Holiday hang-ups and hang-outs

All right, you dirty-minded reader, you can stop snickering. Of course we are referring to the Christmas ornaments that have been part of our holiday celebration for more than a decade — the plastic orbs covered in glitter and fabric that are suspended midair with fishing line to lend a bit of color and interest to an otherwise beige space in our home. 

And it is true, a year ago the balls were absent from our decorating for the first time since we started the tradition several Christmases ago, mainly because our stringer-in-chief Glenn got busy and didn’t feel like struggling with the 6-foot aluminum ladder to pin them into place on our 10-foot vaulted ceilings. 

Not wanting a repeat of last year’s decorating letdown, he decided it was best to catch him when he was in the mood to do it, and it was a good thing because as of this writing his inner Scrooge has returned, and Glenn is back to saying bah-humbug to doing more decorating. 

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A

CTUALLY, THE INSPIRATION for the Nov. 9 project was not accidental at all. We’d been to Hobby Lobby at Slatten Ranch so Roni could search for supplies for a craft idea she was working on. As anyone who has investigated Hobby Lobby knows too well, you can’t go for one thing without checking out other things, and before long we were cruising up and down the Christmas aisles ogling the tinsel and ribbons and gaily colored knick-knacks that are always 40 or 50 percent off. 

Hobby Lobby helpfully groups its decorations together by color or theme, so it is easy to have, say, an all-blue tree with blue lights and blue tinsel and various types of blue ornaments. Or perhaps you pine for peacocks on your pine. They’ve got those too, and what caught our eye were the 4-packs of balls painted up in shades of blue and green to resemble peacock feathers. We liked these well enough that we decided to pick up a pack for our living room display. 

Next thing we knew, our shopping cart was filling up with other 4-packs — one containing little “disco balls” covered in tiny mirrors; another surrounded by silver tinsel; one containing balls coated in black and red plaid. These would be the perfect accompaniment to the 6-pack of larger ornaments we’d found a few days earlier at Costco, some with polka dots. 

Without even popping open the entryway closet containing all our Christmas decor, Glenn managed to string up 18 of the ornaments in one afternoon. A couple days later when the closet was finally opened, we found the existing supply of balls and placed 19 more on the living room and dining room ceilings. There was even an extra one that got put in the kitchen for Roni to enjoy while she cooks. 

It was good to get this project started early, because the larger our collection gets the more time it takes to install and remove, and all the up-and-down on the ladder gets a bit tedious. Might as well enjoy it as long as possible. Now that we’ve added the Christmas tree, garland and other items from the closet, the house is looking just fine and dandy for December.

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T

HE OTHER REASON for getting the balls up early was because we wanted to do so while the living room was still relatively tidy — before all those aforementioned decorations came down from the closet, and because we were already beginning to make a mess of things via a construction project.

One of the projects Roni has been wanting to accomplish for months is the addition of a console table behind the sofa, and this month she finally got her wish. 

For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, a console table is a long, thin shelf that tucks behind the sofa where you can store things such as lights and picture frames and create space for people to set down their beverages. In our case, we were tired of never having a good way to charge our electronic devices while sitting on the couch, and Roni constantly complained of not having enough light in the room to read by. Our goal for our console table would be to include lamps and USB charging ports conveniently within reach.

When we originally considered the project months ago, Glenn envisioned a beautiful table made from stained oak that would include shelf space underneath for the storage of books or magazines. Roni wanted it to have legs or sides that would discourage cats from playing behind the sofa. We talked about recessed charging stations that could be covered when not in use, and adjustable pin lights that could concentrate their beams on books where most needed. 

That was what we imagined. What we got was something quite different: a pair of unfinished, 6-inch pine boards attached directly to the wall on a 2x3 stud ledger board, and a hole drilled in the center for the cord of a power strip that rested atop the table. Roni added a couple of small lamps she found on Amazon that have built-in USB ports and throw off enough light that you can read by them (or be annoyed at the glare they cast on the TV screen.) It might not look like we envisioned, but it does get the job done and cost us less than $100.

