Two Pilots & an LSW: Christmas

It's a slightly strange, quieter Christmas, with just Steve, Kaylee and I. A lot of years we had all the Cherry's around, and Steve's parents, and my parents, and it feels okay but a little unsettling to do as we did this year.

Everyone slept in until like 9 am, then got up and we did our brunch. Bacon, eggs, pancakes with chocolate chips (gluten free of course), orange juice, coffee. We fixed most of it over here then went over to Kaylee's to eat at her table and hang out for awhile. Molly the cat stayed around and hung out with us. We then opened our modest presents, cleaned up everything, and then Kaylee wanted Christmas Kitty photos, so we tried.

Molly, however, doesn't like being held. So Kaylee tried, and we got a lot of photos of the cat looking at the ground wanting down. We gave her a break, then Kaylee tried again, holding her in the weird way she'll allow herself to be held, and put a Christmas hat on her, and that certainly annoyed her too. But it was pretty funny, and we got a few photos out of it, so it was worth it.

We went our separate ways for awhile and rested in our respective homes. Steve made a smoky old fashioned and smoked a cigar on the deck, and I wrote a long, heart-felt farewell to the school board where I'm a board member. They want sub committees and everyone in attendance at the monthly meetings and more meetings with the sub committees and I'm just not able to commit to that. I have one more letter to write tonight that I need to think about, and I'll try to get that before I go to bed. Maybe a third that I shouldn't write but has been bugging me. Maybe I'll drink some Nyquil first and then give it a go. ;)

I mostly feel a little melancholy. But I've been feeling off anyway, and then I was sick for a week, and now it's the holidays, and I have stuff coming up I have to figure out, and I don't feel good about a couple things, and some of it is making me have trouble falling/staying asleep. Last night I was lying in bed at 2 am wide awake still, thinking about something that's bothering and embarrassing and annoying me all three, so I got up at 2:30 and took another dose of melatonin and some nyquil to try to finally knock me out, and then I woke up at 6 am anyway and never got back to sleep, just felt groggy. Boo. Tried to nap this afternoon and couldn't pull that off either. Gave up and got productive instead.

We were so full we skipped lunch, then late this afternoon it was time to get into Dinner Mode. Around 4:30 I started; I tore up gluten free bread and baked it long enough to make it harder, and then I started hand-making the dressing/stuffing. With butter and garlic and celery and actual fresh herbs and stuff. I made my mashed potatoes, which takes about an hour and a half in total. This time, for the first time, I got Steve and Kaylee to help me just peel the 5 lbs of potatoes while I worked on the stuffing. Steve made Kaylee come help him about halfway through, and at the end I asked if the two of them appreciated my mashed potatoes more now that they knew how much effort even that was. They both said yes. lol I actually timed everything really well. The turkey in Kaylee's oven, the stuffing in my oven, the potatoes on my stove top, and the cream cheese corn in the microwave all got done at the same time. I felt oddly proud of that, to be honest.

I left the leftovers with Kaylee of the things she would eat, brought the rest of it back to our house, and then cleaned up everything again. Christmas is a lot of cleaning, ya know? Breakfast fixed, clean up. Breakfast eaten, clean up. Put away all the clean stuff. Dinner fixed, clean up. Dinner eaten, leftovers put away, clean up. Put away all the clean stuff. Dessert later eaten, clean up. We do have a lot of food left over though, which I can't complain about. The only thing I wasn't super impressed with is the gluten free stuffing. It just didn't do it for me. The box of Stove Top Stuffing that I make with chicken broth and butter on the stove top in 5 minutes flat tastes really good to me. The home torn gluten free bread and the chopped celery and the herbs pulled off of plants sauteed in butter (I skipped the onions because I made it and I can do that) and all that stuff did not taste as good to me. Maybe it's just the bad bread, I don't know, and I know it's sad, but the boxed stuff was better. In our opinion. I can't remember non-gluten-free-bread-homemade-stuffing taste right now though.

When Steve and I got back to our own house, and I finished cleaning up again, we watched a Netflix movie called "The Six Triple Eight". It was based on the true story of an African-American Army Captain woman who ran the only all-Black and all-female unit to serve overseas during World War II (The 6888th Battalion). The movie is very good, and the true story is even better. It's long, but if you read all of this... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/real-story-behind-netflix-six-triple-eight-new-tyler-perry-film-about-women-6888th-central-postal-directory-battalion-180981540/ The protagonist Charity Adams was amazing. She graduated with a triple major in Physics, Math and Latin I think with a minor in History, and she rose through the ranks in the 1940s as a black military woman and ended up with the highest rank a woman could get in the Army at that time. They renamed a base partly after her, the only black woman to have that honor to date. There were a couple of arcs in the movie, a run-in with a Chaplain and a run-in with a General, and I figured both of those were added for Hollywood. Nope. I read elsewhere that both things actually happened. Those dudes were major a-holes, but in the end, the General actually came around, because he gave her a (he thought) unimportant task that he (thought) knew was impossible to accomplish in the 6 months she was given, and in the end, she (and her troops) did it in 90 days. Gained the respect of everyone, even with the higher-ups against her. I'd never heard of it. I really enjoy learning about underdog stories come to life. The Tuskegee Airmen. The WASP. The 6888, the men and women during WWII who were fighting for their country in their own ways even if their own country-men and women didn't always give such a damn about them. Like the WASP, the women who were killed in an accident overseas were left to be buried by collecting money from the other women there. Like the WASP, there was no parade, no recognition back in the states. They were disbanded and sent on to go back and live at home once the men came home and took all the jobs again. And like the men and women of that era, quite a few of them lived to be feisty, 100 year olds. I love the story of one of them who took up Tae Kwan Do in her 70s and earned her black belt. I mean, come on, that's awesome! They're all gone now, the last lived to 104 years of age and died two years ago. Anyway, Steve and I enjoyed the movie and appreciated it. He was glad I forced him into it. ;)

And one fun little side fact. A part of the story-line was that one of the main character's beau (he was a white man) was a P-51 pilot in the war. He was shot down and killed, and his last letter, with his blood on it, was sent on. Well, they showed him in the air in one scene, and he was in a unit of P-51s...that were all Checkertail! Most of the facts of the movie are accurate, so I'm really curious if he really was a pilot in the Checkertail Clan. I might have to see if I can find out. The scene was really short, but that's a neat little snapshot, a little shock I got watching the movie.

Now Christmas is...past. I don't have to work until the 28th, so I have a few more days to sort of recuperate, although I do have to figure some things out, check weather, do flight plans, arrange some things, and try to fly BOB with Morgan to finish her up if the weather will let us. So I leave you with all the photos we took to try to get a good one of Molly and Kaylee. lol