving. My family did it right. Sorry to bore those who read this, but I enjoyed reading it again because all of it flooded back and put me into the mood again.

I also know I referred to this in October--I think I published this again now for my own sake! A relative who was less than kind to me sometimes, but very kind at others,  has died... and it has brought up some, well, disturbing memories. They may find their way into another entry, but I think I wanted to focus on something joyous... on a time when I got to be nothing more or less than an excited, happy child.

It is not meant to replace my entries--I realized tonight, as I revisited this post, that it was "birthing" a new one. The hour is late now, as I add these last two paragraphs, but reviewing and editing this piece did the trick.  Joy is the woman who died, and I like visualizing her here, at Christmas, with my mom.

Lately I have been returning to this blog myself, just to bring that feeling back--how lucky I am to have such memories! So, have a wonderful holiday season! I'll READ some blogs, but somehow, even though I mean to write, I get side-tracked.

Here goes... no pictures, no more apologies... just my family at its very best!

Norman Rockwell Ain't Got Nuthin' On Our Christmases
 It's hard for me to choose a Christmas from childhood.  Two or three may be mixed together here, but I don't care. To me, it was idyllic. Jim did not torment us. Jacky and I were small children together, even up until he was about eleven.  Jean Ellen was a keeper of magic and secrets to rival our mother. And Dad and Mom? Well, they had to be experienced.

So the Roots of my Love for the Season Grew Deep and Immortal Here...

My  mother not only looked like Mrs. Claus, she acted like her. And it always began the day after Thanksgiving.

Jacky and I, and sometimes even Jimmy, Would race downstairs on Friday morning to see five presents perched on the top shelf of the extra tall white bookcase in the dining room. The Five Foot Shelf fit on one shelf, that bookcase was so wide...  And the books on the top shelf reached the top of Daddy's head, so it was six feet tall.  I grew up in a home with a bookcase in every room.  It was just not a room without books, even in the bathrooms. And we had a BATH AND A HALF!

At this point, the books were still on that shelf, too, so the presents were annoyingly out of reach.  We would climb on chairs, wondering how it was that Mommy had managed to pile the presents so that just enough of each tag was visible, so we could read the name, but we could not move a single package without the whole pile's tumbling to  the floor. Inevitably we'd blow it and the pile would fall.

Mom would come from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her first of seven Christmas aprons, and say, simply, "Good thing nothing was breakable. Go ahead and open them and ruin your surprise.  I don't much care..."

Then, as she was heading for the kitchen, she would toss back, "Not quite sure how Santa would feel, but that's your problem." We would feign our disappointment and put each one back, rattling them, squishing, doing our best to know what was inside, but Mom was too smart.  We never could figure it out.  It took until I was about twelve to be bothered that there never was something for Mommy there. Jean Ellen and I took to wrapping something for HER the morning after Thanksgiving, because it just felt all wrong. She was in college and it was a ritual we enjoyed together.  I think it was the first of many she and I developed around the holiday together.


Let me reinforce this; until I was about 20, my mother never drank between Thanksgiving and Christmas. NOTHING. She would empty the huge "Silver Satin" port jug and there were never stray rum and cokes around. In fact, she didn't buy Coca Cola® at all until just before the holiday.

From then on, every day held a surprise.  She didn't do a lot that Thanksgiving weekend, but wrap a new present or five each day, and the pile would grow more precarious until, by Sunday, Daddy took the books from that shelf and put them in a box tucked in the footwell of his desk.  "GAWD knows none of you will let me have any peace between now and that day.   MY life is over now. Nothing but shelling out money, having to run around to get GAWD knows what. Bah."

Tiny Tim in Scrooge Clothing
He never said humbug until the day.  He also was the least convincing Scrooge alive, since he read us the Christmas Carol and checked with Mother every single night, asking her whether maybe ONCE she might come up with something on her own list that didn't involve her doing more work around the house.  The truth was, my dad spent more on Christmas presents than anyone else, and would get scolded at by  my mother constantly, often punctuated by a wet dishtowel on his head, which sat there for at least fifteen minutes, at whatever angle it had landed.