We got Ben’s help to move the sofa away from the wall so the console table could fit behind it. And it didn’t take long for Phyre to discover he could play back there without the side legs, turning it into a tunnel to get from the hallway to his cat tree. Well, it’s a start that we can always improve upon later if we get the urge to be creative. 

Right now, the console table is providing additional room to display all the Christmas items Roni treasures.

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T

HE HOLIDAY SEASON is always something of an adventure as our family gets older, larger and more diverse. We celebrated Thanksgiving in Hayward this year with a gathering at Glenn’s parents’ house that included all but our brother-in-law Tom, who is a paramedic and had to work. Sean’s fiance, Chi, also joined us at what will be the final family gathering before the two of them tie the knot next month.

We are always happy to take part in the fun, but it does mean that we don’t go through all the work to prepare a big dinner at home or have leftovers to carry us through the weekend. For our part, Roni made up a salad to bring while Ben decided to do some baking of his own and produced some quiche-like muffins that were a new addition to the Thanksgiving table.

As always, everyone brought dishes that were placed on the island in the kitchen where people could serve themselves. Chi provided a huge rack of beef ribs, Jenny made her popular green bean casserole, and Mom furnished the turkey, stuffing, cranberry relish, and bubbly drinks. There were three kinds of pie for dessert — pumpkin, apple and pecan — that left us all full to the point where we could have imitated the stuffed turkey.

There was football on the big screen, of course, as we got to watch Sean’s 49ers take on the Seahawks in the late offering of what had been the NFL’s usual menu of Thanksgiving Day games. And of course there was discussion about the Macy’s Parade, which most of us had watched and texted about earlier in the day. Dad was home this year, and it seemed long ago when we had to celebrate holidays without him while he was caring for our grandma in Hemet — a familial duty now almost a year in the past.

We hope to do it all again next month when we gather for Christmas Day.

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F

OOTBALL WAS ON the menu in another way this month when Glenn and Ben joined Sean down in Santa Clara to attend their first 49ers home game at Levi’s Stadium on Nov. 19 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The game was actually a Christmas gift last year from Roni, who thought it would be fun for her boys to spend some time together at a father-son activity, and on the surface that looked like a great idea. We invited Sean along back in the spring and staked out a game that the three of us would enjoy (and could afford without taking out a second on the house.) That brought us to the Tampa Bay game, where we booked a block of seats in the upper deck and prayed for sun, or at least November weather that didn’t include rain. We gave Sean his ticket as a birthday gift back in October, so you might say that this was an entirely gifted event.

We were blessed with good weather that Sunday morning when Glenn and Ben caught BART in Antioch for the two-hour ride to the Milpitas station. Ben isn’t a big fan of public transportation, but we were early enough that the train was relatively empty and we had seats the entire way, including after our transfer at MacArthur Station in Oakland. What was truly surprising — at least to us — was that few fans were aboard the train by the time it reached Milpitas at 11 o’clock and we met up with Sean, who had driven up from South San Jose to meet us, clad in his Joe Montana jersey.

We’d worried that maybe we were too early, but that notion was quickly dispelled once we got in line with hundreds of other folks at the VTA light rail platform across from the BART station. It was an ocean of red and gold as we stood shoulder to shoulder with everyone in an overcrowded train car that left us feeling more than a little claustrophobic. Poor Ben especially found the crowd unbearable, and it unfortunately got things off on the wrong foot for the rest of the afternoon.

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OUR SEATS WERE in Section 406, Row 14. That is somewhat closer to the sky than the field, but the way Levi’s Stadium is designed makes it easy to see the action, even from that far away. We stopped at the food concessions first, and arrived at our seats just as the national anthem was getting started, followed by a flyover of military helicopters.

The Niners and Bucs took the field at 1:05 p.m., and after a quick three-and-out by Baker Mayfield and the Tampa offense, San Francisco took a couple of series to engineer a sustained drive that led to a Christian McCaffrey reception for a touchdown.

