The Most Wonderful Time

To be honest, I shouldn’t have used that as a title since I can’t stand that song. Don’t know why but it does nothing for me. It got me to thinking about doing a silly little post on Christmas music but I think I’ve done that before. There are certain tunes that are more winter themed than Christmas themed and they get lumped into the playlists when they don’t belong. I do think I did something like this before. Sorry but I can’t remember everything I’ve ever rambled about.

One of the nice things about living in a bigger city is that we have many different Christmas themed activities at our local attractions. We’ve done two already and have four more planned. Saturday night we went to our zoo to see all the lights that get strung up this time of year. Sometimes some of the animals are still awake – I think they are curious about why people are still walking around in the dark but they were all sleeping this year. Still there is just something about seeing all the lights that just makes me happy. Even if the displays don’t significantly change from year to year. They don’t really get old.

I’ve mentioned this before but the one part of Christmas I don’t really like is buying gifts. It is just because all of my siblings are like me – we really don’t need anything. And I end up staring at catalogs and going through stores just trying to find things that speak to me. Unfortunately, most of it is just useless crap and it doesn’t inspire me. That leads to a little stress because I have to mail all the stuff which means I don’t have endless time to look. In fact, right now, I feel like I should be out looking for stuff and not wasting time here.

Last year, when we did all these events, masks were mandatory – even for the ones that were outdoors. This year, the first event we did only required masks for the one indoor portion. The zoo recommended them for the buildings but did not require them. I think one of the upcoming events will be mandatory but the other will just be recommended. The majority of people so far have not been wearing masks. That is similar to what we see in the stores. A few are still masked but the majority are not.

I do hesitate to bring this up just because the whole virus thing is a hot button issue for so many people. This was just an observation about how things are here so you can compare it to where you are.

I’ll just finish with an unrelated item. We get mice in the house from time to time. Kind of unavoidable if you live near woods. I’ve got no problem trapping them although I do use instant kill traps because the glue traps just seem needlessly cruel to me. We’ve had one that has resisted all the traps so we’ve ended up putting all the food into containers and taking the food trash out every night.

This morning, I got up and was going to put a trash bag back into the basket and found that our little friend had fallen in and couldn’t get out. I couldn’t bring myself to dispatch him and I was going to drive him a distance away from the house but then I was afraid he would manage to jump out of the bin and that wouldn’t end well. So I walked out in the cold this morning and took him down the hill and across the street and let him go in some open woods not really near another house.

I suppose he might find his way back but I’m kind of hoping the owl finds him first. Not wishing harm on anything but the owl needs to eat and I’d rather have him take a mouse than the birds around our feeder.