My holiday weekend off ended up being nice and relaxing.
It began with being let out from work an hour early on Friday, always a nice treat. Saturday was my mother’s birthday and I ended up giving her a call and talking for a while, but otherwise spent the day reading and doing stuff around the house.
Christmas Eve we went over to have the traditional Seven Fish dinner:
The fish dinner tradition began hundreds of years ago when the Church required fasting (no meat) and purification as preparation for Christmas Day.
Italians, in response, created “spectacular” (but meatless!) meals that followed the letter of the law, but “successfully avoided the spirit,” Vincent Schiavelli wrote in his memoir of his Brooklyn childhood, Bruculinu, America (Houghton Mifflin 1998). Some Italians chose a dinner of seven fish courses (signifying – depending on your source – the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Virtues, the seven sacraments, the seven days in the week before Christmas). Others chose nine (a multiple of the Holy Trinity).
Ah Italians. Whatever the meaning, I love fish. The fish is gathered by some men in the family via the annual pilgrimage to the fish and cheese markets in Philly, and it’s all quite fresh and delicious – the eel is a personal favorite. We ended up spending the better part of the afternoon and into the evening there.
Monday, Christmas, we went over to my brother-in-law’s house for a turkey dinner and 24 hours of A Christmas Story. We exchanged gifts with my mother-in-law and scooted out after a couple hours to come home and relax.
Tuesday I also had off from work – yay! Michael had a fire going in the fireplace early in the day, so Caligula spent the entire day sleeping in front of it. In the middle of the day I headed out to do some errands. I was able to pick up some nice kitchen things we needed at Le Butler’s Pantry in Skippack. I also took advantage of the “Christmas present” from my mother – any family members can use her employee number to get a 20% off at Petco, sweet! Caligula got some of his favorite treets and a new pair of grooming gloves.
Wednesday I worked 10 hours so I could take off the rest of this week (a month ened week!) without too much guilt.
I took off the rest of this week so we could go to Maine for New Years, unfortunately circumstances changed and we aren’t able to make it up. Well I wasn’t going to let that take away from my days off!
Instead we have a couple of friends come up, Azi (who came up once with some Swedish friends) and