My parents were in love.  That was the miracle of them.  For all his womanizing, for all  her drinking, for the myriad fights in between?  They loved one another with a passion that would have been embarrassing if it had not been so wonderful to see.  They liked to talk late into the evening, just about books, about politics, about philosophy. About their days.  My father said that Mom was the most highly educated person he'd ever known and she never went to college.  He would walk up behind her in the kitchen and simply put his arms around her sometimes, and they would stand there, singing softly, saying nothing.

(That's what I wanted in my life, and knew I could never settle for less than that, that alone would be better than less.  I do not regret that choice at all.)  I will not spoil this by moving into the present, though.  I will return safely to that time, as a child, through my early teens, when I saw that my parents were clearly lovers at every age.  I felt, though would never have said so, that I was lucky to witness those private moments, and that my parents did not find it wrong to let us see them.

Their love was palpable at Christmas.  And the house was full of the good kinds of secrets.  This Christmas brought us the birth of the "Christmas Spider," As Mom and Jean Ellen dubbed it. A hanging thingy made of glitter gold paper, on a large hook. When you draped it from a chandelier, pointy tentacle/leg things draped in many layers from the center and it seemed alive in a particularly grotesque way.

It moved around the house, from dining room, to kitchen, to a curtain rod, to the lamp next to Mom' chair--wherever Jean Ellen or Mom chose. the damned thing lasted for 25 years!  And there was the wrapping of the "spoon rest" if it was Mom's turn. She and Grandma LeSure, Dad's mom, had an ongoing exchange with that. Granny'd gotten it for her donation to the Navaho Indian Tribe (back then). It was pale pea green, with three spoon rest depressions. Made of plastic, it was a "French" artiste in the center with his paintbrush, surrounded by his palette spoon rests. Half his moustached was missing from the get-go. The ugliest thing I ever saw. Granny gave it to Mom, then Mom gave it back for Mother's Day, then Granny gave it back on Mom's birthday, and here it was being re-wrapped in the same box, same interior tissue, same tag with all the cross-outs, for her.

We had traditions coming out our ears in our family.  Most of them had to do with laughing.

But some had to do with the season.  In late September, for instance, when I was little,  Mom took me for a walk and we brought a pillow case.  We'd go into the wildflower field and fill it with drying grass.  Then Mommy would hang it in the attic and, along around December 20th, there was hay for the manger.  She and Jean Ellen would put the crèche (nativity--we are French) together on the little table by the front door.  We did not do the British custom of leaving the baby Jesus for Christmas morning, but that's okay.  Mommy wanted us to have one thing that would remind us of the day's origin. When I was big enough, she let me sound out the words of the story--we were born reading, so that was fine. We knew it by heart anyway. So Jack or I would tell the story while they put the crèche together.  Jean Ellen always made a star that covered the normal painting there. Sometimes silver, abstract on black paper. You never knew. Sometimes a big star in a cluster of smaller ones in a field of blue.

And the baking.  I would sit cross-legged on the counter and "help" with the doughs, hand mixing in the chocolate chips. Or I would sprinkle the sugar cookie stars. Mostly I licked the bowl because it made it easier for Mom to clean. I think that Jean Ellen and I learned to bake through osmosis. I don't measure much, to this day. Mommy baked by feel, she said.  We had six kinds of cookies, and the butter cookies without leavening were made two weeks in advance, and other doughs were frozen. She never froze cookies.

"They never taste quite the same," she said. I think she was right. And we NEVER used margarine. Margarine was a sin in our house.

We went shopping for presents for Mommy on their double bed, Jack and I.  Daddy would have a miraculous display of things my mother wanted all around the perimeter, with price tags on every item--price tags he had made himself, to suit our budget. He as fair, though, because he had certain items out of our range--they were his presents. And he trusted US NOT TO TELL, and we never did.  Through the year Mom thought of ways we could earn money for Christmas. We'd get paid and she had little jars with our names on them, NOT TO BE TOUCHED.  Some things were practical, and some pretty, but there was always enough so that Jack and I could truly choose up until we were around nine. There were often twenty items there--all bought by Daddy, all re-marked.  And then he helped us wrap them in tissue papers, and he had a stash of glitter and star stickers and ribbon so that we could make them "special." My Scroogey Dad.