The crowd erupted, of course, and fireworks blazed from atop the scoreboards as a ship’s foghorn blasted out a celebratory honk that was probably heard all the way in Tampa Bay. Ben, who had been munching on his Italian “sausage dog,” wanted only to block out the noise and tried unsuccessfully to hide his head in his hands.

It continued like that until halftime, when with the Niners leading 13-7, Ben reluctantly decided he’d had his fill and told us he wanted to go home. We all hung out for a few minutes in the fire lane outside the stadium where it was a little quieter, which helped get him calmed down, but by then it was into the fourth quarter and fairly obvious that San Francisco was in control of the game. We took the opportunity to beat the crowds aboard light rail and were rewarded with a much more relaxed ride back to the Milpitas BART station.

San Francisco won the game, 27-14. It wasn’t exactly the way we had originally hoped to experience the victory, reading about it on our cellphones while riding home on the train, but at least now we’ll know how to prepare better if we attempt another game — have a plan for how to escape the crowd noise and bring really good earplugs.

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R

ONI'S GOT A new computer. After months of struggling with her aging 2016 MacBook Pro and a battery that lasted about 15 minutes per charge, she took the plunge on the new line of MacBooks that Apple announced earlier this month.

Roni picked out the space black 16-inch M3 Pro with a 1TB drive that she hopes will give her the speed, capacity and durability she needs to get her professional chores done today and perhaps carry her into her retirement years — TBA on that goal, of course! 

We wrote recently that our neighbors’ cat “Nomad” delivered her second litter of kittens sometime in early September. We knew this only because she had been swollen up like a blimp when we returned from Europe in August, then a few days later showed up on our porch about half the size. What we hadn’t seen was any kittens to dispel our growing suspicions that all hadn’t gone well with the birthing process. 

We’d basically given up hope of ever seeing them when they unexpectedly appeared on our porch in one big group on Thanksgiving morning — that would be mama cat and her six kittens! They apparently had been living in the next door garage and only came out to visit when guests came to call, otherwise they probably would have remained out of sight.

We won’t be naming these like we did with her first two kittens, Laser and Skittles; that just led us to become attached to them and caused heartache when eventually they vanished. These little ones are amazingly cute, and we hope they go to good homes. We’d also hope that Nomad’s owners will get her spayed to avoid future litters of unwanted animals roaming our block, but that’s probably not gonna happen. 

Halloween fell on a Tuesday this year, which left us wondering whether we’d receive the usual number of trick-or-treaters we get or if the crowds might fall off to their pandemic lows. We decided to play it down the middle and got what we hoped would be enough candy without leaving us a ton of leftovers we’d need to finish ourselves. 

Our calculations were fairly accurate, and at two pieces per kid we had plenty of candy to outlast what turned out to be a deluge of costumed visitors. Seriously, we don’t remember seeing so many trick-or-treaters even in the busy years prior to COVID. Ben manned the candy dish for us much of the evening and rarely had slack time as wave upon wave of kids descended. 

We think the reason for all this traffic was the house at the end of our block where the owners went all out on creating a haunted forest complete with a fog tent, 10-foot-tall skeletons and werewolves, and video screens that projected haunting imagery. These are the same neighbors who have lived there for years and whose over-the-top decorating skills at both Halloween and Christmas never fail to draw crowds. Even Ben and Glenn took time out from our own holiday celebration to walk up the street and check out the display. 

Traffic at our doorstep peaked around 7 p.m., when a glance along the block revealed throngs of kids that made us wonder if our candy projections had been right. But just like that, things calmed down by 8 o’clock and soon it was just us on the sofa watching TV and asking each other if we were ready to close up shop for the night. 

And with that, we’re going to close up shop on this month’s newsletter. With Christmas and a wedding on the radar, next month should be busy indeed. We hope you get your shopping done and that Santa treats you well on the 25th!

Glenn, Roni and Ben