Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Thinking about holiday safety issues on two different scales ...

"According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, injuries from plastic packaging resulted in 6,400 visits to emergency rooms in 2004." -- from "Do Not Pry Open Until Christmas: The Hard Truth About Hated 'Clamshell' Packaging", by Margaret Webb Pressler in The Washington Post, 2006-11-30 (Thanks to cchan8 for pointing it out.)

And:

"According to the page that explains how NORAD tracks Santa Claus, Rudolph's nose gives off an infrared signature similar to a missile launch. In THEORY, this would mean that an enemy could sneak a missile into the U.S. or Canada, as long as it followed Santa's trajectory." -- dakiwiboid, 2006-12-24

And a merry (and safe!) Christmas, to all who celebrate it in whatever fashion!

I woke up with "Riu Riu Chiu" looping through my brain [note: there seem to be some rests missing from the sheet music PDF I linked to], I'm feeling perky and cheerful despite how much physical pain I'm in ... Yup, it's Christmas and the nastybadevil drugs that I stopped taking a few days ago seem to have cleared out of my brain and stopped screwing with my neurotransmitters in time. I gave Perrine some catnip and a toy mouse. Now I'm just waiting for the pain meds to start working so I can get dressed and go be with family.

I think my Mom will be disappointed that I'm getting there so late, and there's potentially stressful confusion about exactly what the plan is for the day (plus my own frustration at my uncooperative body), but I'm going to keep reminding myself to "go with the flow", not worry about these things (just deal with them as I get to them), and not let any of the obstacles and lurking stressors diminish my current good mood. I can only hope that others who are affected by my limitations (family members waiting for me, pretty much) manage to be similarly mellow about timing so that I don't wind up ruining their moods.

(C'mon, pain-meds, hurry up! Er ... wait, wait, they'll start working soon and I just said I wasn't gonna let myself get stressed over it. Okay.)

And so begin the twelve days.

Apparently "I'm going to sell you on eBay" has replaced "I'm going to sell you to the Gypsies" as a parental threat.