My favorite night of the year is almost over. I love Christmas Eve for it's quiet.
It has to be the most peaceful night of the year. It seemed like this year I was farther behind than I have ever been. I still have gifts that haven't been wrapped. I didn't start making my traditional Christmas breakfast until 10:30pm.
I have had the recipe for this breakfast since the kids were very small. I heard a woman talking about it on the radio many years ago and I grabbed the closest piece of paper and quickly wrote down the directions. But each year it gets more faded and more tattered, as you can see. I really need to re-copy it in case the day comes when I can't read it any more. But somehow I really enjoy using this old, faded copy. A lot of memories come with this piece of paper.
A very merry Christmas to you all.
This is it. My favorite time of year. I just love the snow. I really really do. So I am very happily anticipating our first "storm" of the year tomorrow. Not a biggie........6-14 inches. But big enough to make me happy. The start time is between 9 & 11 am so I am hoping I will wake up to a happy no-school announcement tomorrow. Then I can snuggle down and think of what's to come.
Unfortunately, what I happily look forward to is a nuisance to some other members of our family. My niece is supposed to be flying home from college in Utah but is stuck in Utah right now until the planes start flying again. Damon is supposed to fly home from Seattle on Saturday and may be in the middle of flight delays. Paul is to fly home on Sunday from a visit with his mother. Sunday we are expecting more snow. Once everyone is safely home and snug inside their homes we will all be able to enjoy nature's wonderful gift.
I'm in the middle of the last minute push for Christmas shopping. It seems like every year I tell myself that NEXT year I will not wait until the last minute....that I will have it all done by Thanksgiving. And every year finds me running out after school to try to cram lots of shopping in in a few short hours. I get home late, eat dinner late and wish I could just sit down with a hot cup of tea and listen to Christmas music as I relax in front of my tree. There was only one year that I had my shopping done before Christmas and that was the year that I was expecting a baby at Christmas time. I wouldn't recommend doing that every year just to get the shopping done.
Today I did the book store thing. That is always a long process for me. I have to look at almost every book in the store. And once I start buying I_CAN'T_STOP. There is too much good stuff. I have one pet peeve about book stores and that is those tiny little baskets they give you to pack your goods into while you are shopping. They don't hold much and what they do hold becomes VERY heavy VERY fast. I usually end up shoving the basket across the floor with my feet because it is just too heavy to carry. Why can't they have little mini-shopping carts?? Not big grocery store ones, just little mini ones. It would make the shopping so much easier and more pleasant. fI would also buy more if I had a cart. The only reason I stopped buying today was because I couldn't fit any more in my basket. I guess that is Barnes and Noble's loss.
When I lugged my basket up to the cashier this afternoon I told them that I thought little shopping carts would be a fine idea because I would buy more if I could fit more in. The young man at the register said, "I suppose you would like a sheep herder to show you the way through the store, too." Do you think he was being sarcastic?
The weather story for most of last week was the possibility of some nasty weather at the end of the week. The closer we got to Thursday the more it looked like it would be an ice event. Thursday morning was cold and rainy. "Ice storm warning" was what the radios were touting. We were dismissed from school early and told to go immediately home so that we could get there ahead of the "storm" as if it was a posse coming after us. We prepared ourselves for no school the next day.......such a "difficult" thing to do. It was raining when I left school so I went grocery shopping. It was still raining when I got home. It was STILL raining when I went to bed. I willed the thermometer to go down to 32 but it hovered at the same spot where it had all afternoon, 33.4. I really needed a day off to catch up on Christmas. I REALLY did.
I woke up several times during the night to the depressing sound of rain, lots and lots of rain. Inches and inches of rain. No sleet against the window. No cracking of branches from the ice load. Just lots and lots of rain. When my alarm went off in the morning I heard the announcer say, "Oh boy. Do we have a mess today. We better start off right away with our list of cancellations. Torrington public and parochial schools are CLOSED today." What?? How can that be? I looked out the window. It was gray and dreary and raining. What was he talking about?
