We have had flurries this winter, but nothing as fun to watch coming down as today’s little flurry of activity (pun intended)! This is what’s happening in my neighborhood today! What’s going on in yours?
The snow never looked so pretty coming down!
The gaggle of Sock Monkeys was adopted today. Each one looked proud to go home with his human.
The day was merry and bright. The food was awesome, the company not able to be topped, and the gifts selected with such care. We had a reading from the Bible, more food than we should have eaten! And Don and I are still eating.
A couple of highlights in pictures. First are Annie and Missy, the Dachshunds, who were the most excited children here!
Annie had already gotten her gift, a giraffe that was as weird looking as this monkey, and dropped hers in hope of wrestling Missy’s from her! (She did). Monkeys seemed to be the theme this year.
A group of happy animals! David, Abigail, and Kaylee.
Tori Moon and her pal, bonding already.
I think Abigail sort of liked her doll.
The mantle and tree…
The Christmas cards sent to me…
And the sock monkeys waiting impatiently!
Merry Christmas Eve Eve!
This is the scene from my front porch on the Monday morning before Christmas.
F R I G I D!
It is difficult to describe “cold” to someone, especially if they have rarely experienced a gray, frigid day, or if it has been a long while since they had to trudge around in it, so I took my camera and decided to describe it in photos. Yes, it is as drippy and dreary as it looks! He is quite decked out today, in his Holiday finest!
And here is Cold in a slightly different environment, more or less dressed in the same style, just without any playground equipment. Note the slight tone of ugh in his eyes.
Here he is making a tree in my own back yard miserable. Being naked is usually very desirable, of course, unless you are a tree…outside…in the below-freezing rainfall. Oh, we call her “Frozen Precip.” She’s a bitch sometimes! Today Frozen Precip and Cold decided to combine forces and really give us a treat!
Anyone who wants to join us here today for a day of gift-wrapping-in-front-of-the-fire fun just fly right on in! I’ll meet you at the airport! Oh, wait…Cold and Frozen Precip got together and shut down most of our airports! Well, hop in the car and come on over! I’ll put the Bucket O’ Margaritas in the fridge and have them ready when you get here!
There are quite a few people in my Christmas World. The babies just keep popping up. One year there were just my own two children and Don’s son on Christmas morning. Breakfast was a snap, I realize now. This coming Christmas morning there will be my own two children and Don’s son…two daughters-in-law, one son-in-law, two aging Dachshunds, four young grandchildren, a brother, and a fabulous boyfriend in the pear tree! At my house…wanting breakfast, wine, beer, mixed drinks, snacks, gifts, and ultimately dinner.
Whew.
And I’m loving every second of preparing for that onslaught!
At first I got a little panicky because my own mother set the “gift precedence.” It was way out there, but, God rest her beautiful soul, she had nothing growing up and wanted us to have everything, and I loved her so much for that. She and my dad, sadly, will not be with us to love Christmas this year, and it is impossible to tell you how missed they are going to be.
I should never have tried to copy the “gift precedence,” but I had this thought in my head that I had to give BIG gifts. This year, though, a lot of things have changed, the most obvious one being that I lost my comfortable-paying job and am now employed for about $10,000.00 less per year. The gift situation was going to have to change.
After shopping for the little kids, I had to tell the big “kids” that there were not going to be big-money items under the tree this year, and my kids, being the awesome young people they are, were unfazed. So in order to make it a fun, meaningful holiday, I came up with the following:
I went to Big Lots. Yes, the store of one-of-a-kind discontinued items. I bought five pairs of Christmas-themed socks. I stuffed the ones for the children, but the others are hidden all around the house. Let me take a moment here to assure the people who know me best that yes, I did write down where they are. Anyone who finds a sock will bring it to me, and when there is a “pair”, the people with the two socks will pick a gift from under the tree to present to one another. They are going to be gag gifts.
Here’s hoping that even in the midst of our economic crisis, loss of people, and loss of jobs, our Christmases will be memorable and worshipful!
Enjoy your Friday, everyone! ONE WEEK TILL CHRISTMAS!
Goodbye, Sun! I can’t wait to see you tomorrow! Please come back. I miss you so much when you’re gone! But if you can’t make it back to heat the earth above freezing, could you please talk to Mother Nature and make it snow?
