Merry Christmas!

I wish for you all a peaceful and joyous day/weekend/week/holiday season.  I wish I could have you all around my table where we'd share bowls of soup with crusty homemade bread and mugs of cider or hot buttered rum (depending on your persuasion).  There would be the scent of pine, silly toys and laughter, small children playing, and Nat King Cole in the background.  We had our Christmas last Sunday with all of our children, their spouses, and grand-girl for presents at halftime and soup & wings after the game.  It was lovely.  Look what I got!  A pierced metal bowl for grilling veggies, a gift certificate to Amazon for books, a tiny, titanium scissors, "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick" by Chris van Allsburg to use for writing prompts, and some magnetic toys from Santa.

The black & white drawings in the book are accompanied by a title and a single sentence.  This one is called Under the Rug; the sentence is "Two weeks passed and it happened again."  I'm not going to pretend I'm not creeped out by that and a few others of the fourteen in the book.  This was a thoughtful and much appreciated gift.  Thank you, SIL1 & DD.


We had a few flakes overnight.  I know you can barely see them but they are there so we didn't have a totally brown Christmas.





Yesterday after picking up my car with its Christmas tire I decided to see if I couldn't find the two geocaches between Joe's and home.  I got skunked, but I did gather pinecones, seed pods,a broken branch with a lichen, and some boughs to make an arrangement.  Mostly I did it as a coverup since I was in full view of houses' backyards, but I like it a lot.  It's making the house smell a little piney.  If you don't know what geocaches are it's like playing hide and seek all over the map.  People hide caches in parks and other public places, sometimes on private property but only with permission, publish the coordinates and then others go searching for them.  Some have logs for you to sign, others have trinkets for you to leave one and take one, and others have "travel bugs" that are marked with their point of origin and then are put other places by people traveling.  Follow the link above to investigate.  It's an excuse to explore a town or park and have fun doing it.  Sometimes you even learn things.

December 25--Nita Winter.  Viola and Lucille's hands were wrinkled and gnarled but they were sure and precise when it came to their sewing.  Vi was a quilter. She cut and pieced fabric into designs and then made beautiful quilts for her children, grandchildren, and soon great-grandchildren.  Cele made doll clothes, sewing outfit after outfit for American Girl dolls.  She drew the line at making Barbie clothes.  "I didn't make them when my eyesight was good, I'm not making them now when I can't see for shit," she'd say.  They both worked on their sewing machines at home and saved their hand sewing for their Wednesday morning sewing circle in the parish hall.  The talk around the table kept them laughing and ranged from books and movies to recipes and just the littlest bit of gossip.

It's time for me to shower and get a pot of coffee on because my brother, AJ, his wife and son are coming for a little visit in a hour or so.  I'd better rustle up some snacks too.  Merry merry Christmas!
--Barbara