Hey gang! Christmas officially came to my house on Thursday. Got the tree up, the lights strung, put the decorations out, got out the Christmas music (including my record player & Christmas records that I've had for over 30 years).

I'd been hoping that Fluffy would have forgotten that right at the tail-end of last Christmas, she learned how to bat glass ornaments off the Christmas tree like a pro. But it was not to be! The very first thing she did when she saw the tree all lit up in the living room, smarty pants that she is, was head straight for an ornament and bat it off the tree. (Of course, this year, I tricked her and I put all the unbreakable ones near the bottom. But this doesn't keep me from having to chase down ornaments scattered all over the room and hang them back on the tree.)

As most loyal readers of this lofty blog will no doubt recall, I am a real stickler for seasonal dishes. Especially my coffee mugs and cereal bowls -- they have to match the seasons or I can't get out of bed in the morning. And apparently I've ALWAYS been this way! Please note the coffee mug in the photo below. I have had this Christmas coffee mug since December 1981. Is that ridiculous, or what? (What's even more insane is that I remember the day I bought it perfectly. I was with Greg Murphy and we were shopping in Macy's Cellar on Herald Square at around 5 o'clock one blustery December evening. I fell in love with this mug at first sight. Now you can see for sure that with me, love is eternal, gang.) (And that tiny framed photo is of my late best-friend-in-the-world, Paul Martin. It was taken on our last Christmas together before he died. He came to visit me in NYC and we went to see Santa at Macy's.)