Christmas Songs by Jars of Clay

I've started this habit of buying one Christmas album a year. This year I went with an album by Jars of Clay. I just gave it a listen while I was cleaning up my living room. I'm not going to go into grave details about every song, because it was background music for me. I will say I loved their take on Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime." My first take from listening to the album is that it provides the listener with a setting for the birth of Christ. Their wonderful alternative folk rock sense makes this album worthy of a listen.

Notes from Vivace

Not that I don't like Kids

I was helping with food preparation at an Angel Tree event. Angel Tree provides gifts to kids who have a parent in jail. So these two kids came over. They weren’t Angel Tree kids. They were there, because their parents were also helping out with the event – doing non-food related work. One kid had great enthusiasm about food. He seemed to know all about different types of cheese. He relayed his experiences with making garlic bread. He told us about his favorite desserts. And he kept on asking if we needed help. We told him we really didn’t need any help as everything was mostly done. He kept pressing, saying he felt guilty if he wasn’t able to help. The kid was getting on my nerves. He came across to me as a know-it-all. I didn’t want to be rude, but I did want to try and get across to him that we really didn’t need any help. I gave him my pseudo-psychology lesson, “You shouldn’t feel guilty about not helping people out. When you grow up, people will take advantage of you. They’ll know they’ll be able to guilt trip you into helping them out and you’ll end up being stretched too thin and up being burnt out and a stress case. So learn to not feel guilty about not being needed to do something.” That didn’t really work. He kept on hanging around, giving his opinions on food.

Notes from Vivace