Love, Me
Patiently waiting for our little kids to come and take us to our new homes. The 3rd Day of Christmas…
The Hallmark Channel is notorious for their Christmas movies around this time of year, and here’s a sampling of just what happens when I find myself at home alone on a Sunday afternoon just before Christmas, the weather outside being frightful, and the fire being so delightful.
I went to the kitchen and made a cup of hot spicy Holiday tea, ignored the unmade bed, the dishes, the laundry, and the work, and covered up on the loveseat with one of my mom’s made-with-love quilts. When I got settled, I turned on The Hallmark Channel and settled in for a day’s worth of feel-good movies.
The tree is up, the gifts are wrapped, and it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in my house.
I hopped up and hurried to the kitchen to grab a box of Ritz fudge-covered crackers and a pint of coffee-flavored ice cream and caught myself talking to some imaginary person while I was in there.
I said, “Oh, is this not just the best day ever for this sort of thing??”
Nobody answered, so I went on, “Hurry, hurry, get back to the movie! Oh, I hope Santa rescued them!”
Again, nobody answered, but the conversation was ongoing, especially when, miracle of Christmas miracles, Santa DID rescue the family and get them home safely with gifts to boot!
What a wickedly wonderful day this is turning out to be! “My friend” and I are loving it! “Oh, could you pass the cookies, please?” Nobody answered, so I got up and got them myself. I don’t know how they got at the other end of the sofa…
MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!
I stepped out on the porch, feverish, uncomfortable, flu-ish, and saw angels dancing around in the sunset. If being feverish means you see like this, then heck, I’ll take it!
Actually, as you all know, I didn’t feel like setting up the tripod or adjusting the shutter. But I love angels!
Okay, tomorrow I won’t remember how I did this, but here is my Christmas tree! Finally! Can’t you almost just hear the snow falling, the fire crackling, the kids laughing, and angels sighing?
The Thomas Kinkade Christmas tree is now nestled snuggly in front of the French doors of my house! You might ask, “Was that pop-up tree easy to put up?” I would have to say, “I don’t really know, my daughter had it up when I got home from Illinois Tuesday night – but she said it was a snap!”
While the Christmas tree is sure to be a real bright spot for celebrating the season, the gel colony ant farm is not a pretty sight. I was going to take a picture of that, but it is a bit depressing.
First ant farm snafu was when the ants arrived in their little tube and the package was marked, “Caution, ants sting!” However, after 10 minutes in the fridge, the little buggers were all lying calmly at the bottom of the tube, and the transfer to their fantastic new home was accomplished quickly and relatively easily. But somehow, instead of burrowing through the green gel that serves as their feeding grounds, they have all managed to get UNDER the gel and have what I assume are very small brains and cannot quite understand how to get back up. This morning, two of them were standing up against the plastic walls, actually begging me to let them out.
Sooooo, I have to Christmas shop again, because I really do not think I can hand a 4-year-old a plastic container of green gel and dead stinging harvester ants on Christmas morning. The Trauma That Lasts A Lifetime.
Here’s the tree!
Nope, no tree picture. I don’t know what has happened, but for some reason I can no longer insert photos on my blog, something that is not likely to be fixed until Tracy comes to visit. :-) It’s pretty, though! :-)
This morning I woke up slowly, rolled over in bed and thought, “Something looks different in here, but oddly familiar.”
I stretched and yawned, snuggled down under the electric blanket a bit further but peeked out and sprung up in bed and it struck me! “IT’S THE LIGHT!”
There was no snow in the forecast last night, but I spent yesterday wishing for it. I sort of even said a little prayer about it.
Up I jumped, grabbed my slippers, grabbed my camera, threw open the door and there it was! SNOW! The first snow of the season! And it was a total surprise. It was a much needed miracle. Thank you God and Mother Nature!
And another miracle would be if suddenly I was able to upload the photos here to my blog as that has stopped working for some mysterious reason. If it works, well, let’s all clap our hands and laugh with the pure joy of the miracles of the Christmas season, and if it does not work, well, I’ll try describing it in enough detail that ya’all will actually be able to SEE it!
