EMBARRASSING MOMENT NUMBER TWO--GIMMIE ME A BABY JESUS!

These are some of my favorite Christmas decorations. I think I am the only one in the family who adores these fellows. And how I got them is embarrassing, even now, all these years later.

Look at the lovely detail on Mr. Monty Dromedary. His dreamy eyes, his prickly topknot. He is regal if every any animal were. Don't mind the fact that he spits. The sheep are only interested in dinner. They've only been interested in dinner for years and years.

Okay, on to the story of my great insensitivity and even greater embarrassment:

Years and years ago when Kraut was age two we lived in Greensboro, North Carolina. I worked for a cosmetic company called Carté. One of my customers was a lovely Jewish woman a few years older than me.

One day she took me to her synagogue to show me her little "store." She was proud of the many beautiful things she had stocked. I fell in love with some of the handmade animals and people that had been made in Jerusalem. I bought two camels, two sheep, and a "barber." I thought he looked like a shepherd or maybe a camel driver.

"I want to buy more," I told her. She looked and looked for the catalog but couldn't find it.

"Just tell me what you want and when I find the catalog I'll give you a call."

"I want a baby Jesus and a Mary and Joseph," I said with sincere stupidity.

She didn't say anything. In fact she kind of hurried me out and I never heard from her again. I wonder why?

DO IT NOW

“We must lengthen our stride and must do it now.” President Spencer W. Kimball 12th President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Today, two friends and I went to the opening of Kohl's and then to lunch where we all ate too much, I'm sure.

On the way we stopped at a stoplight behind this car. I am dying to know the owners. What do they do that I don't? Do they ski all winter? Have they started their own company? Do they go to Egypt and ride camels? --I have an insane fondness for camels, I don't know why. They look so regal. Yes, I know they spit.-- Do they go up into the mountains, lie on a blanket and count stars and coyote barks at 2:00 AM? Do they stop at Denny's on the way home and have breakfast at 5:00 AM?What do they do?

I am going to get fit and buy a mountain bike and go to Sundance and ride the ski lift and then bike down. With exuberance. Maybe I will buy a season pass. I will take a notebook and ride to the end of the little road on top of the mountain and write for fifteen minutes before every insanely fast downward journey. Then, perhaps, in the winter I will ski the bike trail that is covered up so I won't be lonesome of it. That's what I think I will do. If I don't do that I am going to do something else courageous.

What do you think you will do? Will it be a courageous thing or a fun thing? Will it be a humanitarian thing or a family thing? Will it be an insanely risky thing or a safe thing? What will you do?

I found two quotes by Eleanor Roosevelt that seemed to fit:

"You must do the things you think you cannot do." Eleanor Roosevelt

"The purpose of life it to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience." Eleanor Roosevelt

PS On the way home--why, oh why didn't I stop and take a picture?-- we saw a little grey haired lady with--I'm not making this up--a dog on a leash, a chain saw and an untidy 100 foot-long, orange extension cord. What on earth had she been doing? Something courageous? Or, something illegal? Or something that would benefit mankind, like saw off an overhanging branch from a vacant lot, that threatened to sweep bicyclists off their bikes as they pedaled by?

Whatever it was, she did it.