My Letter to Santa

Christmas Eve, 2012



Dear, dear, DEAR Santa Claus:

I realize I'm a little late with this, but I figure by now you must be tech-savvy enough to have an Internet-capable cell phone and you probably get bored while flying over oceans and large stretches of bare land so I figured I'd give it a shot anyway.

I admit that a few weeks ago I wrote a short list of materialistic items and gave it to desperate family members who had no idea what to give me for Christmas and, to be honest, I expect to get quite a bit of it tomorrow. So for you, Santa, I have compiled the following list of items not so easily given- things I want desperately but that cannot be purchased at Walmart or Amazon.com.

The list is as follows:

• Excellent health for me, especially when it comes to my stomach. If it's not asking too much, Santa, I would very much like to never experience nausea and/or stomach pain again
• Excellent health for my loved ones, namely relief from arthritis and a painful knee replacement
• The invention of a new kind of hair dye- the ones I buy always say "permanent" on the box, but it's not true. In fact, it would be awesome if it could just come out of my head the colors I desire- I love my colorful hair but sometimes I get really tired of dyeing it
• In the coming year, I would love to get a whole lot of snow and rain and any kind of moisture- anything to prevent fires
• I would love a vitamin that I could take that would naturally make me better at math. That and a vaccine against procrastination
• I would like a little help with not being so clumsy- that way maybe I could quit dropping my phone and stop getting mysterious bruises and not rip half my finger nails off
• I'd like a car that never needs to be refueled with gasoline and a printer that never needs new ink cartridges and a camera that never needs to be recharged
• I'd like for me and all of my loved ones to have a great year in 2013, in New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma and West Virginia 

Of course, I know how this whole thing works- you only get what you want if you've been good all year. Well, I can't honestly swear to that...

• I've been a pretty law-abiding citizen this year but I've never been much of a law-breaker so that doesn't really count.
• I almost always save part of my meals to give to my dog, but that doesn't really count because I love her to death and don't mind, plus she sleeps with me and I fear retaliation.
• When my dad had his knee surgery earlier this year, I was pretty good at taking care of him and while he couldn't move at all I took care of all the household chores but that doesn't really count either because my dad has always taken great care of me and he works really hard at household chores all the time. If anything, I realized how lazy I usually am.

Suffice it to say, Mr. Claus, that I have been average this year. To sum it up, I guess perfect means 100% and awful means 0% so average would be 50%, right? So if you would cough up 50% of the items I asked for, I would be very happy.

Thanks, Santa! On behalf of my dog, I would like to wish you a very Merry Tiss-mas.

Sarah

Iiiiiit's Beeeginning to loook a lot likeee CHRISTMAS

It's funny how when school suddenly ends, you find yourself with all this extra time you never knew existed. I am done with school for the semester/year and I'm way happy about this. And, tomorrow night will be the very last performance of Miracle on 34th Street and after that, I'm going to have more free time than I know what to do with!

Today I killed some of my free time by going to lunch with my mom, Granny, and sister at KBobs and then I went back with my sister to her place of work to decorate for the holidays! She works as a secretary at Robin Blair's office and her Fridays are typically a bit slower than the rest of the week so today seemed like a great day to make the office more Christmas-y.

My sister, Emmy, had brought some extra Christmas ornaments from home and had dug a tiny Christmas tree (complete with a tiny string of lights and a few ornaments!) and a very old string of lights (the price sticker on the box reads "Coast-to-Coast"!) out from the depths of a back closet. We set the tiny tree out in the waiting room on a small table and plugged in it's tiny string of lights and then we ran the Coast-to-Coast string of lights along the top of her desk, where they sit blinking in strange patterns. Pleased with our handiwork, we decided to spread Christmas cheer further back in the building and proceeded to cover a large plant in Mr. Blair's office with small, red ornaments. Mr. Blair was not there at the time, so he will have a surprise in his office on Monday morning.

After that, Emmy got kind of busy with office work but I continued to decorate. Emmy had brought a bunch of huge, really cool ornaments in from home and I wasn't about to let them go to waste. The building has the kind of ceilings that are made of uniform panels of porous board with metal in between, you know, often seen in public schools? Anyway, this kind of ceiling is great for hanging things from the metal- you can kind of tuck it up under the board and it stays put, perfect for Emmy's ornaments! However, I quickly ran into problems. Both Emmy and I are on the short side so neither of us could get anywhere near the ceiling on our own. Thanks to my mom's counsel (she used to work there) we found a step stool buried in a corner. I excitedly dragged it from it's hiding place and clambered up-- only to find I was still about three inches short. However, Emmy found a huge, ancient dictionary that did the trick. As she worked, Emmy looked on in amusement and worry as I precariously hung ornaments from the ceiling. Looking back, it was sort of a ridiculous situation, but I must say, the end result was fabulous!

However, as nice as all the aforementioned decorating was, there was one other adornment that was both Emmy's and my favorite: on the wall of the waiting room there is a huge pair of horns -ox, bull, yak, whatever- that now sport several bright, Christmasy ornaments (I call them hornaments) on each tip! The contrasting tough, masculine, intimidating horns and the bright, sparkly, girly ornaments is truly breathtaking.