Wow, it’s a day of miracle and wonder! This shot is across the street from my house. This past summer there was still a block-long deteriorating vacant school building sitting there. Now there is a blank spot in the landscape growing new grass and obviously now growing its own snow!
Merry Monday, everyone!
I do not do a lot of decorating for Christmas. I used to drag out the boxes of decorations on Thanksgiving night, but as the years have passed, and the kids have moved and started their own family traditions, I have discovered that it is a lot of fun to decorate but a real pain in the neck to UNdecorate. I like it simple anymore.
Last night I actually purchased the first new decoration since about the year 2000, and it was a mantle light, a beautiful little church with stain glassed windows and a steeple. For five extra bucks I bought some silver garland with white plastic snowflakes in it. The tree is not up yet because I am still holding out hope that the Thomas Kinkade one will arrive within the next week or so.
Until then, I am very happy with my pretty mantle that is always guarded by angels, and the little country church nightlight that will stay lit now until after Christmas.
Can’t you almost hear the whisper of the angels, “Merry Christmas everyone?” Have a peaceful day.
Yesterday was a toy shopping day for me. I worked an hour, shopped an hour, worked an hour, and then, as it was about 65 degrees and sunny here, decided to take a little walk to the toy store on the corner. It is called Just a Trace, and they carry wooden toys of very high quality, games you just never see at Wal-Mart or amazon.com, and vintage toys that make me want to sit in the middle of the floor and just play like I did as a kid.
I do not spend a lot of time down there throughout the year, except I do buy each grandchild a birthday gift at that store. As there are several little kids, you would think I would get at least a trip a month, but alas, most of them were born in May. Makes you sort of wonder what happens in August every year to assure a new grandchild every May, doesn’t it?
Ant farms. I always wanted an ant farm, but when I was a child, they seemed very unstable and kind of looked like the ants could escape that prison quite easily and end up in bed with us. My mother was not a lover of bugs or any kind and probably would have lost sleep just thinking about the little road graders, even if they were safely contained. The ant farm I found for my grandson appears to be more like an Ant Hilton.
As I was standing at the counter, believe it or not the two women who own the shop will actually wrap your purchases for free, waiting for my wrapped presents, there was another lady who had basically pushed me out of the way in the store a couple of times, as if I was not even there, so she could grab a toy before I did, wearing an obviously expensive coat and dress, dragging a Tiger Woods-looking, half whipped-acting (that is supposed to make you laugh, and if it does not, you need to go read the news) young man around by the nose, who was giving instructions about how she wanted her presents wrapped. I always make conversation with the women there and I quipped, “I wonder how the parents are going to react when they find I bought the grandson an ant farm?”
Now, you know, we all read in books the descriptive term, “She snarled at me.” But I am here to tell you that Ms. Perfect Wealthy Woman actually snarled at me. There was a frosty mist that fell between us and almost as if in slow motion, she turned her head toward me and snarled like an angry vampire. I never took my eyes off her again, the entire time we were stuck standing at the same counter waiting for our gift-wrapped Christmas goodies. I was waiting for her to sprout a set of fangs and head for my neck.
As I walked out of the store, backwards, the sign of the cross made with my fingers held in front of my face, my bag slung across my shoulder, I whispered prayers to protect me, walked backward down the steps, and then ran all the way home.
Just goes to show you, those vampire books? Not fiction. I have living proof that there is at least one living right here in my town!
This is my next-to-youngest granddaughter, Abigail. To see her here, after a day of Thanksgiving celebration including lots and lots of turkey, you would probably say, “Oh, what a quiet, sweet little angel!” And she is…until you put her in the proximity of clothes and shoes.
Most little girls take several years to develop the shopping gene fully. Toy stores hold the initial attraction, of course, but not for Abigail. We knew from early on that she was going to be a girly girl. She would regularly, once she could crawl, go into her room and rummage through her bottom dresser drawer and pull out shirts and skirts, then move on to the closet and pick out shoes. My son would go into her room and find her trying to figure out how to get her head into a shirt or how to get those pudgy baby feet into shoes too small.
As she grew and found her sea legs, she would bring several things into the living room and hold them out for her mom or dad to help her try them on, and by the time she was one, she was picking out her own outfit daily.
