Christmas Letters I Have Writ: Letter No. 2 (2012) ~ Original Photography and Original Christmas Wishes In Lettered Form ~

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The Joys of the Holiday Letter

I've always enjoyed the Holiday Letter. Long-winded, typed-out pages, describing various life events of the past year. Put out in December (theoretically), as a chance to regale your friends with all the facts, figures and other exciting tidbits of existence that have gone on in the past year or so of your life. And, if so blessed, read the letters your friends send to YOU on the holidays, in return. Chock full of all the exciting things THEY'VE been doing in the past year or so.

Every now and then, I would get a wild, holiday hair, and put out one of these things on my own. Usually in place of the standard, old-fashioned Christmas card. One or two typed pages of absolutely riveting babble about things going on in my world. These Holiday missives were often well received (or at least they SAID they were), and are a hoot to write as well. Even gave me a chance to stretch my 'poetry legs', crafting my own little Holiday rhymes to spice up the letter and add to the spirit of things. (The letters usually included a hand-inked Christmas image, in the upper-right corner of the letter...but I can't do that on this site. [Large sigh]. You'll just have to imagine a green and red holly branch or Christmas tree, next to the poem.)

But What About Recent Years?

To be honest, since the advent of Steemit, I've been more than lacking in this Christmas Letter department. Writing on this site has meant doing less “outside writing”, which when I take a moment to sit and think about it, greatly reminds me of my days at University. All that WORK. Taking 15 hours of classes, studying, eating, sleeping, drinking my share of beer, and playing more pickup basketball at the intramural building than the average, sports-minded bear. Let's face it, with all this collegiate stuff going on, there just wasn't much time, or desire, to do any “outside reading”. Steemit is a lot like college. There just has not been much time to do any “outside writing.”

With all this in mind, I thought I would resurrect a few of my old Holiday Letters, and put them out on Steemit. Why not, I say? I wrote them, it's the Christmas season, and it's fun. So, WITH much further ado...Round One:

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Letter 2012

(Sent after Christmas 2012, in LATE December)

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'Tis holiday time,
And we’re all a-giddy.
With Elve’n shaped thingamabobs,
And decorative’s…so pretty.
So on this grand Holiday,
Of myhrth and great cheer,
I’ve run out of seasonal deep-thoughts…
So will end this tome here.

I was going to call this my Christmas Letter to you all, and wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year! But since it is now almost the 1st of January, of the year to follow, and as further evidenced by the mis-timeliness of this missive, and the speed at which this endeavor and its resultant delivery has progressed, maybe we better just bunch those two seasonal thoughts up together like a passel-load of trussed-up Christmas nutria in a drainpipe. And re-phrase the sentiment…

HAPPY HOLIDAYS to all, and to all, a good day!!

My oh my, it’s been a busy 8 or so years since I last wrote one of these Holiday Letters, (There’s a good chance that the last one was not all that timely either). So, rather than covering all that time and space into a novella here, potentially going broke putting 78 of these things in big old individual, cardboard book-boxes to mail out, I think I’ll concentrate on the last year or so. Not really all that much has happened in those previous 6 years anyway, so you can just fill in the life-event boxes as you see fit.

Let’s see, big-time news. I still very happily hang out with HH, and she wishes you all a Happy Holiday Season as well. We are both still living apart en'domicillis, but I seem to spend a lot of time over at her “farm”, as we like to call it. This last year or so I was very busy, "putting up" about 80 quarts of tomater’s, 400 lbs. of walnuts, and I even dried some fruit. There were many plumbs this year, but the Damson tree was a complete bust. TONS of tiny plums, that tasted like little bland bags of purplish-blue water. Branches all broke and the 9 yard-nutria ate most of them.

