Sheepish Grinch

The Grinch has come to Te Kuiti. Our town sports a whole lot of metal sheep that adorn the main street. Each year our local statues get decorated with scarves in winter and Christmas hats in December .. except for 'Pinetree' Meads our local rugby hero, who gets a miniature pine tree next to his statue. Well, this year the sheep were festooned with Christmas lights, all solar powered of course, and cheap Christmas hats. That is until the Grinch decided to undress the poor sheep. Many of them have lost their hats and now sit with velcro spots where hats used to be. The funny thing is that a few of the Grinch folk are feeling a little bit guilty and a number of the sheep got their hats back in the dead of night. The Christmas spirit is obviously not quite dead.

Tonight is our Santa parade through town followed by flea market stalls in the middle of town. I am putting some small items on the flea market. Namely three Malabalaba boards. Hopefully some ex-patriot South African will recognise them and snaffle them up for Christmas gifts. Trying to find suitable counters for the game was a struggle. Firstly there need to be dark and light 'cows'. I was going to buy a bag of pebbles from the town dumps and paint them in bright colours. My better half said it wouldn't dry in time and maybe the $2 shop would have something easier. Oh okay, I let my arm be twisted … and bought a bag of blue marbles and a bag of crystal lumps. The crystal lumps sit nicely on the boards, but the marbles .. well lets just say we lost a few marbles in the process. Then we hit on the idea of glueing a small button on the one side of each marble. (Do marbles have sides?) And hey presto, the marbles no longer roll off the boards. Yay. I nearly, nearly let my Grinch appear while fighting with the marbles, but was saved by the hot glue gun! Barry is now an official member of the crafters of the world. He was initiated with his first hot glue burn. I remember the first time I was initiated … sadly I have since become a gold card member of the hot glue burn club. But Barry is quite OCD and sadly my bottle of old buttons was not doing him any good … not enough of the same buttons to go around. He had to settle for same colour, but different shapes. OCD blow out averted.

I made my Christmas cake. Yes, I did put cherries in it. Apparently there is a debate on whether glace cherries are good in Christmas cakes. What nonsense. My Grandmother put glace cherries in her cake and if its good enough for Granma, who we all know was a better cook than I am, well its good enough for me. But my Mother-in-law put crystalized pineapple in her cakes and this year I decided I would go the whole hog and do the crystalized fruit thingy. I searched the supermarket aisles, nothing. Not a crystalised anything fruit at all. I asked the assistant. She had never even heard of it. But I have a clear memory of visiting Woolworths with my Mom-in-law and buying a 100grams of this and that. The price was ridiculous, but the taste was amazing. I eat crystalised ginger almost every day .. so I can't say that there is absolutely no crystalised fruit in the shops, but is ginger a fruit? Anyhow I went online to see if I could order in from the big smoke. And found that I was not the only one on a search for glace fruit. Even the big city shops are not stocking it. Scandalous! My husband suggested I make my own. I mean how hard can it be? The end result … a rich fruit cake with lots of glace cherries, but not a pineapple in sight. Too much effort to make it for something that I might have to feed to the birds if no one eats it. It's usually our son Chad, myself and the birds that enjoy a good fruit cake. The rest of the family nibble a small bit and then decline further fruitiness. Did I ever tell you that in good old days that the top layer of a wedding cake was supposed to be eaten at the christening of the oldest child? Our eldest was born 10 months and 1 day after our wedding .. and no, the cake did not appear at the christening because it was already re-cyclyed into energy (by myself with my pregnancy cravings). Thank you Mama Descroizilles for the yummy treat that sustained me through some midnight munchies.

I am doing face painting at a Christmas party on Saturday, so I thought I had better get some research to find out what children want painted on their faces these days. Picachu and assorted friends… so lots of yellow paint then. Black for the hightlights and red for the cheeks … and then the usual spider man contingent as well as the butterfly and fairy lot. I dont give the kiddies too much of a choice because otherwise they spend hours looking at the pictures. But we realised that our face painting supplies were getting a bit low. The black and white were dried out and dead … the green (thanks to all the Hulk fans last year) was depleted and the blue was just a smidgen on the bottom of the bottle. A friend then alerted me to the dire warnings about buying cheap face paint. She had gone to a specialist store and bought her supplies at a huge cost and was gently suggesting I do the same. What? Am I made of money? Luckily I was sitting next to Helen .. and she leaned over and asked a few pertinent questions. 'What brand is the one that is causing the problems?' 'Oh, a Chinese make that was not specified in the report.' Helen took a breath and then said 'So where is your expensive face paint made?' Apparently it was made at the same place as the cheap one .. What did I buy in the end? The expensive ones or the ones I have used for the past 10 years and have never given me a moments concern. Yup, my old tried and true one won the day.

My fascinating life just continues and continues on. What with face painting fairies, sheepish Grinches and glaced pineapples, I did manage to sneak in a trip to Gua Sha therapist, Sue. Amazing. She tells me that the hurts from the past are affecting my present and that I need to let it all go. She goes in for the holistic approach to health. So as we go into Christmas this year, my special gift to myself will be to count my blessings, check to see if I have been naughty or nice and unload baggage from my past that is slowing me down. Yes, Jill, I know you have been telling me this for years … well I was listening, but now I am doing!!! May the Grinch never show its face in your lives, may your smile be wider than your belt and your bank balance grow fat and round and healthy throughout the year. And here is hoping that the Christmas fairy drops a Gua Sha tool in my stocking so that I can continue my therapy. Or even a gift voucher to visit Sue for more mind blowing advice. Enjoy Christmas and remember that life is more than having the right glace fruit in your cake or a hat on a sheep .. its all about family and service. Give more than you get and accept what you do get with gratitude and joy.