Life is Healthy

This is easily the best thing that I got for Christmas. It's a discarded draft of a letter that I wrote to Father Christmas that my parents saved and found 27 years later. It looks like it was binned due to a spelling mistake in the first line, but, crucially for historians, it was then used as the backing sheet in the typewriter for the next (and presumably final) draft, so that the imprint of what I typed can still, with a bit of effort and holding it up to the light, be read. (I believe that the Guildford Four had their convictions quashed after analysis of their "confessions" using a similar technique, though it's not recorded what they asked Santa for - presumably to stop being hit in the face by the nasty policemen.)

OK, so if I'd done it in Word in the first place I could have inserted a space between Santa and claus, and capped up that 'c', and it wouldn't have done that funny thing with the 'a', and I would have saved myself the bother of having to start again each time that I made a mistake. I still let quite a few typos through though - check out the quotation marks where I meant to put the '2' (to this day I still think of quotation marks as "number twos", as that's how my sister and I referred to them when we played with my Dad's typewriter), and also the capital 'I' instead of the lower case 'l' for the '1' (this typewriter didn't have a '1').

But if I'd have done it in Word then this copy would never have existed, except perhaps as a deleted file sector somewhere on a hard disk, and I've never wanted people looking at my deleted file sectors in case they found out about the embarrassingly mild and ordinary pornography that I had looked at.

Here's what I wrote:

Dear Santa Claus,
I hope you and Mrs. Claus are well. Are Rudolph and the other reindeer well? For Christmas please may I have a large size "Millennium Falcon". If you cannot get this please may I have an electronic detective game. Merry Christmas and happy New Year.

From
Salvadore.
P.S. On the hearth is a mince pie and a glass of sherry for you and a carrot and a saucer of sugar for your reindeer. MERRY CHRISTMAS again.

I didn't get the Millennium Falcon (please note the correct spelling of Millennium - who knows how many drafts it took to get the right?), as I think that I only mentioned it to my parents about a week previously. I'd only seen The Empire Strikes Back that half term at some cousins', and hadn't seen the first film at all, so they had no idea that I would suddenly ask for this. My parents had actually bought me a fischertechnik construction kit, and I remember some not too subtle brainwashing that night about what I should expect Santa to bring.

But what was this electronic detective game that I was asking for? I don't remember ever seeing such a thing on I Love 1980. Perhaps my Mum had said that I should suggest an alternative present to Father Christmas, and I had cleverly asked him for something that didn't actually exist to ensure that I then got my first choice (which was itself quite hard to source, regardless of the fact that they had already bought me my present).

The only other question is what on earth was I doing writing to Father Christmas at the age of ten? That I was typing my letter should perhaps have been some kind of clue to the fact that I should have been growing out of that kind of thing.

Alas, this was the only such missive that my parents found. I'd love to know what I'd asked for in other years. I expect the originals are all filed away in Lapland, but I won't disturb Santa now as he probably likes a rest at this time of year.

I am done.

The holidays were great this year but hectic. And having kids five years apart, with very different personalities and interests presents its own particular challenges.

And I am still recovering from New Year's Eve (but boy did I have fun).

I think I need to come to terms with the fact that longer, more thoughtful posts might be out of the question until my boys are both back in school on January 7th.

Perhaps I'll blog tomorrow about New Year's resolutions (yes, I am making some this year. I haven't in many years but since a) I am permitting myself to think ahead a bit further than a few months at a time and b) this unexpected life I'm living could benefit from some goals and structure). Mine all have to do with taking better care of myself and getting some stuff done.

Kristy, over at BlogHer thinks I need to be more specific. She's right.

Last year my spouse resolved to 'buy better tomatoes and keep all the pencils in the house sharpened." We are definitely eating better tomatoes, having gone organic and local but (and this is despite the acquisition of an electric pencil sharpener) we still have a lot of dull pencils lying around.

I think I need to be more ambitious.

What about you? What have you resolved to do in 2008?

Meredith has 30 pounds left to go. She is halfway to her goal weight. Last year her goal was to lose sixty pounds and she succeeded in losing thirty. She did this by cutting out a lot of sugar and exercising regularly. She went from a size 16 to a size 12 (she is 5'10") and was feeling pretty proud and comfortable with her weight as she had not fit into a size 12 since she was a kid.

But over Christmas her father spent a long time in the emergency room in the hospital due to his Type II diabetes. She says;

There are few things that I fear more than developing Type II diabetes. I've seen how it can maim and cripple both mind and body when left unchecked, or when lifelong habits prove insurmountable. Having full and proper use of my limbs, appendages and brain is a better motivator than being able to tug on size-8 jeans, though you'd think otherwise if you read my food journals from the past few years.

Now she is determined to lose thirty more pounds. See her story; 30 Pounds to Go.

For a long time, Spanish people have had a traditional custom to celebrate New Year's Eve.
On the last day of the year, the 31st of December , they wait until twelve p.m. Everybody has to have twelve grapes ready to eat when the clock starts to chime. It is traditional to listen to the clock from Puerta del Sol in Madrid.

When it is midnight, each time the clock chimes, they put a grape in their mouth. By the time the clock has finished chiming, everybody has to have finished their grapes and the New Year starts, but nobody finishes eating the grapes on time.

Eating the grapes is very funny because everybody starts the New Year with a full mouthful of grapes. It's almost impossible to finish eating the grapes by the time the clock finishes chiming. Normally people still have all the grapes in their mouths, and they start looking at each other and have to laugh.

You can imagine what would happen if the laughed with all the grapes in their mouths. It's really difficult to have a second to swallow them. I think you can imagine the rest of the story.

This tradition started in Spain because one year when there was a big grape harvest, the king of Spain decided to give grapes to everybody to eat on New Year's Eve.

Over the winter holiday, Susan L. Taylor sent a small shock through the publishing world when she made an unofficial announcement that she was leaving Essence Magazine after 37 years of leadership via an out-of-office message reading "When I come back to the states in mid-January, I will be leaving Essence to do what at this juncture in my life has become a larger work for me--building the National Cares Mentoring Movement, which I founded as Essence Cares and today is my deepest passion."

As the spiritual force and face and heart of Essence, Ms. Taylor's ethereal presence has had an enormous impact on the magazine, the brand, and those that she touched over the last 4 decades. But her next pursuit falls in line with her consistent philanthropic efforts and desire to improve the community at large. The National Cares Mentoring Program is one that provides guidance and mentorship for at-risk youth.

After climbing to the top, it's easy to sit back and re-count all that you've accomplished, but it's noble to establish and even larger challenge and affect millions more. Susan Taylor said it best: “We don't have an eternity to realize our dreams, only the time we are here.” Therefore, carpe diem', because we know even greater things are to come.