****
I am the youngest. The miracle for me?  Christmas Eve. By then, there was a ham coming out of the oven by 1:00 and a turkey going IN, for a late buffet at night.  The trimming party was that night!  While Jack and Jim were rooting around for a missed present or whether or not Santa REALLY was out there, I sat cross-legged on the living room floor with my dad. I wish I had a picture. I was not more than five or six. I was tiny. He six one. And we tested the bulbs, consulting over how he might plan which should have reflectors. Counting sockets and bulbs. Sometimes the count was wrong and he'd say, "Road trip, Jetty, get your coat." We'd run to Wallach's grocer and get some bulbs of the color we needed adn somehow or other, Daddy's find something that someone just HAD to have, just to even things out you know.

But I would hand Daddy the bulbs or reflectors and he would string the tree, from the bottom up. He didn't even bothe with the spire until the end. We knew it would get tipped. We worked quietly and fast, for guests arrived by 4:00 and we had to also unpack the ornaments, so people could decorate when they came.  I loved unwrapping the blown glass ornaments. Mommy never hid breakable things from us. If we broke and item, she's say, "Did you mean to? Will you be more careful next time?" And that was that. We didn't mean to, and we WERE more careful and very little got broken.

That Christmas, when I think I was six, Grandma and Grandpa LeSure were there for BOTH days and were staying in a hotel!  And Aunt Joy was coming. She wasn't married then, and was ten years younger than Mommy and was GLAMOROUS.  The tree-trimming party mostly had friends of my parents when I was little.  I loved sitting in a corner and hearing the adult conversation. Grandma LeSure told me I could go INTO her purse and try her lipstick.  When I did though, Grandpa SLAPPED me and I yelled at him for it.

When Grandma explained, he had the oddest smirk on his face and said, "Well, Missy, I guess no one will push you around in this life. Excuse me." I found it a wholly unsatsifactory apology and avoided him all night.

Slowly the beauty of the tree emerged, amidst the singing and the laughing and the stories, the ham, the turkey, the spilled drinks--not Mom's, other people's ... she had me TASTE hers even--the boys nearly tipping the tree over from an over-rambunctious game of throw the dish towel around...

As the night lengthened, it all blurred for me.   It seemed to me that our tree glittered more than anyone's.  Then Mom and Joy had the obligatory fight over not having garland tinsel. We had the long, leaded icicles then.  And Mom and Jean Ellen would not let ANYONE help with that. Every piece had to drape free. Grandma LeSure got that, too, and so did I, but when I started to help, suddenly, Daddy said, "Santa comes soon, Jetty! You have to run to bed!"

Run I did, and so did Jack. Jim and Jean Ellen stayed up later, but I didn't mind.  I never saw the thing done. For me? For me, the last glimpse of Christmas Eve was a room full of people laughing, JE draping tinsel over Daddy's head, the boys NOT fighting, but playing cards, Mommy talking with Grandma, Grandpa standing back, holding his stomach, smoking his pipe, but looking happy. Joy working on the tree and clucking at the lack of garland, and two to six other adults laughing, singing, or talking. We always sang "Lullay thou Little Tiny Child" when I went to bed.

***
That early Christmas I leaped out of my bed though, pretty late and looked at the roof below our window. It was the roof to the den and there were HOOFPRINTS. "JEAN ELLEN!"

Now, my sister HATED to be wakened. We were not allowed to rouse her OR Jim until 7 for stockings, but I JUMPED ON HER. She opened one eye and grunted, but she got up and came to the window and said, "Oh, Jetty. Honey. Santa must be HERE right now. Quick. Back to bed." She went to bed, I flew into the hall, STRAIGHT into my dad.

"WhAT ARE YOU DOING?"

"Santashereisawtheprintsontehroofandiwanttosayhiand go---"

He had a huge turkey platter in his hand. It was NOT one of the presents we'd seen."DADDY?"

He simply squatted down and said, "Jetty. Santa is so frazzled this year, he's asked ME to wrap this for your mom. See? He already had me put the stockings at the top of the stair. Now, don't you think he might be a little upset to have to carry on polite conversation with a little snigglefritz who is supposed to be in bed NOW?"

"YOU are helping SANTA?"

He looked so solemn with the weight of this honor.  "Yes. And I need to do a good job, so off to bed."

No problem.

