Under the tree

It’s Christmas. The world pauses to acknowledge the birth of our savior two thousand years ago. Or at least it does here. It stopped snowing sometime during the night and the sun was bright and made the snow sparkle. Snow is beautiful. More than I thought it would be.

And there were gifts exchanged. Larry gave me “Rehabbing for Dummies” so I’d heal quicker. No, actually, he made me cry. He gave me a beautiful gold chain, very shiny, and told me to wear it on the mound to distract the hitters. He had help me try it on. I felt….I don’t have the vocabulary. But he *believes*.

All I got him was a custom-made black and slime green glove with his name and number on it. The glove has long fingers to hide the ball and, well, it’s very nice but doesn’t compare at all to his gift to me.

And the other brothers gave me my own cribbage board. It looks similar to this one except the lid is not hinged, there is blank space at either end, so it’s slightly longer and the pegs are black, white and silver instead of sliver gold and copper.

It’s very nice and I anticipate using it for years. I expect to play a lot of cribbage. I did mention cribbage is a gambling game.

And I, of course, got them gift cards. Once again, I’m outdone. I plead my busy rehabbing lifestyle.

Now more about cribbage. You deal out hands. The dealer gets a phantom hand called the “crib” made up of cards discarded by the players. In a two-player game, each player is dealt six cards and discards two. In a four-player game, each player is dealt five cards and discards one. So anyway everyone gets their hand and discards into the crib.

Then players lay down cards one at a time in rotation, totaling their values. If a player plays a card to bring the total to 15, she gets a point. If the total is 31, she gets 2 points. The count can’t go past 31 though so if no one can play a card, the person who played the last one gets a point and the count starts over. Points are also awarded for pairs, three- or four-of-a-kind, and runs of three or more.

Then each player counts the points in their hand, including a common card turned up from the top of the deck (which is 2 points to the dealer if it’s a jack). You start with the person to the dealer’s left. After all the hands are counted, the dealer counts the crib and scores any points.

Things that give you points: A pair = 2, Any cards that total 15 = 2, A run of 3, 4, or 5 = 3, 4 or 5 points. A flush of all the cards in your hand = 4. A flush including the common card = 5. And you can use the same card in more than one combination. So if you have 2,2,3,8 and the card is a Q, you get 2 points for the pair of 2s, and 4 points for the two 2-3-Q 15s. If you see points in someone else’s hand that they don’t see, you can call “muggins” (not “muggles”) and you get to peg those points for you. I know about this because I was on the receiving end of muggins several times.

You count these points on a board. Each player has their own track, except in a 4-player game, it’s teams so you share a track with your partner. On my board, the track goes from start, 30 holes to the other end of the board, 30 holes back. Usually you play to 121 points which is two laps of the track and off the end.

For a better explanation, go to the Wikipedia cribbage page. I probably should have pointed you there in the first place.

We gave my new board a test-drive after dinner and Larry and I actually won. We had the black pegs so I want to be black from now on. We won a couple of times.

Well, this is getting long and it’s getting late. Maybe I’ll write more tomorrow.