Well, there was ice. Lots and lots of it if you lived above 1,000 feet. Much of Torrington is above 1,000 feet and those areas got hammered. At our house we just had a dreary rainy day.
As I looked out my front window I could see a very definite ice/no ice line.
As I sat in my little soggy water-world the rest of the area was trying to navigate around downed trees and power lines and coping with no electricity. We went out this evening and could see that less than a mile up the road from us the trees were still heavy and bent over with ice. What a difference a few feet in altitude makes.
It looks like next week we may be coping with more of the same type of weather. If the temperature is only 1 degree less than it was on Friday I may be looking at ice outside my window instead of rain this time.
One of my very favorite sights, always and forever.........my book waiting for me on my bedside table. Every morning when I make my bed I carefully place my book and my glasses on the table next to the bed in readiness for my favorite time of day, that moment when I can crawl into bed and reach for my book. I look at it and think "I can't wait to get back to you tonight."
In the summer I love to lie there with the windows wide open as the breeze blows the curtains and the sound of crickets make lovely background music. Sometimes I hear the sound of the coyotes howling close by. My reverie is broken when Paul dashes out in his skivvies to fire a few rounds in the air to scare them off. In the fall the windows are still open but the air is crisp and smells like Halloween. I can hear the rustle of the dry leaves as I read my book. In the winter I love to cuddle under my fluffy comforter, book in hand and windows still open, and listen to the wind howl against the house as it rattles the bedroom door. Sometimes I can hear an owl hooting in the direction of the old goat house. In the spring I read to the sound of the peepers in the corner of the meadow or the rain beating against the glass.
Sometimes during the day I will stop and think of my book lying by my bed, waiting for me. Parents who read to their children don't know what a wonderful lifelong gift they are giving them. Reading is one of life's simplest and best pleasures. Now if only I could stay awake long enough to fully enjoy it..................................
I'm pulling out all the stops to try to get it to snow. I was almost successful this morning. We had a little snow but it quickly changed to sleet. The temperature stayed at 32 almost all day so any moisture that fell from above coated everything with a thin layer of ice. I had planned to drive to Rocky Hill to visit my mother but the ice changed my plans for me.
Instead I stayed home and did some much needed cleaning in my basement. What I want to know is....how can I work so hard all day long and my basement still looks the same way it did this morning? I really think that I need to retire just so that I can have the time to get my house straightened out. I have so much accumulated stuff that needs to be tossed. Things like the 9 volumes of the works of Victor Hugo, 13 volumes of the works of Rudyard Kipling and 42 volumes of the Great Books of the Western World such as Plutarch, Plotinus, Augustine, Spinoza, Huygens. ???? These things I will NEVER read if I live to be 850 years old. How To Read Palms. Why did I ever buy that? I don't think I'll ever go into that business unless they all agree to use hand sanitizer before I start reading. I think it's time to weed my shelves and make space for newer and more useful stuff.
The sleet and freezing rain have changed to plain rain tonight but the temperature is only 35 so it is a cold and nasty rain. It's a good night to stay inside where it's nice and warm.......and watch the UCONN women play basketball. It doesn't look like my snow dreams will come true this week. I can only hope for next week.
Thanksgiving is creeping up on me and, as usual, I am so far from ready. The only thing I have bought so far is the turkey. Right now it is in the fridge trying to thaw out. I keep poking at it and hoping I will feel a little bit of give, but right now all I feel is hard frozen turkey. Oh please let it thaw by Thanksgiving morning.
I did try to do a little shopping after school today but all I ended up with were decorating items. That's the part of Thanksgiving that I like........getting the house ready and making it look Thanksgivingie. The part I hate about Thanksgiving....the cooking. That's not very good on a day like Thanksgiving where food is THE star of the day. But I love the eating part. I guess that is my reward for slogging through the food prep and cooking.
I only have tomorrow to shop. I guess I better go make a list before I go to bed.
Gas prices today: $1.84/gallon. Wowie.
It was COLD and WINDY out there today. Really nippy. I went to a baby shower and on the way home I heard on the radio that the temperature was 28 degrees in our area and 31 degrees in Sibera. We were chillier than cold Siberia. I won't question that at all.