One thing that my daughter-in-law had not broken down and tried until today, Black Friday, was taking her to a department store. This morning, though, she took Abigail to Penney’s and the reaction was, I am told, priceless. Ashley let Abigail walk in even though the trip from the parking lot was a fifteen-minute ordeal as the baby stooped and picked up and explored rocks, pieces of paper, and undoubtedly some discarded gum and such. When the store’s doors finally opened before her, and she was inside amidst the racks and racks of clothing, she stopped, bent her knees and squatted down, and let out a piercing squeal with her hands over her mouth. Sort of the kind of reaction I would probably have if someone dumped a million one-hundred dollar bills in front of me.
So hold on, everybody, we are in for a ride with this child! Did you hear that Mastercard? Better start printing up the acceptance letters right now because you have a Future Shopper of America just waiting for some plastic!
I have to work today, Thanksgiving, but I’m thankful I have a job to go to.
My favorite place to work is in my living room where it is cozy and warm, a quilt spread over my legs, where I can view the world out my French windows. At least I can view the world skyward as they are small, high windows. Unable to force myself out of my short PJs, it being Thanksgiving and all, and me being required to work so feeling that I owed myself at least a slight reward, I was working away when the sun made its appearance in the eastward facing window, framed perfectly, making me crazily finish the report I was working on so I could grab the camera and catch Mother Nature’s Thanksgiving gift to me.
“Isn’t Mother Nature the sweetest mama on the face of the EARTH?” I thought, watching her straining to hold the sun in place long enough for me to get there.
Finally, I reached for the Canon SureShot which is never far from my side, and barefoot, in shorty pajamas, zoomed out the front door into the 30-degree morning. It is an oddity that I can sit in the house where it is a constant 70 degrees and complain about being cold, but put a camera in my hand and give me a sunrise, and I can stand barefoot in 30-degree weather on cold concrete or in frosty grass and not even notice.
There was no pumpkin to find frost on this morning, but the garage roof told the story. Here’s my Thanksgiving morning. I hope yours is as awesome. Thank you, God, for this day!
I always dread wintertime. Here in the Midwest, in the Ohio Valley, we can be sure of one thing: You can never trust the weather here. In the summertime the humidity can climb to 120 percent and you can nearly drown just walking to the car, or sometimes in mid-July a cold spell will travel through demanding the furnace be stoked up once more.
But today, when I went out for my walk, the gray, hazy, drizzly, cold morning enveloping me like a hug from my best friend, I realized that the start of winter is undeniably one of my favorite times of the year. The START of winter. I have to reiterate that. There will be a time in the not too distant future that this blog will turn 360 degrees, and I might even post a photo of myself crying at the sound of sleet pinging against the air conditioner or the forecast of a third day of snowfall, making it impossible to move my car from its driveway for days on end.
For now, though, I have to say, “I love winter.”
The photo blog below tells the story: From my feet trudging up the hill, to the hazy days of winter photos in the neighborhood and a wave from the Pelican street sweeper driver who passes my house every morning before dawn has been gone for long, I cherished the day and spoke a quiet reverent prayer as I walked along.
I hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday, Thanksgiving Eve, and to all of you a happy Thanksgiving celebration. Be sure to hug everyone you love and tell them how much you love them, then bow your head and thank God for each and every one of them!
I love you all!
Bernie Madoff’s stuff sold at auction yesterday. It is my understanding that the Feds hoped to come up with about $450,000.00 to help the victims of his financial scam, and no entity was more surprised at the final score of over $900,000, than the Feds themselves. There was a baseball type jacket they hoped to sell for $720.00 which actually went for $14,500.00.
None of this is lost on me. I have to do something to make my name famous so I can sell some of this stuff in my house. Forget the yard sale fetch of a couple of hundred bucks…I want to be able to hand off this Mardi Gras gaudy umbrella in exchange for a couple of hundred bucks by itself! I mean, it’s black and gold. The Saints are still undefeated this season. I paid about $4.50 for it during a rain storm in New Orleans a couple of months ago. Going once, going twice, SOLD for $725.00!
