Oh those golden slippers

I got my unemployment check the other day. It's not as much as if I was working but if I am careful it will stretch for the bills and such. The money from selling little red truck will help out, too, to get my safety margin back in place. While I am back on a real budget I don't feel broke.

When I was cleaning out the attic one of the many note books we have filled up and I have kept over the years surfaced. I had broken down the bills and income on a list there. It reminded me how far we have come. I am not even close to broke. In one note the mate left me five dollars for pocket money for the week and I was worried he needed it for gas to get to work. Even then we didn't feel poor or broke because we had what we needed and some left over, but it was tight.

I would like to suggest you do your family a favor that will last for the years ahead better than a batch of cookies. Start a notebook like we had. With jobs and teens and school and friends and family something was always coming up "off the schedule". Kids so hate "reporting in" or asking to go somewhere. We had a hard time making them understand that letting people know where you are is a roommate courtesy, not a parent rule. We both hated having loud conflicts and got tired of fighting with them. There was never pen or a paper to leave a note. They hated calling home from a friends. We didn't have an answering machine back then. It was a total hassle.

I finally got wise. To show them that we liked to know where the other was, and it was not just them we needed to be able to find, I started leaving a spiral notebook with a pen tied to the wire on the table in the dining room. Bill would leave me a note if he was going to a friend's place after work. I would leave a line that told him I had to stop for groceries and would be late. The girls finally got to where they would leave a note that they would be going to the library after school and such. I lost all those note books and my journals in the fire in '88. I kept the habit of a notebook, however and put together a new one and filed the old ones as we went on.

I have notes from people watching the animals, my sister, nephews and nieces, the kids, the grands and the mate. When he was working days, going to school and working second shift the days he had school we only had the notes to keep in touch. I worked, too and we just didn't even see each other except to sleep. It was a hard time for us. We wrote loving, wistful notes of encouragement to each other.

Now, I can read back and the notes are love on a page. I have times the boy didn't do chores, times the boy did chores, times the girls had places to go, lunches and dinners I had made for the mate and times he would do errands so I could sleep, budgets, shopping lists, requests for help, thanks from people, times the boy I tutored watched the animals for us, lists of his assignments for the day and notes from his Mom on when she would get him. Memories brought to life again from a few lines scribbled in haste on a page of paper.

The kids didn't fight using it and we finally could all find each other in an emergency. There was less stress all around and now it's like a family daily history. I know how I treasure each line in there and, for the holiday, would like to suggest to each of you still raising a family, that you start one. It may be the best gift I can give you. For the cost of a dollar notebook and pen you can have a record of your family and how it changed over the years. I have one still but it gets much less use now that I am mostly alone.

I shopped for my little girl, she is three this year and I will call her Minx here. I got practical gifts. I hate that for the holiday but it's what she needs. I did toss in two toys and there will be some candy, of course, but it got me thinking.

I bought two stockings, one for each of the girls so they would be the same. As we got older we hung our stockings at the end of the beds and they were the first thing we opened. There was always a tangerine or an orange in the toe, some nuts and loose candy, a candy cane and, usually, a small toy or two. One year my sister thought she would be smart and put up a pair of panty hose so she would get more gifts. It didn't work but it looked funny hanging there and made us laugh a lot as she reached for miles to get her presents out.

When my kids were little I put the tangerine or orange in the toe, the candy cane, a banana, some nuts, a box of rasins and then a small slinky and silly putty one year. Another I put cheap kalidascopes and socks so they got socks in their stockings.

When the mate and I got together his tradition included a box of chocolate covered cherries. I had to get fairly good sized stockings for us. And I was Santa. Each year I would get the fruit, candy and small gifts for the stockings and stuff them after he was asleep. I always remembered his cherries. He would nibble at them all day while he watched parades and games on tv.

It seems like everywhere I have gone the last two weeks that the cherries are right up front. It's made it hard to go shopping for anything, even groceries. I have no reason to stuff a stocking this year, either, except tradition. I don't know if I will or if I will just set out a bowl of fruit, nuts and candies to munch this year.

But that isn't the burning question of the day. It was strange to have a new tradition for the stockings. That box of cherries messed up my whole plan of how to stuff a stocking and took me awhile to get used to. I loved the white nougat candy with the red and green bits in them and green spearmint leaves. I had to limit them to get the tangerine in the toe and fit in the box of cherry candy.

While you always know others do things differently it's one of those things you never remember to ask about. So please, blog it and leave me a link in the comments or just write in the comments - What was in your stocking? What was your favorite thing to find in your stocking? Or, like dutch boys and girls, did you use a shoe? Or something else or nothing at all?