With our wood stove crackling away in the gathering room and our gas fireplace flickering on the porch we are cozy and warm. Several weeks ago, when things started looking wintry, I stopped at Penny's to treat myself to a new pair of warm pajamas. The only thing I could find were short sleeved gowns and pajamas. Short-sleeves as winter is rearing it's ugly head?? They put Christmas displays out in September but they can't get winter pajamas in November? I went back again last week and found one rack that, lo and behold, had winter pajamas. I found a pair of fleece pajamas. I have worn flannel ones but I have never tried the fleece. They felt so invitingly soft that I thought I would take them home and try them.
Well..........am I glad that I did. Those are absolutely the warmest, coziest, cuddliest, softest things that have ever touched my body. I never knew anything could feel so good. I mean..........I really cannot wait every night to go to bed so I can put them on. Seriously. If you have never bought yourself fleece pajamas, go out and do it now. They are SO good. One of the 10 best pleasures in life.
I'm off to climb into bed with my fleece..........and I can't wait.
I felt like I was a time traveler yesterday as I drove my car past the gas station and saw that gas was selling for $1.97 a gallon. This was even better than the other day. I NEVER thought I would see gas under $2.00 again, especially after seeing it climb towards $4.00 a gallon this summer. It's still not quite as good as the days when you could drive up to a gas pump, flutter a dollar bill out the window and say "A dollar's worth, please." As they were putting that dollar's worth in for you they were washing your windows, checking your oil and putting new oil in if yours was low. Those days are gone forever but right now I'm happy just to be paying under $2.00 a gallon for gas. I wonder how long before it goes back up again.
It is really really cold and windy out. And there is no let up in sight. I think winter has come to stay. There will be no warm November days to let me finish up my garden work. All those things I had planned to do..........it doesn't look like they are going to get done. Maybe next year. Right now I'm looking forward to some cozy nights in front of the fire, listening to the wind roar as I read my book..........and count my blessings.
Things are getting better! We had our first snow squall today. Winter is getting closer. It happened while I was on bus duty. The wind was furiously blowing snow at me. My long black winter coat (with the silver sled pin, my hopeful omen, on the lapel) was covered with white. And I was inebriated with happiness. It only lasted a short while but it filled me with all kinds of winter anticipation. I can't wait until the ground is white.
Do any of you look forward to winter this much???
I got gas today for $2.12 a gallon. Wow. I never thought I would see it that cheap again. It sure felt good. I know someone who, with discounts that the grocery stores are offering, paid $1.19. Pretty soon the price will go back up again because we are all buying it. Crazy world.
Born when I was 15 months old, my sister, Lauri, has been a constant in my life. I have never known life without her. She has been with me for over 60 years. When we were small we shared the same room. After we were tucked into bed each evening we began a marathon session of giggles, story telling and playing made-up games such as "coming out of the cow" that went on long after the lights were out. My poor mother was often forced to yell up the stairs, "If you girls don't quiet down and go to sleep I will turn the hall light out............NOW!" Sometimes she had to follow through on her threat, which would reduce us to hysterical drama-queen type tears. The daylight hours would find us having tea parties with our dolls or playing school or building forts in the hayloft. When we entered the teen years things changed. In true teen-age hormonal fashion an imaginary line was drawn down the center of the room. Her things had to stay on her side of the room and mine had to stay on my side. We each watched the other side with eagle-eyes to make sure that rule was not broken. There was less story-telling and giggles. We were into our own worlds. Lauri sometimes teased my few boy-friends mercilessly, especially the Little Rapp Boy. Her practical jokes showed how funny and creative a person she is.
When we went off to college we ended up at the same school. I'm glad we did. It felt nice to have her around. It felt normal. After all, she had always been in my life.
We got married and we moved apart. But we still did things together..........
................like having babies. (nice pants, Midge) We have married husbands that are eerily similar. We both enjoy reading, antiquing and gardening. We love clotheslines. The bedtime marathon sessions of giggles and storytelling are gone. Now we share stories of our families and our everyday lives.