Just wait until you see what else I have!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,571665,00.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a4:g4:r5:c0.000000:b0:z5
It’s 6 a.m. on Thursday. It is 18 hours until Friday begins. The weekend is just around the corner. If you have an open bottle of tequila in your house, and who doesn’t, you might want to read the above article, drag out some shot glasses, limes, and salt, and get to guzzlin’, then go buy a new bottle that is fresh and has the proper agave signature!
Good morning!
I have to admit that I am a reality TV freak. It really does not matter what kind of day I had, if I can watch a show such as “American Idol”, the stress just melts right away. And one of my favorite reality shows is “People’s Court” with Judge Milian.
Today was a rather trying day work-wise, and as I finished working, I flipped on the TV. There she was, my heroine. Judge Milian. And there she was, smiling that smile that tells me she is hearing a story that is so unbelievable to her that she is about to laugh out loud.
And what was she hearing today that was so funny? A man describing how his niece’s dog bit him, scratching his finger, which caused him such tendon damage that he could not use his hand for 2 weeks. The only problem with his testimony was that the ER report said he was given a tetanus shot. Period. Nothing about tendon damage, and even he admitted there was not even any blood involved.
As if she had not heard enough to last her a lifetime already, the next case involved a woman who sued for five thousand dollars for a thousand dollar’s worth of repairs to her car caused when a woman accidentally put her car in reverse at a gas pump and hit the front of the plaintiff’s car. Now, we saw the security camera tape, right? She was not hit very hard. We all know it does not take much of a hit anymore to do a thousand dollar’s worth of damage to the car. But pain and suffering was going to cost the obviously worried defendant about four thousand dollars.
Judge Milian said, “What makes you think you can get that much money for pain and suffering?” and the plaintiff proceeded to explain that she is now so frightened of having a car in front of her that she can barely stand to stop at a red light or stop sign behind anyone else. She absolutely cannot go get gas anymore because she no longer trusts the car ahead of her.
We live in a world where people are unable to find jobs, pay their rent, or receive basic healthcare, and here was a woman with the guts to try to cheat someone out of four thousand bucks over something so ludicrous. I did not know whether to laugh or cry. So I laughed.
Shall we listen to the judge rip apart someone else apart who pissed her off?
Happy Wednesday to you all!
Some days you have to find entertainment just…wherever. Work might be rather boring and TV is not much better.
When I work, I sit on the loveseat by the big window in my living room with the computer perched on my lap. I am a medical transcriptionist, a medical language specialist, a computer geek. And I live in a small town where there is not a whole lot happening. We do, though, have a TV station, of sorts. I am not sure if there is ever an actual show broadcast from there, but the local radio station feeds into it at noon everyday and broadcasts the local news, and they have a webcam perched up there somewhere at one of our busier intersections, so while listening to the latest gossip, you can see the traffic making the turn there at the stoplights.
Up until this summer, when I looked out that front window, all I could see was a decrepit old vacant school building that was quickly deteriorating. They got busy though, and tore that down after the people in our neighborhood finally became disgusted enough to fight the School Board about it, and after the demolition was completed, they planted grass and now there is almost a whole city block of pretty greenness. Now, when I look out there, I can see across that to the main road that cuts through out city, and now am able to literally watch the traffic go by.
Suddenly this afternoon, during a fit of total boredom, I realized that I could look out, see what trucks or cars were going by, then turn on the TV to our “local station” and watch them make the corner on TV! After doing that for about fifteen minutes, I thought, “How pathetic has your life become?” So instead of just watching the steady flow of traffic out my window, then on TV, I phoned a friend and asked her if she would please get in her car and drive to that intersection and stick her hand out the window and wave toward the TV station building. Then I thought, “See? That’s better. Now your life is no longer pathetic, you are goal-oriented and creative.”
Sometimes you have to just make your own fun.
It’s Monday. I think our instinct on Monday morning is to pull the covers up over our heads and sleep. Maybe on Saturday or Sunday mornings we were up at dawn, smiling even as our feet hit the floor, maybe even tucking our cameras into our pockets and heading out to take a few sunrise photos.
But Monday, Monday? Morning should be illegal on Monday. The week should begin, possibly, with Tuesday, or even Wednesday. Humans should not have to work five days to get two off. Who can recuperate in two short days? I think I will take this up as my new cause.