***
The morning between 7 and about 8:30 was a cacophony of stocking openings and playing games until Daddy allowed us to get him up. On this ONE day,  he insisted on showering first, just to torture us. Jim would dig out his slippers--again worn once a year--and his robe and we'd wait. UGH.

Then HE woulds schlump downstairs, grumbling and turn on the lights and this was MY FIRST look. Presents from one wall all the way to the front window, presents as high as my chest, and the most beautiful Christmas tree EVER. And we were allowed ONE PRESENT before breakfast. Only one. It was okay. We learned very early that our Christmases lasted longer than anyone's because we took turns and we took breaks. We had to PLAY with our toys. WE read our books.  We watched the grown ups. We all shared the jokes.

If it sounds like Heaven, it's because it was. Sheer Heaven. This Christmas was all about trains, though. JACK GOT his Lionel trains from Grandpa, and five billion miles of track and little houses and trees and, well EVERYTHING.  I had good stuff too, but it was the trains.

When Daddy's last present was opened, along around TWO--he HOARDED them under his chair and we had to watch him open his all at the end. Rotten man. And he won at the can you unwrap tissue without ripping it game. Excruciating. Mommy was festooned in bows and she and Grandma and Jean Ellen were busy with dinner plans. Jim wanted to listen to his record albums and call his friends.

Jack, Grandpa and I went into the basement and built a city.  We had hills and had to measure the angles--Grandpa was a vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. And engineer... WITH A REAL ENGINEER'S CAP! He put it on and he we built our railroad route, complete with a mountain, a skyscraper we could drive it THROUGH and a cave and tunnel. We only had four crashes before it was complete at Five.

And Grandpa looked like a little boy, when we threw the switch and the train began to run. He ran around the tables with us as every obstacle was successfully managed. I threw the switch correctly--we had TWO trains--and they avoided one another neat as can be.

When it was done, He threw his cap in the air and DANCED. It was the only time I remember seeing  him smile, let alone dance.  My grandpa, my brother, and me, we danced a jig and sang a railroad song on Christmas.

***
There were no pictures taken or home movies. Grandpa died the following summer.  But I see him in his cap, I hear him and I remember forgiving him the slap for the call, of "GREAT JOB THERE, LITTLE ONE" when I threw the switch for engine number two.

Grandpa was a railroad man. And for one Christmas morning, so was Jack and so was I. Three guys on the tracks, just doing our job.

On one magic Christmas when I was only six, and the world was new, and Santa landed on my roof.

***
The tree held presents and gave them up at night, after we were all in our nightclothes again. Mommy doled them out and all were labeled from the tree. They were always special--jewelry, a matchbox car, something special to the particular child. That year, mine was Santa in a Snow globe, only it was about three inches tall, with a tiny note affixed that said, "Thank you for not bothering me. It was a busy night. You are such a good girl. Love, Santa"

***
There is no one left from that time but me. Even Grandpa's hat is gone. But I hear him still. the magic of that Christmas, of many others, remains with me still. But that one  Christmas, Grandpa let us see his back yard, the boy, the man who loved trains, the man who loved us. And I see the tree shimmering as I glanced at it over my daddy's shoulder as he carried me to bed, humming so that his chest rumbled and tickled me.  I see the tinsel on his head, and Jean Ellen slapping Jimmy's hand as he looped the stuff in a clump. I feel my heart speeding up at the memory of almost seeing Santa.

I see it as clearly as any movie could bring it. It shines there for me to run whenever I need it; there, just by my heart, with Mommy close by, laughing.

So forgive me if I indulge myself in festooning and laughing and singing my way around my new home, making cookie dough to freeze, ordering some gifts, putting up my tree, repeating the story of every ornament. And planning my own Christmas Eve celebration with nine of my family, here. In my home. And there will be stockings from TWO Santas under my tree Christmas morning. And there will be toys. There will be singing deliberately off key.

And there will be more love than any one woman could possibly hope for. Here. In my home. You all are invited. Just let me know by the end of next week, so I know how big a turkey to order!

Update and my Christmas Tree

Thank you for the inquiries about my health.  I have had some difficult news about the spinal issues and am simply working on learning to function in spite of them AND accommodating them as necessary. Sometimes this means finding the boundaries by crashing into them and then needing a few days to deal with the repercussions, but, well, that's the only way I know to learn my limitations.

