It's Christmas Eve!

These last years since the keeper left direct parish work, these immediate days before Christmas seem very strange, like an ill-fitting piece of clothing, she says.  Stassi, before he died, told me that the cats would never see her until the Christmas Day in the afternoon, she would be so busy.
But now, she moves at a different pace because someone else is doing all of that organizing and planning, and fussing, and checking.  She is free to prepare a Christmas Dinner, wrap presents for us, finish her cards, plant some seedlings. We like having her around. Tonight we  paid our respects to our creche which is a collection of many creches and other interesting figures, including a little "Comandante  Marcos" , the guerrilla freedom fighter from Chiapas.  He is guarding the stable.  We figure the scene was probably more like this than what is often portrayed.