Busy Busy Busy

It's a busy time of year, isn't it?  All that shopping and wrapping and decorating and cookie & candy making takes time. (These are my holiday butter cookies that you make into rolls, refrigerate, slice, decorate, and bake.  I just pour the sugars and decors on a plate, press one side of the cookie in, and bake.  I call it decorating "toddler style", saves time and tastes just as good.) Add in appointments (unsatisfying ones to boot) and your days just aren't your own to fritter away like at other, un-holiday-ish times of the year.  Yesterday my friend from The Clearing, Lala, came up to spend the night on her way Up Nort' to visit her mom and cousins.  She and I talked and talked, I made Chicken Tikka Masala in the slow cooker for supper, then we went to the Botanical Garden for their Festival of Lights. 
 

 





The last time we went it was about -5 below zero, last night it was pushing 20 above.  We'd had a little snow so the lights were especially glowy.  We splurged on tickets that included a horse-drawn wagon ride about part of the display.  You'll have to excuse my blurry photos.  I took most of them from the moving wagon.  The fire was lovely and warm and I loved the barrel it burns in.  (Spellcheck just told me that "wagon" was spelled wrong.  I know how to spell "wagon" but didn't I just grab the dictionary to make sure?  Sheesh.)









 

 I have a rat!  I thought a groundhog (or woodchuck) had burrowed under the shed but this morning just before it got light I saw the rat.  Ack!  I'm sure it was attracted by the spilled birdseed.  I don't want to stop feeding the birds but I don't want a rat either.  I don't want to poison it because we've got hawks and owls that hunt around here and they'd die from eating a poisoned rat.  I talked to my friend MW and he's got a rat trap he said he'd lend me and he'll even come over and set it up.  He's a real pal.  Speaking of MW, he gave me a Christmas gift last night after Friday Night Knitting.  He bought this set of 101 Wilton cookie cutters for $2 someplace and thought that LC & OJ & I would have fun making things with them. He's such a nice guy.


December 23--Jan Brueghel the Elder, Fete de la Rosiere (Farmer's Wedding).  Clara was sure that everyone in the county was at the party.  People she'd only seen in passing at the market or in church on Sunday were there drinking her father's beer and eating like they hadn't seen food in a year.  She had no patience for people who leeched off others. Yes, it was a wedding, her marriage to Roger, but she didn't want it to turn into a riot.

Holy Moses, it turned cold today.  I'm really glad that I'm in my nice warm house and not sitting on the aluminum benches in Lambeau Field watching the Green Bean Pickers get their asses handed to them by the dreaded Minnesota Vi-queens.  See?  I might not watch football but I know how to insult the enemy teams with the best of them.  I think I'll go find a dish of ice cream and do a little channel surfing.  Toodle-oo!
--Barbara