Done 10 Days Early!

I have been determined to get the puppets for LC and OJ done before the eleventh hour on

Christmas Eve--and I did it.  I sewed the horns onto the head and the head onto the body last night before supper, and then this morning I took it downstairs and hemmed the body.  Done!  Now I just have to organize the gifts for the Kentucky part of the family that isn't able to come for Christmas this year, get it all wrapped, boxed, and ready to be mailed on Monday.  Then put up the tree, make cookies (only one kind), and nail down exactly what I need to buy for next Saturday's family supper and what I want to fix when my friend Lala comes for an overnight next Friday on her way "up north" to see her mom.  The puppets are the last gifts to be gotten so I'm feeling pretty good--at the moment.  I'm absolutely certain that the standard feeling of being overwhelmed at Christmastime is just around the corner.



I made the English Toffee this morning.  I thought about making a half-batch to halve the temptation of bags of buttery, sugary, chocolatey candy lying around but Durwood convinced me that a full batch is what we needed.  I suspect I'll be handing it out to friends, acquaintances, and maybe even strangers on the street if I struggle to resist the siren call of the stuff.  I've got a pound of butter softening in the mixing bowl so I can make a batch of butter cookies to be sliced and decorated, toddler-style, and baked one of these days.  Just what I need, cookies ready to eat.  Maybe I'll blindfold the scale until after the first of the year.

December 15--Dante Gabriel Rossetti, La Pia de Tolommei.  Clouds piled up on the western horizon and a large flock of crows seemed to pull them across the sky.  The breeze stilled, not a leaf moved.  It was as if the whole world held its breath.  From far off, the sound of pattering raindrops grew closer.  The rain was so fierce that it blotted out the trees and obscured the road so that cars pulled over, their drivers unable to see.  Tia gripped the windowsill facing down the storm, daring it to do its worst.  It did.  Trees blew over or surrendered all their leaves so they looked like skeletons thrashing in the wind.  One of Maynard's cows blew by bawling out its fear to the uncaring wind.

And that's all there is about that.  Now I'm going to go poke my butter to see if it's soft enough to mix into cookie dough.  Wish me luck.
--Barbara