Revenge of Bethlehem

This morning there was a bit of a "foot spa" set up on the counter here, one with a sweet twist to it.  Still, I would be careful drinking any hot cocoa if it were offered!  The elf shows up each morning with something a bit more elaborate, with just twelve days to go.

That's right, today marks the "Twelve Days of Christmas," however you want to celebrate that.  Some people say it's the twelve days after Christmas, while others use it to count down the twelve days of Christmas.  All I know is that there are twelve days left, and to celebrate that fact, I got to open a present myself!  Mommy has an unusual advent calendar of sorts, little boxes with numbers on them, placed in different spots all over the front room's tree.  Daddy found box number one, and inside it was a pair of socks!  "Jungle Book" socks, at that!  Apparently it's the "Twelve Socks of Christmas!"

Madison was off to school today, and we were off to work, getting things ready for the Christmas service in Spartanburg.  We were also focusing on our own service here as well, although we'll have to do that a little more tomorrow.

She's got a little cold, Madison does.  She was very upset about the possibility of not going to school tomorrow if she gets worse.  Can you imagine that?  Not wanting to stay home?  Daddy checked on her grades this afternoon, and the one that was teetering between and A and a B made a substantial move towards an "A," and that gives her straight A's, with about a week to go.  Hopefully this can be sustained through the next five days - she's worked hard at school.  It's been a more challenging season, but she's made it through.  I know she's learned a few things, and a few more things beyond the academic.  It's great to see her so comfortable at school, having  good time, learning, and wanting to go back.  She always has stories to tell getting home, about teachers playing pranks or other students goofing off with her.

Tonight we went over to see a Christmas play, "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever."  Each year we watch this short movie on the television, and we did that tonight after school, and before going to see the actual play.  It was put on entirely by kids, and Madison hopes to join them up on stage soon.  Until then, she was content to sit in the audience with us and watch one of our neighbor friends perform with the rest of the cast as the Herdman family once again learned about Christmas for the first time, despite wanting to change the local church's Nativity program to something they call "Revenge of Bethlehem."

Which would be a great title for a Christmas CD, by the way.

We got home and went to bed after this, saying prayers and reading from Luke, from the Scrooge devotional, and finally from the "Nutcracker" book we've been reading lately.

Last night was "Christmas Under the Stars" for the church, so Daddy missed a big community meeting where our area was told of a plan that the local government had to build a water treatment plant nearby here.  By one neighbor's account, this is pretty much a done deal.  It was done in a way that nobody knew about it until it was too late to complain, and now the neighborhood has signs everywhere about "What's that Stink?" and so forth.

It's not just the neighborhood, but all up and down Jot-em-Down Road and along Browns Bridge Road there are signs.  I imagine there are signs beyond these places, and plenty of them.  And plenty of people showed up at this "town meeting" last night to oppose this thing that our local politicians had pretty much already agreed to.  I imagine some of these folks might not get re-elected after this, at least if people remember all this and vote.  But at the same time the politicians were probably given plenty of "incentives" to move forward with this, and if anything they themselves all dodged a bullet because - true story - not one of them live nearby where this facility is being built.  I'm sure that has value in itself, because unlike us here, there's no risk for them to take a hit on their property value.  If this sounds cynical, then yeah.

Here's a map I made where the poo plant is, as it relates to our neighborhood.  The one thing that gives me a little hope about the smell is this:  they're building a high school right next door to this.  In fact, the current plan is to have the high school built just down the road from us, so that Madison won't be traveling all the way to the current location for the high school.  In fact, if all times the way we hear it, she'll actually be a freshman in a brand new high school just down the road from us.

All I know is this:  our church smells bad, frequently.  The stinky air from these places is released at night, and it gets trapped in the ventilation systems of other buildings where it recycles around all the next day.  This is our experience for years.  Anyone who lives or works in the McEver and Browns Bridge area of Gainesville knows this, and knows about the smell.

So hopefully this new structure won't be built with the same level of government "efficiency."  Because that would stink.  Literally.