Saturday morning ritual, Christmas style

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Originally uploaded by coralinad

"What can I make for breakfast that isn't the same old thing?" asked Jack, propped against the stove.

The same old thing for him is what most people only get to eat when they go out for breakfast. Hash browns, sausage and two eggs, sunny side up.

I just started piling things on the counter. That's how I like to cook, throwing things together and seeing what happens. I grabbed a green pepper, leftover hash browns from yesterday, an onion, the 99-cent mushrooms, sausage and eggs.

A frittata?

"Ok," said the man who had never heard the word a year ago. He was off. I went back the the table piled with Christmas cards. Last night I abandoned ship on my attempt to rubber stamp them, but by Jeeves, I wasn't going to waste all those blank cards so I painted them. Weak, but honest.

I turned on Pandora's Christmas station and began writing. Breakfast was lovely, especially with the last minute addition of red pepper flakes, which make everything better.

At 8:56 am, he turned on National Public Radio. Our Saturdays are bookended by public broadcasting. In the morning, it is Car Talk and Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me on NPR and the evening ends with As Time Goes By on PBS.

Amid stories of men hiding antique car restorations from their wives and mysterious smells and sounds coming from Isuzus and Subarus, we drafted cards to loved ones. We live hundreds if not thousands of miles from most of the people we love, and are positively rotten about staying in touch. But how to sum up all we feel and all we'd like to share in one greeting card? A few years ago we started writing the summary Christmas letter. Impersonal, perhaps, but informative. Plus, I like to add pictures. Of course.

He wrote to his people and I wrote to mine. I didn't subject any of his people to my handmade cards. They got cute Leanin' Tree cards. The Santa card in the photo was honestly the best one. Sad, I know. My dove looked like an albino goose. The ornament could have passed as a flushed Easter egg. Apologies to all my friends and family. But hopefully they'll love me anyway. I've done weirder things to them, I'm sure.