Watermelon, Watermelon, Watermelon

Last weekend was the Christmas Party at our Eastern Star Senior Living Community, commonly called the Home. I understand that decades ago it was okay to be a retirement home, but that in the past twenty years or so the words "retirement home" have taken on a bad connotation, painting a picture of a sad, depressing place that people just go to die. So we, and a lot of other groups from what I have seen, have renamed their retirement homes to call them "senior living communities" which implies a more active, dynamic environment where people go to live rather than just fade away. The Home is a perfectly lovely building with awesome stained glass windows, a cozy chapel, an ice cream parlor, and a bazillion other amenities and services for our Residents. The Grand Officers visit the Home at least three times each year, once for the Christmas Party in December, once to make an Official Visit, usually held in February or March, and for the Fiesta, which is like a carnival/festival, in June. Then the Residents come to Grand Chapter for a day in October, so it comes out to about once a quarter. In between our visits, I am told that other Chapters come to visit and hold an Eastern Star meeting at the home for the Residents so that they can participate in our familiar ceremonies. For the Christmas Party, there is usually a lovely dinner and entertainment provided by the Grand Officers. It is traditional for the previous year's Grand Officers to also be invited and starting a couple of years ago, last year's Grand Officers also get to help with the entertainment, so I got to see a bunch of my 2009 Grand Family which was great because I have missed them lots. It is hard to travel with a group of people almost every weekend for a year and then suddenly they aren't there anymore. This year, it was decided that we would do the entertainment and presents and such first and then have the dinner afterwards. I sort of liked that a little better than the other way around because I think that people get really tired after dinner and having an hour or so of stuff after the dinner is harder than doing the program first and then having the dinner afterwards. At least it was easier on those of us who perhaps hadn't gotten as much sleep as they should have the night before. It is also traditional for the husband of the Worthy Grand Matron, or a substitute if said husband is not available, to play Santa and bring presents for all the members of the Home. I understand that the Home provides the official presents, but that the Worthy Grand Matron also buys presents for the Residents, so that is something for which I have to keep an eye out. Each of the Grand Officers take turns delivering the presents from Santa to the Residents and it is considered nice if you can chat with them for a minute or two, but the way the chairs were set up Saturday didn't really make that very easy, so I was only able to speak with my deliverees for a moment. One of the ladies to whom I delivered a present is over 100 years old. That's a lot of Christmases! After delivering the presents to the Residents, we sang Christmas carols with them. That is rather difficult for me since I know the words to exactly zero Christmas carols, but at least for Jingle Bells, which was sung by the 2009s and the 2010s together, words had been provided, and I think I got almost half the words right on Here Comes Santa Claus, at least I think so. For the others, we were told that if you just mouth "watermelon, watermelon, watermelon" over and over, it will look like you are singing. I think that there was a lot of watermelon flying around that room Saturday night. It's a good thing that the Residents knew almost all the words to almost all the songs because otherwise the singing would have been very soft. There was also a lovely duet of White Christmas by the gentleman playing Santa and his wife, who are marvelous singers. After dinner, the Grand Family went to our hotel for Secret Pal presents. Secret Pals is something that many Grand Families do, where each Grand Officer gets another Grand Officer to be their Secret Pal. Then you bring them presents and cards and fun things all year long and get them to the secret keeper without anyone seeing them so that your Secret Pal doesn't find out who you are until the end of the year. We all got together in the breakfast room at the hotel and the presents were handed out one at a time so that everyone could see the gifts. I got a great cookie cutter in the shape of a dragon that I am sure the Chairmen of my next events are going to come to loathe because the cookies will be way too cute not to make them for everyone, but rolling the dough out over and over is going to make them a bit crazy. But I can't wait to see how the cookies come out because the cutter has all sorts of great detail in the outline. I also got a dragon calendar and a dragon puzzle. So only three dragons this week. Perhaps the pace is slowing down and I won't end up with 1000 after all, perhaps just several hundred. After you get your Secret Pal present, you sort of have to thank the room in general because of course you don't know who your Secret Pal may be. I have a great Secret Pal who has sent me some way cool cards too. A lot of the presents were in danger of being swiped if the new owner didn't pay attention because they were so nice. Everyone had a lot of fun even though a couple of people had to be reminded not to spray their awesome new body spray at the crowd over the apple pie. I mean we understand that you want everyone to see how great it smells and some of them were very nice, but not over the pie please. Apple pie should not taste pine fresh. The next day, we had a transitional and an instructional in Lomita with much laughter and many funny hats. Perhaps I will explain about transitionals next week, when we are home for the holidays. In fact we have three travel weekends off, just in time for me to try to get my house into some kind of controlled chaos instead of the rampant chaos currently taking over every flat surface.