Alison Hodgson

Expert on the etiquette of perilous times.

Archives for December 2007

T minus…oh I don’t know – We’re getting close!

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I have the house to myself.

It’s so rare for me be able to write that ever, but especially since we got Jackie Boy. He’s at…I really don’t want to write this…Doggie Daycare. All I can say is that he runs his little heart out and then is sweet and mellow for four days. Seeing as how Paul and I are falling down every other day walking him and we just got a boat load of snow with more imminent and tomorrow is the holidays…think what you will.

I have the house to myself.

Paul and the girls are taking his mom out to lunch and then to the airport, Christopher is at Torey’s playing video games with David and I am sitting here trying to summon the strength to eat a salad. This is part of my plan to ring in the New Year without being issued my own, private, zip code. I’ll keep you posted on that. After lunch I am going to start cooking for tomorrow. I also want to do some sprucing so that everything feels fresh and clean for Christmas.

It is cold and snowy here. We had picture book type snow last night. It’s beautiful.

Wherever you are, I hope you are enjoying the day.

No, no, Charles, YOU complete me!

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I read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens today, for the first time. When I was a kid it seemed like every year there was a new television production of it that my family, TV whores that my siblings and I were, chose to watch despite the the seemingly equal parts creepiness and smarminess, “God Bless us, every one!” Playing a genuinely good and sympathetic character like Tiny Tim without going overboard on smarm is a delicate balance that most young actors can’t keep. All the ghosts and Scrooge’s comfortless house just scared me.

So I’ve never been interested in reading the book.

WHAT was I thinking?

What I love about Charles Dickens is that he has you at hello, but then goes on to make the big speech and takes it all the way to “You complete me.” He was such an amazing writer.

Here he is in the second paragraph,

“Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therfore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

Hello!

He had me.