Frosted Fields by Katherine McPheeters – The wintry beauty of a frosted field is depicted by a twig wreath and a collection of frosted stems in shades of champagne and chocolate

At times, maybe even most of the time, I must admit that I am pretty clueless. I wrote yesterday about our gift basket largess. It did seem a wee bit strange for my brother Frank to send us seven identical food gift baskets. I wasn’t really thinking about the why. I was more concerned with how I was going to shoehorn all of these baskets into our not particularly large refrigerator. My second thought was wondering where I would find room for the Christmas dinner fixings to come. If I did think about it, I thought that maybe he got a good deal. Anne thought that Frank was just trying to fatten me up.

When I came home tonight, I knew that something was wrong. There were another three new gift boxes waiting on the front porch. Plus, a different kind of food gift box from Harry had arrived too. I called Frank, afraid that his vendor had mistakenly sent his order for ten different recipients all to my address. This fear was amplified because I had already taken one basket to work and Anne had taken another one to school. My co-workers devoured the first one and I see no sign of the second one, even though Anne has come and gone from after school. It turns out that upon reviewing his invoice, Frank did in deed order ten gift boxes, instead of the one intended. He suggested that I re-gift the excess boxes and that is what I plan on doing.

This actually works out quite well. To date, I’ve done almost none of my Christmas shopping. Jury duty took a week out of my life and the wind out of this holiday season’s sails. That is my first excuse. Last weekend my credit card company called me to say that my card had been compromised. Someone had tried to purchase $4,000+ worth of radio controlled toys using my account. The operator promptly canceled my plate and then asked if the normal seven to ten-day delivery schedule would be an inconvenience. Yes! I have Christmas shopping yet to do. She thought so too and then offered to FedEx the new plate. I got that yesterday too. That is my second excuse. Let me say this. If I had planned to purchase you a gift, I still will. There just might be an extra food gift box also included under the tree this year.