At the end of the day, after admiring all of our decorations, Emmy and I stood together in the waiting room, staring up at the horns.

"It's very Christmas-in-New-Mexico," I said.
She cocked her head to the side, examining the hornaments. "Do you think it's too much?" she inquired.
There was silence for a brief moment, then we glanced at each other. "Nahhh," we said in unison.

It may seem strange, but today really put me in the Christmas spirit. I guess being so involved with school and the play and with all the unseasonably warm weather, it just didn't really seem like Christmas but now that I'm not so busy and with all the great snowy weather, I'm starting to enjoy this holiday time of year.

Plus, in about two days, I'll be twenty-one. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at all excited. I don't really know why, though. I've never been much of a gambler and ever since the scarring experience of taking a swig of my mom's beer instead of my milk at age four or so, I've never been much of a drinker, but still. Just a big milestone, I guess.

Otis is doing her impatient-sighing thing again, so it must be bedtime. Good night!

Sarah

Eight Random Thoughts

The following is a list --in no particular order-- of random thoughts and observations spinning around in my head at the moment.

1.  At least 90% of my Abnormal Psychology classmates must be heavy smokers. You can always tell when that class is about to begin or just ended because the same big group of people will be huddled right outside the library doors taking desperate drags from their cigarettes. Once in that class we were doing group exercises and one of the guys in my group snuck out in the middle of our hour and fifteen minute class so he could run outside for a quick smoke.

2. It really is a "small world"! On Wednesday a piano tuner came from out of town to tune a couple pianos here in Raton. For my birthday present, my Granny lead the piano tuner up to my house and he tuned the piano up here. (It sounds great, Granny! Thank you again!) When he finshed, he headed back into town for some lunch and then to tune more pianos. I left shortly after he did and went to the Shuler. (I'm helping with Miracle on 34th Street and I had to paint parts of the stage in time for it to be dry by rehearsal time.) I arrived at the theatre and fruitlessly knocked on the front doors and office windows for a little while, getting more and more frustrated and embarassed by the minute. It was shortly after noon so Main Street was pretty thick with traffic and the sight of a lone girl with crazy hair desperately banging on the front door of an obviously closed business was attracting more attention that I would have liked. However, just as I was about to give up on the whole endeavor (either by storming off or breaking into tears, I'm not quite sure which) Mr. Billy Donati pulled up in a chariot resembling an old truck and let me into the building. It took some digging around in the left vomitory, but I found some old beat up paint brushes and a can of grey/black paint. I had just started painting when I heard voices out in the lobby. I glanced up from my work to see Mr. Fegan entering the the theatre, leading... the piano tuner! I'm actually really glad the timing worked out like it did- the piano being tuned was the large upright down in the pit and during all the Miracle on 34th Street music rehearsals had managed to get wedged way in the corner and it took a lot of work getting it out far enough that the tuner could actually open the top.

3. I have been so accident prone lately!  I know some people say you get clumsy when going through a big growth spurt but I sincerely doubt that's the case- I don't think I've grown an inch taller since about 4th grade. I remember when I was a lot younger it seemed that I would take after my mom in height- I towered above just about everybody in my classes at school! And then... I stopped growing and everybody else kept growing. Now I'm way short.. and thanks to this clumsy streak, covered in strange bruises.

4. Tomorrow is opening night for Miracle on 34th Street and I'm way nervous! To answer your question, no I don't have a lead acting role in the play. Actually, I don't have an acting role at all. I'm up in the light booth, running the.... SPOT LIGHT! It sounds so ridiculously easy- turn on, point at actor, follow actor, turn off. But somehow, I still found a way to have a hard time. I haven't yet been able to move the spotlight around without spasm-like jerking and even when I just aim it at an actor and they don't move, the spotlight still seems to bounce around. It's okay though, I'm sure I'll have it perfectly under control... just in time for the last performance of the season.

5. I've been kind of busy lately so I haven't had a whole lot of time for reading but the last new (to me) book that I read was "The Shining" by Stephen King. It was actually the first "scary" book I've ever read (except for "No Escape" by Madge Harrah, which is pretty intense when you're eight). I gotta say, it just really impressed me how someone can create that kind of horror and suspense with nothing but written words. I mean with a movie there are scary sounds and watching it on the screen can make it look like you're right there. But it takes a whole lot of talent to do that with words alone. I doubt I'll ever be a horror book author, but it's that caliber of writing that I aspire to, no matter what the subject.

6. It probably goes without saying that I've had, and will have, the songs from Miracle on 34th Street playing on repeat in my brain for what seems like many months.

7. So it's December 7th. Where the hell is the snow?

8. In case you didn't know, my dog sleeps with me. Of course, wording it that way makes it sound like I share my bed with her, when really, it seems like the other way around. It's totally her bed, complete with her blue stuffed lobster, Chester. Anyway, the point I'm making is that while I'm typing this on the computer, she's lying right next to my chair and every thirty seconds or so, she lets out an exasperated sigh that tells me only too clearly that it's past our bedtime. Oh, see? There was another sigh. I better take the hint.

Sarah