The reckoning.

Okay, people, time is running out.

At the Key house we still pay our bills the old-fashioned way, waiting for them to arrive by Pony Express, paying them as they do with handcrafted artisan checks.

To this process, in January, we also include my hair standing up like Linus Van Pelt's when I open the envelope.

This year I found a way around it. We spent a bunch on Christmas in November. That way my hair pops up on end twice, once last month and once this month, but only for half as long each time.

Spreading the shock around helps keep the heart from giving out, you know.

As I write my checks, focused on the expenses incurred to give good things to others (rather than the expenses based on things that I, uh, happened to buy myself) I try to remember our old pal Ebenezer Scrooge. We think of him as a miserly old creep, but years ago an editor pointed out to me in the context of A Christmas Carol that that was not the way London remembered him; rather

it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!

So if Scrooge could do that, maybe I can find a way to pay my Christmas bills too. God bless us, every one! (And hurry!)