It's been great having a sister for 60 plus years. Here's to many many more. Happy Birthday, Lala!
When we built our house in 1978 we had big plans but little money. My father offered to help us out by digging our cellar hole at a price we could afford. We took him up on the offer. Financially, it was a big help to us but I also knew that it was something my father loved to do. My father loved his farm machinery as much as he loved his cows. He was happiest when he was revving up his engines and moving heaven and earth with his bulldozer. Often I would wander down to the building site and watch my father as he moved the earth and slowly turned a piece of meadowland into the foundation of a home. The sound of a bulldozer today projects an image in my little farmer brain of my father bouncing up and down in the seat, at peace with the world.
When my father passed away his bulldozer was sitting in his half finished barn on the Mosquito Path and there it stayed. No one knew quite what to do with it. It's not something you bring home and park in your driveway. It wasn't working well. We hesitated to get rid of it because, well, it was part of my father and you just can't get rid of things like that easily. So it has been sitting in the elements for the past 10 years.
Now...........it seems Paul has always had a hankering for a bulldozer (I have said before that I have married my father). He has "stuff" he would like to do with a bulldozer. Lots of "stuff". So this summer he decided to buy the bulldozer from the family. He had it hauled down here. He searched for and bought the necessary parts to fix it. I really don't know what those parts are because I'm not a bulldozer woman, but he got them and found someone to "work" on the bulldozer. Last Saturday, after several months of work, he brought his baby home.
And now, like a child's old Tonka toy, it sits in his garage. His precious car has been displaced from the garage and in it's place sits his precious bulldozer. It shows the effects of the years of exposure to the elements but Paul, the fixer-upper, is ready to paint it back to normal. He has already happily uprooted a number of hated wild rose bushes. He is gleeful with the thought of all the projects he has planned.
Welcome home little bulldozer. I'm so happy you are staying in the family.
Today I drove to Storrs (Huskie country....GO UCONN!!) to attend the baby shower for my niece Emily who is expecting her first bundle of joy in two months. I love baby showers and this was as good as it gets. It was a simple and joyous affair with Emily surrounded by her family and close friends. We sat with Emily and Ken in their cozy living room and ooohed and aaahed over the eensy weensy red converse sneakers and the red feathered boa for the new mother to adorn herself with. And the teeny weeny UCONN Husky booties.............they melted my heart. It's so much fun to imagine your baby wearing these tiny outfits. Emily and Ken probably couldn't wait until we left so that they could place these little things in the new nursery.
I love baby showers because they always remind me of how much I loved my own pregnancies, every second of them. It was always such a happy time for me and I enjoyed the whole life-giving process. I always felt the best I had ever felt in my whole entire life. I loved the feeling of the small wonder warmly nestled against me day after day. He/she was my constant companion. How could I fall so deeply in love with something that I had never met? As I would sit and feel the kicking and thumping from inside I felt a special relationship with that little one that no one else had. It was just the two of us talking to each other in a language that no one else could understand. I would have been a very happy baby-machine.........making babies for eternity!
I hope that Emily experiences nothing but happiness and joy these last two months. It goes so fast. Savor it all. There is a reason why pregnant women look so radiant.
We've been having some lovely warm weather. Quite balmy. The kind of days in November that make you think that maybe this year will be different and we won't have a cold and snowy winter. Yesterday we had no school because of the election. I spent most of the day transfering leaves into my vegetable garden. The job is done and my garden is at rest for the winter. Now I only have 4 more gardens to go. I hope the nice weather lasts long enough for me to finish the job.
Off to bed now to read Pillars of the Earth. It is so good, but so long. But I am thankful that it is long because it makes my reading pleasure go on and on. I am on page 400 and something out of almost 1,000 pages so I have lots of pleasure left.
I love corned beef and cabbage. Some poeple think of it as an Irish food....something to be eaten on St. Patrick's Day. I always thought of it as New England food. Corned beef cooked with cabbage, potatoes and carrots was always known as New England Boiled Dinner in my world. Not very much Irish about that.
