Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Dad at the entrance to Christkindl

I spent Saturday morning with my mother, since I had plans to spend the afternoon with my dad.

Since we're going for a retro look with our wedding, I thought it would be a good idea to look through Mom's jewelry to see if there was anything that might go with my wedding dress.

I hadn't come up with the idea until that morning, so it took Mom by surprise. Still, she was open to the idea, and she brought down jewelry box after jewelry box to go through together.

She's also inherited her mother's jewelry, so there were all sorts of options. I selected several I thought might work and took them along with me to try on later with my dress.

Mom also dug out her wedding photos for me, because I wanted to copy them for myself. She was married in 1967, so I thought they'd be good for ideas.

When we had finished with the jewelry, we had lunch: sandwiches made with homemade bread, chicken, low fat cheese and lettuce, with celery and frozen strawberries on the side.

Then we ran a couple errands. First, we stopped at the CVS store to print out some photos from her reunion from her camera card. She also wanted to make a disk of the photos so that she can erase the card and reuse it. This took an incredibly long time, because for some reason, the computer actually copies all the photos onto its hard drive before copying them onto the blank CD. It took two CDs, although it only put one photo on the second one.

A woman was waiting behind us the whole time, and even though Mom kept apologizing to her, she didn't say a word in reply. I've gotten used to that in Central Pennsylvania. For some reason, people there just don't talk much. The only place I've ever seen where they're that tightlipped is Minnesota.

Mom had one more errand to run, so we drove out to the local craft store to pick up some embroidery floss. She is using it for some gifts she's making for Christmas. We also found her a tape measure, since she's misplaced the one she needs for her projects.

We had just enough time to drop Mom off and for me to meet Dad at his place. We were going to the annual Christkindl market in Mifflinburg, a Christmas celebration that also celebrates their German heritage.

As soon as we walked in, we encountered a huge crowd gathered around a juggler. He was a lanky guy with a thick German accent who kept up a constant funny patter, filled with self-deprecating humor, such as, "I know you're saying, 'Hey, skinny German guy, that trick is lame'."

He built up to several bigger tricks, including one where he rode a unicycle with a kid from the audience on his shoulders.

His final trick might not look like much in the photograph, but it was impressive to watch. He balanced a plunger on his chin and caught a bowling ball with it.

When the juggler had finished his act, we began perusing the booths, looking for Christmas gifts. Most of the items there were either Christmas related, food related or jewelry. We found a few small things, though.

We also met Santa!

Afterwards, I asked him how often adults asked for pictures with you.

"Oh, you want adult pictures?" he asked, with a wink.

Bad Santa!

We had just enough time to take a quick look at all the booths before meeting Mom for dinner at Ruby Tuesday's. It was crowded, but fortunately, it didn't take terribly long to be seated. Mom was running behind, but she showed up before we'd even ordered drinks.

I chatted a lot at dinner, and I hope that the two of them didn't mind too much. I don't get to spend time with them by myself too often.

Dad and I wanted to get some more Christmas shopping done, so we hit the nearby mall after dinner. I hugged Mom in the parking lot and told her I'd see her at Christmas time. I managed to find gifts for the rest of the people on my list.

Then we drove to the Staples to get my father a web cam. My brother and his wife sent us an e-mail recently with a video from their new web cam. They want everyone in the family to get them so that we can do video teleconferences.

I offered to help Dad set up his web cam, which went smoothly. Then, I typed up Mom's Christmas wish list, so he could take it with him to State College the next day. He was going shopping with my sister. The thing is, I couldn't get it to print out. I did all the troubleshooting things I could think of but came up with no solutions. We finally gave up, and Dad said he'd call in technical help on Monday.

We went up stairs and watching Saturday Night Live, although I fell asleep after the first two sketches.

Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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