At Patterson House, It’s the season of too much Christmas… too much work… too many visitors… too hectic… too much to do…
Around the too much, the too weird has set in and found a home… There is a box of rocks on my desk… There is a story… of course there is a story…
Tomorrow the three year olds arrive… lots of three year olds… invited into our Victorian home… Some think this is the definition of insanity… instead, I think it’s a moment of clarity… On the other hand the rocks may be insanity…
In the middle of all of this my work computer has imploded… dead… blue screen of death dead… a thoroughly dead parrot… About as useful as a rock… I have called I.T. they will address it eventually, but not immediately… leaving me with less work to do at work… at least for now…
The 3 years olds are coming tomorrow… I may have said that already… Steph (aka, the daughter… she has appeared before in this blog) is in the kitchen making sugar cookie dough… we will cook them tomorrow on the wood burning stove in the Victorian home full of antiques and too much Christmas and way too many 3 year olds… and a box of rocks… a really interesting box of rocks…
The 3 year olds, and parents, and siblings are coming to the farm, and the Victorian house full of antiques and too much Christmas (and a box of rocks) for a Christmas field trip… We have Father Christmas, we have chartered a train… we have butterflies in the trees… we have horses and turkeys and a farm full of wonderful things to see… and a Victorian house full of too much Christmas… for the 3 year olds to explore…
Flashback, to Christmas memory, of a Christmas long ago… many, many years ago… when I was a child, not 3 years old, but probably less than 10 (I am old… at least by some definitions) when my grandmother would take us, each Christmas downtown, to downtown Los Angeles, when Los Angeles had a downtown and a downtown shopping district, with numerous department stores… each of which would decorate their windows for Christmas… Magical windows full of too much Christmas… We would view the windows… we would walk about… then we would have lunch… either at a downtown cafeteria… Clifton’s Cafeteria… when downtown cafeterias were stylish and exciting… decorated with rocks as I remember… or at Grand dad’s club…
The trip to view the windows defined my childhood Christmas… Maybe Patterson House’s too much Christmas can define the holiday for a new generation… I hope so… hence clarity… A new Christmas tradition for a new generation... and continued meaning for our old house...
That leaves the box of rocks…
Early during the Christmas decorating season we had an accident… while hanging garland we (me) dislodged a glass lamp shade… a 1903 glass lamp shade… it fell to the ground… it shattered… Being a professional, I knew the shade in question was still available… I knew where… I thought I might have a spare in the attic… among the push button light switches, the knobs and tubes, and the curtain rods… there are also lamp shades and bits of wooden rain gutter… all the things that define a Victorian house…
There on the shelf of spares was a box with a tag marked “lamp parts”…. A promising box with a tag suggesting the possibility of a replacement shade for the 1903 kitchen light fixture… The box itself was interesting as so many things in the attic of Patterson House are… It was old (most things in the attic of Patterson House are old… ) It was a pre-war (this would be World War II… ) a pre-war box from Gump’s department store… (we are back to department stores… department stores used to decorate their windows for Christmas… I might have mentioned this before… but today, instead of windows with too much Christmas, Gumps has a web site… called “Holliday Shop”) back to our box… A box marked Gump’s, San Francisco and Honolulu…
The box, the promising box was addressed to Miss Sally Patterson, Newark California… a box, a cardboard box… addressed to a Patterson, living at the time, a time long ago, before 1941, at our Patterson House, now a museum filled with antiques and too much Christmas… A box with three 4 cent stamps… an old box…
Of course, I opened the precious cardboard box… and found… rocks… non-descript rocks… the now well known box of rocks… The box is special… the rocks may have once been special to someone… but now, they are just a curiosity… and currently live on my desk next to the very dead computer…
The frustration of the dead computer has an upside… I can’t do my work… I get frustrated… the work calls… I get more frustrated… unable to do work, I go outside, behind my office… There resides the fire wood pile… I take an axe… a splitting axe… I use said axe to hit the firewood… to split the firewood… preparing the wood for use in the stove to cook the cookie dough the daughter made for the too many 3 year olds viewing the too much Christmas… The physical exertion helps ease the stress… It warms me… and now I have wood for the stove, to cook the cookie dough for the 3 year olds…
To all a Merry Christmas, and to all a good night…
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