I think there must be some sort of odd cat-breeding contest going on between various neighbors on this side of town. Because of this neighborly experiment, we’ve taken to trapping and fixing cats. Hard to believe, but even after being dis-enjewelled, some of them just won’t go away. At last count we tallied 7 of the little P-woods, still hanging about, so that keeps me pretty busy. I spend an inordinate amount of time feeding cats and managing litter boxes. Most of them are outside cats, but the small, brown lumpy terror affectionately labeled ‘Stinky’ makes up for the rest of them. Not sure a 110 pound Rottweiler visiting the litter boxes could out-do the little Stinklepuss. (We think she may not be a cat…but an ancient breed of Egyptian Fell-Dog.)

Besides this annoyingly cute little wondercat, there is a Kiwi, Pantera, Robert, Checkers (Fatty), Little Kitty (she only has 3 front toes…both front feet combined), and Hairston Ascot III. Until recently we had a coal-black, semi-feral cat named Paintbucket as well. So named for his 4 white legs. He looked like he'd been standing in a white bucket of paint, his legs were so perfectly 'colored', half-way up each leg. Unfortunately, he kicked the kittybucket this last year, bless his slow moving self.

Paintbucket was a very Zen kitty. We were convinced he was a wise old soul, or some sort of kitty sage, all mellow and thought provoking. But after a visit to the vet's, ends up he just didn’t have enough red blood cells. Guess even a cat’s walnut-sized brain needs a bit of oxygen now and then.

But while he was with us, he was a good cat, as way-too-many-cats goes. And through some of Paintbucket's hemoglobin-based, patience of lackadaisical-ity , he DID manage to teach Hairston III SOME semblance of kitty normalcy. Hairston would actually walk UNDER Paintbucket, whenever the occasion of vicinity arose, actually raising Paintbucket about 12 kitty-feet off the ground. But ‘Painterly’, as we called him, was a good sport about all of this, and would go with the flow. And now that Paintbucket is gone, Hairston III tries to butt his way under the other cats while they're at the food-dish. They mainly just get annoyed, and bat him on the head, as only an annoyed cat will do.

I think there may be a lesson or two buried deeply here, regarding red blood cells, oxygen deprivation, and the advent of World Peace, or some other great-idea thought process. The details are yet to be worked out. Maybe something connected to climate change?

Wow, I seem to have gone on here a bit about cats. Think I’m turning into one of THOSE people, but I suppose you could say we are helping the planet, one crazy cat at a time. Sometimes you gotta search out the lining, no matter how small the cloud.

Let’s see, other news…
I washed my white Toyota truck again this year. Think the last time it saw a hose was about the time you all got my previous Christmas letter.

And I’m still gainfully under-employed by the Forest Service. Leading research crews out of the Experimental Forest. It’s a cool place, with lots of nifty forestry research going on, and the drive along the reservoir to get there is very exciting. You have to dodge and weave the vehicle around oodles and oodles of Rough Skinned Newts, all crossing the road on the way from the reservoir to uphill mating grounds. Gotta love the mobile herps of the world.

Well, hope you all have/had a nice Holiday Season, and that the next year brings hope, peace, happiness, and if you are so inclined, a new Christmas cat or two…*

Happy Holidays,
DDSchteinn

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_{*Free delivery. Call 555-5606, Area Code 010, between 9AM-4PM.
Red Bow is extra. Includes 2 free cans of Frisky/cat. Guaranteed fixed, even though in reality, they’re now broken.}

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~ Finto ~

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Thanks for stopping in and viewing my first Christmas Letter of Day's Gone Past. If you have any thoughts about sending out, or getting these things in the mail, Christmas traditions of times gone by AND still here, extra long Christmas correspondence, or anything else this post reminds you of, please feel free to comment away in the spaces below. I'd love to hear from you.

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Please UPVOTE, COMMENT and FOLLOW if you enjoy my works.

And go to @ddschteinn -- There's a whole lot more...

_{Posted: 12/22/2018 @ 17:25}

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Excerpts From Late-Night Conversations With A Mechanical Cat

Fact Number 106