Christmas was Carol's favorite holiday, jokes about Christmas Carol not withstanding. She took as much joy in finding the perfect gift for someone as she did in receiving a less-than-perfect gift.

When I lived alone, I didn't do much about Christmas.

The year that Carol's mom died, she was depressed and didn't have the energy to set up the tree or decorate. A few days before Christmas I finally had time to go shopping, and I picked up a little two foot tall pre-decorated tree.

That's been our tree for the past 15 years or so.

For the last half-dozen years of so, I did most of the Christmas set up in the house, bringing Christmas to Carol. It pleased her to wake up and find that I'd set up the tree and stockings and stuff while she was asleep.

I'm not feeling like it this year. I'm not grumbling "Bah, Humbug!" as I used to when I was trying to work and stupid shoppers were getting in my way, but the idea of putting up the tree and stockings like I did for Carol isn't appealing.

I did take the sympathy cards off the piano and replace them with the Christmas cards I've gotten so far.

Just to be honest. I wrote that paragraph first, then finally re-read and put away the sympathy cards and put out the new Christmas cards.

So let it be written. So let it be done. To quote Yul Brynner. After all, it is the Yule season.

The idea of bringing up the Christmas decorations that Carol and I used to celebrate Christmas just feels so wrong. That feels like a denial: trying to make believe it's the same old celebration when it isn't.

But just ignoring the season doesn't work either. The solstice celebrations have been around a lot longer than the current names for them. Even when I lived alone, I put up a few decorations.

So, after a bunch of pacing and talking to myself, I decided to get a new decoration to put up. Nothing big, or intrusive, but an acknowledgement that the season is here and I'm doing something about it, but not trying to repeat Carol's holiday.

So, after hitting Costco for a month's worth of stuff that doesn't go bad, I trooped over to Kohl's. I found a rack of "Half Price Faux Plants" in the "Seasonal Decorations" area. I looked really hard at a Charley Brown tree that's more spindly and bare than the one I bought at BigLots some 15 years ago and decided that if I was going to get something like what I already have, I should just use what I own.

In the end, I picked up a ten-inch tall fake-fir thing with red berries. It sits on the table like a small centerpiece, and will easily go into a box for the rest of the year.

I kind of feel good about the decision. Not great, by any means, but this feels better than trying to continue a "Carol Christmas" without Carol, or just making believe that Christmas isn't there.

And, since anything worth doing is worth overdoing, a couple days after I got the centerpiece thing, I decided it needed to sit on a rack, so small presents could go under it.

The small presents will probably be the dog and cat toys a friend sent, but it will look Christmassy.

So, I spent most of Friday in my wood shop for the first time in a long time.

I wanted a curve for the legs on the new rack, sort of like French Provincial chair legs. The make-a-circular-cutout jig I used for the first foot-stool I made for Carol when we were courting would be perfect for this.

However, in the intervening 30 years, that jig was either lost, or cannibalized for another project, or just stored in a box labelled "Misc".

So I tried a quick hack, which didn't work well and put my fingers uncomfortably close to a chunk of spinning metal. Then I tried a hole-saw on the drill press, but my big hole saw was designed to cut through drywall, not cherry. It would cut about 1/16'th of an inch, then jam and the belts in the drill press would slip.

By all rights, this should have been a bandsaw project, but I haven't used the bandsaw in almost 30 years (it's not my favorite tool), and after a half hour of fiddling, I couldn't adjust it to not just dump the blade off the wheel while dry-turning it. I never got so far as to turn it on.

There's a numerical analysis technique where you determine the area under a curve by drawing lots of tall, narrow boxes and calculating the area of the boxes. This is frequently used when the actual data can't be integrated. It's a trick you can use to follow an irregular curve.

What I wanted for these legs was basicly a French curve, which is irregular enough for me. So, I grabbed a 1/4 inch dado blade and cut a dozen or so rectangles of varying depths out of the legs, then smoothed the jaggies on the sanding station.

In the end, it came out looking quite nice, in my humble opinion.

Several years ago, a friend lost her last parent and needed something to do on Christmas Eve. So we started a tradition of her coming to our house for a special dinner and maybe a TV movie or such.

This evolved into a small present exchange.

The friend and I agreed to continue this tradition, so I picked up a couple small gifts for her and her pets.

In the course of cleaning Carol's office, I found a gift bag with two laptop/tablet screen cleaners. This is the sort of little gift that Carol loved to find as a stocking gift.

So, I wrapped one for our friend and labeled it "From Carol." I think one was meant for the friend. It's the last gift she'll ever give.

The friend didn't cry when she saw the gift, but it was close.

Carol and I generally had a very laid back and relaxing Christmas day. I might do something fancy for breakfast, like pancakes, then presents and sit around the house reading our new books. (There might be other presents, but there were *ALWAYS* books.)

I couldn't face sitting at home this year.

Luckily, one friend invited me to brunch with her extended family, another invited me to an extended-family lunch, and a third invited me to a Christmas dinner.

I felt like quite the social butterfly, flitting from meal to meal. I had just enough time between things to stop off at home and feed Caz and take him for a brief walk. This is probably the longest he's been stuck at home by himself since he came to live with us.