Feeling Combobulated

I woke up feeling combobulated this morning. Then I wondered if that is really a word. I found it on Urban Dictionary and it means what you would think it means. The opposite of discombobulated or pulling it together. The reasons I'm feeling combobulated at the present moment, despite advertisers attempts to pull me into the vortex of consume, consume, consume, is that I got all my Christmas gifts in one place, a cozy bookstore, in one afternoon. I just wandered and perused and browsed and doubled back and did it all over again until I found gifts for the few family members that we exchange with. (We just share cards with the family that lives far away.) With patience and persistence, I found the perfect book or CD for each one.

Then I wrapped them in paintings I had done in a recent art class. We used tempera paints and heavy white paper to create colorful expressions of what we were feeling in the moment without worrying about the finished product. They looked different cut up into sections and each one seemed to match the gift. It contributed to my feeling of non-attachment and passing things along.

I have tried to keep my time in the stores to a minimum but a few purchases have added to my feeling of combobulation. Yesterday I made one stop and did some banking, bought gingerbread men to take to a friend's house for lunch and a new "double-wide perch" for the outside of my parakeets' cage. An early Christmas gift for Pie and Apple.

Last weekend we went to a holiday party at a neighborhood Bed and Breakfast we discovered for visiting friends. The owner has a two story aviary filled with 400 birds of varying kinds. He has parrots, parakeets, finches and lovebirds. I tried to imagine Pie and Apple among that flock. People were crammed into the perfectly decorated home and we squeezed past the harpist to get to the heavily laden dining room table. The host had prepared his special mushroom soup which he served in mugs. There was wine and eggnog and lots of birdsong.

At our son's Christmas party last night, there were his neighbors, co-workers and our grandsons alternately watching a DVD and consuming way too much sugar. Then they would fling themselves into our arms and drag us into their room to play. There's all kinds of ways to celebrate the holidays but being with family, particularly children, is undoubtedly one of the best.