Red Christmas

It should come as no surprise that I had big plans for what I might accomplish around the house over my Christmas holidays. I get about 10 days off work from Penn State around Christmas and New Year's, and it's a break that I look forward to all year.

I planned to reorganize and clean the house. I planned to tidy things up. I had lists, short and long, of what ought to be done.  (This timely posting from the satire site The Onion seems to capture that feeling quite well.) But seriously, what HAVE I done?

I visited family. I made some cookies. We took a long bike/hike. We ran errands in town. But what did I do MOSTLY? Binge-watched episodes of The Mentalist (my husband bought me the whole TV series on DVD for my birthday), while eating fudge, wild cherry gummy bears, doughnuts, crackers with onion dip, and those marvelous little Ghirardelli dark chocolate sea salt caramels.

I did much of this, by the way, all the while huddling under blankies on the bed with That Tabbycat. (Tabbycats are a bad influence, folks.) Ha! BUT SOMEHOW TODAY WILL BE DIFFERENT; I JUST KNOW IT!!!!<<--groundless optimism!

On this particular evening, I was sitting in bed admiring the reflection of the Christmas tree and the lamp in the mirror, a shot I've posted here recently. But I was looking at it again, thinking there was something more there, something different than the shot I already took.

So I got out of bed, and I got my camera, and I went in for another look. (No mean feat, getting out of bed!) And I realized that if I focused on one of the crystal teardrop dangles from the lamp, I could get a reflection shot that included an upside-down view of the red Christmas ribbon on the little tree, with all of the colorful lights forming a nice bokeh all around it. 

Fans of the series may remember that in The Mentalist, Simon Baker, as Patrick Jane, was on an endless quest to find and bring to justice a murderer known as "Red John." Many episodes' names feature the word "red" as part of their titles. And so the name "Red Christmas" seems fitting for this shot, given what I was watching at the time.

Before I end this posting, I'd like to give a shout-out of recognition to all of those who didn't make it to Christmas this year; and to those who didn't survive 2016. In their honor, we light the lights and put them in the window so that any lost hearts may find their way home.

The soundtrack: Wham! with Last Christmas.