I have to find them.

Super stores would appear to be my main downfall. I cannot make it through  a super grocery store, so I will not go to them any more. I have had several dear friends suggest I use a motorized cart, but I think that this maybe shows most graphically how I feel I need to approach the challenges of new damage in both the thoracic and cervical spine.

I will not sit down unless there is no choice. There are other stores in which I can shop, and while they cost a bit more money, they allow me to stand, to walk, to complete my shopping, to get the items upstairs all on my own. THEN I can recuperate for a couple of hours. Psychologically, that choice to use the motorized chair is a symbol for me. I do not judge anyone for choosing the chair.

But for now? I need to keep my legs moving when and however I can.

My absence here is simply a reflection of my turning my attention to physical survival and adaptation. The pain is horrible, yes... but there are medications that help, and I am learning to use my yoga and breathing to control my own response to what pain remains because I choose NOT to have large doses of the meds.

I am decorating my tree. What used to be a two day process is a four-day one, but it is a beautiful process for me.  Ninety per cent of the ornaments on my tree are gifts and/or symbols of people I love. David is a drummer... an old love who remains a dear, dear friend. I have a stained glass "present" ornament he gave me thirty years ago, and three drum sets friends have given me. Jim--the brother of whom I rarely write--played the trombone. I keep an ornament that reminds me of the best of him. He had a best and I choose to keep that nugget. My sister played the clarinet, Jack played the banjo. Jamie and R, the guitar. I have my two guitars and I choose to keep R. on my tree, despite the way he treated me.  My tree represents the best of people I love, and when I look I try to focus on that. I have gifts from Gail, from Paige and Judy, Nancy, Sue, Martha... ornaments that were my parents', ornaments from both sets of grandparents' trees.  There is the reindeer in her glitter dress, leaping... my tutu'd flamingo, Santa on a chicken, a glitter pig riding the moon, a rocking cow. I have blown glass holly and a hobby horse. I have glass icicles that will be the finishing garnish, replacing the lead tinsel of my youth. One hundred fifty of them will go on tonight, near lights. With a finishing touch of 100 tiny balls on the tips. They make the tree float at night.

My tree represents joy to me. I have modes of transportation, every musical instrument known, right down to an accordion.  I have beautiful Santas and dopey ones, I have a castle and a house, tinkerbell and the tin man. Raggedy Andy. I gave Raggedy Ann to my counselor the Christmas after Jessie died, and she gave me a blown glass bell from Bermuda. I have a flute; Jessie played the flute. And a little boy playing soccer, the way Jay did. So many bits that make me think of them all...

And all of it is my mother and father.

My tree is love; the season is love to me.  If anything can bring me out of the losses of the last few years, can help me believe that there will be joy in the years ahead, my tree will do it. The recollections of my family Christmases, of my beloved sister.

Fetching the stockings at the top of the stairs. Daddy's socks were long. We hung them by the chimney, but Santa put them at the top of the stairs. Jean Ellen got them, told the boys it was time, and the four of us piled on her big bed, to open the stockings, to laugh... to give my parents' an extra hour's rest on the craziest day of our year...

But that's for another week.

For now, thank you one and all, for the concern, and for making me feel that my writing offers gifts to more than myself. I have to go work on my tree some more. I cannot find just the right place for my hooker flamingo in her polka dotted dress. I mean, you can't put her just anywhere. And my glitter frog prince... I was given him as a reminder that maybe one day the amphibian would change.

Not so much, but I don't care. I JUST love that damned frog just fine.

Uh-oh... then there is the high heeled puce green boot with the red feather fur at its top... the problem with having the tree at the top of the stairs, is there is no longer any "back of the tree!"  Elvis can be seen, even in toward the trunk. And this boot? OH. Wait. There's a spot just above Santa on a Chicken, three branches from the pig wrapped in a string of lights... never mind.

Later.

Sleeplessness: friend or foe?

When I was little, on Christmas Eve night, it was undoubtedly foe. I got up once in the middle of the night, out of my mind with excitement, because the reindeer had landed outside my window, first on the roof of Daddy's den below. I heard them and had awakened my sister, never the best of ideas.

