Merry Christmas and goodbye tooth

The kids are at Jim's, and it is just Maddie and me for Christmas, which I used to celebrate when there were children and a husband in the house, but which is no longer for me.

I am glad to be rid of all the hoopla, but which parent who has had young children in the house can forget the excitement and fun?

I amused myself last night by checking in with the Norad Santa Tracker,  watching Santa's journey around the world and keeping an eye on the digital counter showing how many gifts he had left. Last time I looked, he was over Warsaw, Poland. This morning I checked in again and saw that, his journey completed, he had delivered 7,060,919,100 gifts.

Next I made blueberry pancakes and watched "A Christmas Story," which gets better every time.

I'm going to walk Maddie and then see "American Hustle," and after that, bring home Chinese food to have with the kids. This time last year, I was eating Chinese food in Barcelona with Katie. We were surprised to find an excellent restaurant. We got there around 9 and thought nobody was coming, but then, it being Spain, diners started to file in until the place was filled.

Dec. 25 was my parents' anniversary. They got married then because, after the Christmas rush, it was a good day for my mother to close her jewelry store. My mother loved to tell the story of how she wanted to spend their wedding night at the Plaza, but my father insisted they stay across the street from Penn Station at a hotel with a tunnel connecting to the station. He was afraid that otherwise, the impending winter storm would keep them from catching the train to their honeymoon in Florida. As it turned out, the blizzard of 1947 roared in and they rolled out. She said that after that, father always knew best.

Moving on to another topic, I had the troublesome tooth #3 pulled on Monday. It still hurts a lot, but that is to be expected after an extraction. I am following my Dana-Farber doctor's guidelines on how much oxycodone I can take, and it is quite a bit. Yesterday I thought it was getting because I didn't take anything all afternoon or at night. That is a good sign, but today it kills again. I hope that with all the medication in me, I don't fall asleep at the movies.

From Granada to Barcelona

On the plaza overlooking the Alhambra

View of the Alhambra

We had a couple of beautiful days in Granada, where the sky was a perfect blue.

Sunday was our big day, when we toured the Alhambra, the palace and fortress that looks down on the city of Granada. The gardens are amazing, with some flowers still in bloom. The design, with fountains and water flowing all around, are designed to inspire meditation. We sat on a bench and took it all in.

There were steps everywhere. Our admission ticket allowed us to wander in the gardens until 6 p.m. if we wanted, but after about two hours I couldn't move anymore. I looked up at a steep flight of stairs which I'm sure led to an inviting garden, but I froze. We found the salida and ended that part of the day.

But later, after I lay down for a while, we headed for the old Jewish neighborhood, where the view of the Alhambra was promised to be awe-inspiring, and it was. We went up up up more stairs through  narrow streets until we finally got to the top. A band played flamenco music, and so-called hippies playing flutes laid out their wares on blankets while dogs wandered around. As the sun set, making the Alhambra look more and more unreal, I didn't want to leave, but it was getting dark and we had a long way down.

At right is the street that we took to get to the plaza with the view.

Monday, a short day because we had to catch a flight, we went to a tetería, an Arabic tea house where you can relax and have a choice of many teas. We think we might open one in Northampton. If you don't drink, it's an excellent place to hang out instead of the bar scene.

But that venture will be hard to realize if we move to Andalucía, which is another possibility that we have discussed.

Christmas in Barcelona has been pretty quiet. We walked along La Rambla, the main street, and spent some time in our hotel, having coffee (me) and hot chocolate (Katie) and sharing a chocolate chip cookie and talking.

Last night, Katie watched "A Christmas Story" ("You'll shoot your eye out!") and I watched it with her until I fell asleep sitting up. I think I'll watch the end tonight after we eat Chinese food and take a stroll to see the lights at night.

I said before that I have been introduced to many things. One is Principe cookies, sort of like an oreo but not as intense, with a chocolate filling inside two plain wafers. I have to admit that I just ate quite a few while I was writing this. I also have to admit that we had breakfast at Starbucks, which is just as ubiquitous as in the U.S.

Running around

I was going to break out and try running today, but instead I walked to the Common for the South Hadley Columbus Day Fair. I ate a baked potato with sour cream and cheese, bought a scarf, talked to people and then walked Maddie around the lake with two friends. Then, I ran to buy a chair to take advantage of a Columbus Day sale.

I also spent a lot of time on the Internet making arrangements for when I join Katie in Seville on Dec. 17. We're going to travel for 12 days; I haven't done much except get my plane ticket and reserve a room in a B&B in Seville, and now all of a sudden the trip is drawing near.

We are going to spend a few days in Seville so she can show me around, and then go to Granada, Barcelona and Paris. After I settled on a place to stay in Paris, I looked at a map of the surrounding area and saw the hospital. Oh, the hospital! Not Oh, the Eiffel Tower. I wonder if there will always be that little voice that says, "Just in case."

Anyway, it's very exciting to be realizing I'm actually going.

But first things first.

The election is maybe taking up too much space in my brain. I "have to" watch the MSNBC politics shows and I have to read the New York Times and on-line sites. On one of the news shows, a panel was debating whether the good jobs report on Friday – unemployment dropped to 7.8 percent – would give Obama a bounce that could neutralize the negative effect of his poor debate performance in Denver. Some thought that it could, but one panelist wondered how many people actually felt that the lower number made their day.

Well, I was one of those people. I heard it on the radio driving down to tennis and immediately felt buoyed after actually being depressed by Obama's lackluster performance. I went on to play some decent tennis.

Meanwhile, I hope that tomorrow I will get that run in.