Whew!

You can all relax, I found the Coach Cake recipe, or rather Durwood did in one of the (bazillion) boxes of papers I brought home for him to sort through into "save" "shred" or "toss" piles. I suspect he thinks that doing that is no big deal, not much of a help but I keep telling him that just knowing he's home to hug on and that he's making a hot and yummy supper for me is an enormous help. Tonight he made gizzards in the crockpot that we had over noodles with fresh broccoli. Mmm. I'm keeping him. I spent most of the day over at Mom's apartment and almost got through the stuff in the doll room. Almost. TW and AJ hauled in all the boxes in from the garage (after AJ packed the canopy bed into his truck), we borrowed a couple banquet tables from DIL1 at Titletown Brewing, and then they spread out all the Christmas stuff and the small amount of really antique china Mom had. Once pretty much everything was out we started pricing. What a pain. Necessary, but what a pain and none of us are rummage salers, estate salers, or antiquers so we're just guessing. We've agreed that we'll entertain offers, especially on the pricier stuff but we're not going lower than half. The longer we work on this the more I threaten to buy or rent a flame-thrower to clean out our house over the winter. I don't think they have home models, though, and I suspect that the jellied gasoline is hard to get your hands on.

November 19--Southern Netherlands, Crib for the Infant Jesus. "No baby could sleep in there," Lois said, bending over to peer at the ornate crib. She straightened up and shook her head. "Look at that. There's no sides to keep Him from falling out and who'd put a baby down on covers with all those pearls and that scratchy embroidery?" "Ma," Sally said, "it's not for a real baby." She looked for a tag. "When was it made? Oh here." She read for a minute. "It says here it was made sometime in the 14th century so that was in the thirteen hundreds. That's a thousand and three hundred years after the birth of Christ." She tugged her mother into motion, urging her down the gallery. "Not even a religious fanatic moron would expect Him to be a baby after all that time." Lois turned to look at the crib. "It's pretty though, isn't it?"

It's amazing what pops out of people's mouths. And here I sit talking like I actually heard someone say that instead of it being a conversation I made up last night when I was half asleep. Now I'm half asleep again. See? It's a cycle.
--Barbara