Jean Ellen got up, but I do not think she felt my thrill. I was five. She was nearly fourteen. We had different perspectives.

"Jean Ellen, look at the tracks. LOOK!" I shone the flashlight on the snow. It was one of those rare mid-Connecticut years when there was new snow for Christmas. Those movies about Connecticut White Christmases are myths, and they really are about the Northwest corner — part of the Buffalo run. We were more of a slush and ice place for the first month. But there it was. Slightly bluish purple, with a very clear line of tracks of something bounding across.

Jean Ellen might have said many things, having been awakened rudely. What she did say was, "They are awfully small for reindeer, so I really don't know."

Then she looked at my face. "Well, Santa's reindeer change size, you know. They have to. They get really tiny because they cannot be detected that way by all those big radar dishes on t.v." She had me in her hand by now, and she brought me to her bed, and went on. "Plus, they have to shrink all the presents and make the sleigh lighter, for flying. When they shrink the reindeer, they don't lose their strength or get slower. They just get small. You see? So the presents get little and lightweight and so does Santa. I mean, he's a big elf, really, when you think about it."

I remember being absolutely enthralled. They never TELL you the logistics of it all, you know?

"And how would 'eight tiny reindeer' lug around presents for the whole world? I mean, really, Jetty. How? So I think you are right. And Santa's probably HERE, with Dad, and--"

I was out the door and straight into my dad, walking down the hall with a platter about the size of our flying saucer sled, with a giant turkey on it. It was the most gorgeous thing I'd ever seen, but Daddy had SHOWN us all the presents for Mommy already. And it couldn't be for anyone else. I was stunned, there, trying to figure things out. And why was Daddy up anyway? Santa was here. He didn't have a cap, but he was supposed to be asleep.

I said, "Daddy, Santa is HERE. I gotta see him."

"WHOA, there, Jetty. What are you thinking of? You can't do that." I was still eying that platter.

"Is that for Mommy? How come you didn't show me when I asked you? You PROMISED me you'd trust me with the secrets Daddy, and I didn't tell even one, even when I knew you got the pretty combs Mommy wanted, with the blue."

Then I saw he stockings at the top of the stairs, too.

He didn't miss a beat. He said, "Well, This is PRECISELY why you have to go to bed, young lady. Santa is downstairs and he is running behind. So he asked me to help. I have to wrap this from him to your mom, because those elves ran out of time. PLUS, he asked me to bring the stockings up on my way. Now I have to quickly do this and go back down there so Santa can sign the card, so you... better ... skeedaddle... off ... to... bed...."

LONG pause and he looked like he would chase me...

"NOW"

I squealed and ran and jumped into bed, laughing.

Jean Ellen mumbled, "Okay now? Will you PLEASE sleep?"

I hurried up and slept faster than any five year old on the planet.

***

But not tonight. Earlier I wrote a tribute to my ex-husband, but left it posted for about an hour. then I took it down, realizing it was TOO personal. I have never told HIM what he gave me, why I will never consider our marriage a mistake. I decided I should tell him first. Married couples have their own secrets, and though, for once in my life there was nothing but love in it toward him, I felt as if it were sacred. As if I shouldn't share THAT. Isn't that strange, after we've been apart now for longer than we were together? He blew up my life in ways from which I'll never climb back--financially, anyway. Yet it felt disloyal.

And it kept me awake.

I am sleepy and I have work to do, but I am too groggy to work, which is not good. I tried all day to work, but I spent time with my grown son--important time. And that was far more important than money to me. And my constant companion of pain of the last few days was at hand, talking loudly to me all day long.

And that keeps me awake.

But what fun to move from either kind of pain--poignant and loving emotional pain or physical--to this. To pure joy, given to me by a five-year-old's faith in magic, a sister's love that outweighed her own love of sleep, and a Dad's willingness to keep his little girl's faith bright and shining. The same Dad of yesterday's entry. MY daddy.

I want to sleep. Just for a couple of hours. Perhaps now, after remembering the BEST sleepless night EVER, I can go to sleep now really, really fast. I don't know.

But I think, perhaps, I was mistaken at the beginning of this entry! The judgment rendered for tonight is sleeplessness: friend, without a doubt.

Good night all.