More beads sneak into the crochet

I started this last night...four days before Christmas and I'm making a Christmas gift. Now, I have to tell you, I swore off Christmas presents a number of years back - giving or receiving. My idea of a great Christmas is spending the day with close friends and otherwise avoiding malls, stress, overspending and consuming for the sake of consuming. Children in the vicinity of your immediate life are a perfectly valid reason for Christmas giving, or big adult children who are still, in their hearts, children when it comes to Christmas.

But my friends and I are at an age when it occurs to us that we are drowning under mountains of stuff. Stuff in the closets, stuff packed in boxes, stuff practically dangling from the rafters. Our budgets are tight and God knows we just don't need more stuff. Me - I spend an inordinate amount of time rearranging, dusting, packing and storing the offending accumulation and trying to convince myself to give some of it up. For Pete's sake.

This year though, I have this one friend who has been down on her luck. She relocated a couple years back and since then she's been barely making it month to month. Finally, this year, after struggling on the below-meager pittance of social assistance all this time, a volunteer position working with special needs people has morphed into a good full-time job. They had to hire her. She was so good and sensitive with their clients anyone would have noticed.

So. This is for her.

We now return to our regular Grinch programming.