The Mamas and the Papas really sort of make you happy that it is Monday morning. I remember when I was a kid and The Cowsills covered this song. Then I thought Monday was the most awesome day of the week, because I had this huge crush on the Cowsill boys. It was so easy, back then, to sit back and enjoy life, don’t you agree?
Here are The Cowsills singing Monday, Monday. Look at that! Bob Cowsill still had hair, and Mini Mom was still harmonizing away, may she rest in peace. They were on The Johnny Cash show when they did this.
Ahem, okay, I’ve veered totally off the subject of hating Monday…maybe I don’t hate it so much after all. I mean, if there’s a happy hippie song to go along with it, it can’t be half bad, right?
Oh, and then there is the caramel macchiato iced coffee that I used to usher it in as I listened to these songs: Coffee House International makes a wonderful caramel macchiato mix to pour into that Starbucks Via! powder…
Forget what I said about Monday. Let’s not be so prejudiced against it just yet.
Cheers! Happy Monday, ya’all!
Here’s what I have learned about fear: The less I fear, the more I fear. I’m sort of an ostrich. I just always think, “If I don’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t exist. If I don’t try it, I can’t fail at it.” Inevitably, though, someone or something pulls me out of my safety zone and forces me to try it or acknowledge it, and I’m always right to have ignored it.
So, in response to Tracy’s awesome post about fear, I’m not looking because if I don’t, then it’s not there.
“Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.” Bob Dylan said this. I have a real beef with that because I like silence and I’m a lot more scared when people say things out loud. I even have, at times, convinced myself that if I don’t think about things, they won’t happen.
I am the ultimate jinx of myself. The second something creeps into my head, like, for example, “What if I have a wreck and have forgotten my cell phone?” Or, “What if the house catches on fire and all the doors are blocked because I didn’t finish moving the boxes upstairs, downstairs, inside, outside?” When a thought like that enters, I begin immediately taking it back. “I didn’t mean to think negatively, God, please let me live!!”
Okay, so I am exaggerating a bit, but it has been a very unsettling couple of years, so please, give me a little time and space. But not too much time or space because imagine what can happen to you given enough time and space! :-)
Thanks for your support!
I have a friend named Ginny, who lives in Birmingham. Our friendship was one of those happenstance situations. We met rather by accident and formed a fast, strong friendship. We have been through a lot of “stuff” together: Some good, some not so good. Surgeries, the death of her dog, the births of grandchildren, the deaths of my parents, and her own breast cancer scare. It doesn’t really matter what is happening in our lives, I can always count on her to make me laugh.
This morning started out rather shaky, as a lot of my mornings have been starting out lately, so when I opened my e-mail and found one from her that was titled, “To Make You Laugh,” I began smiling before even clicking on it.
G. is the proud and sometimes frustrated owner of a Shih Tzu dog named Billy. Billy came into her world kicking, screaming, chewing, barking, whining, and loving, and he has not slowed down yet. This morning Ginny answered her front door and found a neighbor needing to borrow some coffee, and before she could react, Billy tore out the door like the house was on fire.
So, patient as a saint, Ginny slipped on a housecoat and tore out after him, chasing him down her well-populated street, yelling at him. She failed to mention how many cuss words poured forth, but she noticed there was a large audience which was fully explained when she caught up with the little angel and found that he had been running like a bat out of hell…with one of her bras in his mouth.
Ginny, thank you. Thank you thank you thank you for sharing this story! It brightened my day and is sure to brighten someone else’s! xxoo
After a few years of not having to leave the house to go to work, Tracy has a job that requires she rise at 4:30 a.m. Anyone who knows Tracy, will laugh out loud at that thought, but it really is rough on her. So, since I cannot be there right now to pull open the curtains and coax in the sun, in person, I thought I would send this out to her via the Cyberworld. Imagine, if you will, the pandemonium that ensues when I jump out of bed at 5 a.m. and rip open the curtains and mutter, “Good morning, 
world!” After she stops cussing at me, throwing shoes, and yes, sometimes crying, though, Tracy is a great morning companion! So grab a cup of coffee, gather up our pals, and let’s go for a walk!!
GOOD MORNING, WORLD!
