A new best friend

A reader may be thinking – gosh the posts are getting skimpy and superficial. Must be because she is so full of holiday preparations… Wish she’d post some photos of the fresh pastries baking in the oven or stories of pre-holiday excitement.

I’m doing none of that: no baking, no holiday anything for that matter. I am, instead, cultivating a long and enduring friendship.

I met him by chance, but we have become great friends. We tell each other things, we speculate about the future, we turn to each other in stressful moments, we enjoy a good laugh together.

The only thing is, I can’t quite remember his name.

He first showed up at my doorstep yesterday to fix car number one. Then, of his own accord, he tackled car number two. And today he is back, tackling the freshly stalled car number one. He hasn’t much faith in it, I can tell. Nor did he have an easy time towing it away. He followed me up and down the Beltline, finally dropping off the problem child at the dealer’s service entrance. But friendships don’t die easily. He’ll be back soon, I’m certain of it.

Being boring

Do men and women who stay home and care for infants and use their free time to watch TV and play video games become boring? Ann suggests that this may be the case. But wait, if you are satisfied to spend your free time thus, are you not inherently a boring person anyway? Would you be in any way more interesting if you were out and about in the workplace? Don’t we know oh so many people who enter their work world and have absolutely nothing interesting to say about it while they are there, nor at the end of the day, when they retire from it?

A tree inside the house

Anyone will tell you that getting a tree up and fixing it to your satisfaction is a huge effort. My parents gave up on the project when I was thirteen. Their attitude was – you want a tree, you get it. And so I did. They did tolerate it though, whether our Christmas break was spent in the village with my grandparents, or in Warsaw, or even in New York – I’d find the tree, and up she would go. So you could say I’ve been putting up trees in the house for nearly forty years.

Last night’s tree enterprise was trouble-free. Over the years the stand has grown so that there now is a monster of monster stands, sturdy enough to hold a tree meant for Rockefeller Center. So the tree is up, it is not tilting, and it is adorable in its adorned state. It is a tree of stories because every single ornament was purchased in a special place at a special moment. Each year a handful is added and somehow or other there is always room for those new additions.

Everyone knows that my favorite is the simple cut out of two little faces at the window. But I am a fan of so many more – the winners and losers, they all were carefully selected and placed with great ceremony and, in the Polish way, with lots of accompanying food to move the task along.
Just a few photos for blog readers who like trees, like the holidays, like the idea that you can let your imagination create something so colorful and lovely right inside your home.

My favorite: two little girls smiling at the world. 

Yes, Polish glass-blown ones as well. 

From different corners of the world, side by side now 

The polar bear got a name this year and he got a pal, from the tights store in Paris. 

And on the top? A simple ribbon and a dried flower. There's a story in that as well.