Kaff Coff-Coff Hack

I am sitting in the dining room, listening to the March of the Toy Soldiers from the CD player, and hearing the sounds of my wife and daughter mixing icing in the kitchen -- the icing is for the Italian cookies my wife made last night; we're giving them to neighbors, along with some torrone and some rum balls that one of us plans to make this afternoon. And, I am shivering, just a bit, despite the two cups of coffee and breakfast -- the aftermath of the cold my daughter was gifted with at school, and which she then regifted to me so that I spent much of Thursday night coughing and hacking, great fun. I was in pretty good shape last night, but this morning I awoke and found that at least a trace remained.

I for a long time wondered what the lungs actually looked like, also, what phegm was -- not the composition, but where it came from. About six months ago, I found a marvelous diagram that showed me what the lungs looked like in great detail -- I was surprised to find that I actually already knew many of the words, such as alveoli, but I had not clearly understood the concept of air exchange. Not to say that I really understand it now, but I have a good handle on it.

I think I understand phlegm, too, but not really. But you know what? I'm ready to stop having this as a primary source of interest. I want to be in the Christmas mode, lights and 'nogg and all of that. And I want to imagine the look on my wife's face when she gets the 'extra' gift, tomorrow night. A few years ago I told her that I thought it was unfortunate that we (not just us) tend to think of Christmas as predominantly being the gifting period in the morning. I wanted the magic to last just a bit longer. So we started our personal tradition of 'the last gift', which we give each other that night, just before going to sleep.

This year, she's getting something a little extra special. Let's hope she doesn't remember what we said the budget would be, when she opens the small black box with the silver Apple logo.

She's worth it.