I used to cook it every year on Halloween for my family. Partnered with homemade applesauce it was the perfect meal for a crisp autumn night. It made the house smell good. It is one of my "comfort foods".
For years I would always browse through the bins of corned beef wrapped in their cryovac packaging and ponder over "flat cut" or "point cut". I was never really sure what the difference was but always ended up with the flat cut, mainly because I liked the way it looked and because it was more expensive. I come from the "you get what you pay for" philosophy, especially when it comes to meat.
When I bought my corned beef this year the store only had a point cut so I grabbed it and took it home, figuring that there can't be that much difference. Oh, was I wrong, so wrong. Now I know what the difference is. After simmering my meat for 3 hours I took it out of the pot and proceeded to cut it in luscious thin slices to lay on the serving platter. Ick. Ick. Ugh. The meat was glistening with an oil slick. There was more fat than meat. I tried to poke and paw at it to pick the fat out. I was left with lots of fat and a few mangled pieces of meat. As we nibbled at our fat-infused meat I vowed NEVER to buy a point cut again. It was very tasty but quite slick with fat. By the time you cut the fat away there is very little meat left.
Stay away from that point cut.
A Happy HallOOoooweeeenn from the house at the end of the long spooky driveway where no-one wants to trick or treat.
Brrrrr.........I can smell winter in the air. The past few mornings have been cold and gusty. I have had to pull out my mittens, winter coat and ear muffs in order to survive bus duty in the morning. Our wood is split and stacked and ready to insulate the house against the cold winter winds. When I came home from school yesterday there were snow flurries dancing in the air. Quite a contrast to last year at this time when we had record warmth and were still running around in shorts and short sleeves.
I like this time of year. I love the promise of snow. I like the shortened days when we can snuggle inside and the yellow lamp light makes a cozy backdrop against the wind and cold outside. I like to sit in our Belly Acres room in front of the fire and watch the leaves tumbling from the trees and blowing against the windows.
As I was shivering in the gusty 35 degree weather outside school this morning staff members would scurry past me, hunched over in the cold, and remark about how VERY C_O_L_D they were. Cold? It did feel cold but cold is all relative. There will be a day this winter when the thermometer will go "up" to 35 and we will be remarking about how warm it feels!
Yes, last weekend we made our annual pilgrimage to Ogunquit, Maine. This is our favorite time of year to go. It feels so much different than Maine in the summer. There are less people and you have the beach to yourself (almost). Some years the weather is sunny and warm enough to go wading in the ocean. We have been there in the middle of a rainy blowing gale. The waves would lull us to sleep as they slapped against the deck of our Inn. This year the weather was sunny but it was cold with a brisk wind. But that didn't keep us from enjoying the beach and our annual walk along the Marginal Way.
Sometimes the nicest thing about being so cold is how good it feels when you come inside and get warm. At the end of our chilly Marginal Way walk along the ocean we stopped in at Barnacle Billy's for hot clam chowder and hot cocoa. There were two crackling fireplaces for us to warm our hands by. It was one of the nicest things about the whole weekend. I can't wait to do it again next year.
If you want to see our pictures you can click here and then click on The Second Maine Event to open up the album.
The whole family met in Maine this weekend and had a wonderful, but chilly, visit. It was a great two days. More about it and more pictures tomorrow. Tonight my bed and book are calling......................
Wow....what a whirlwind of a Christmas week. It's been a good Christmas but oh so very busy. I have lost track of what day of the week it is.
One of my best Christmas presents was having Damon home from Seattle for a week. It is always so nice to have him around, even if he wants to spend most of his time snapping pictures of his mother. We miss him so much and wish we were able to see more of him.
After a long day of shopping on Christmas Eve day I came home to the smell of Damon cooking chocolate peanut butter cookies. I walked in the door and said, "Oh..yummmm. That smells so good. And what is that other smell? It smells just like...wax. Wax? Why does it smell like wax is burning in here?" Paul and Damon looked at each other. "Do you think it could be the waxed paper on the cookie sheets?" Yikes. Waxed paper on cookie sheets? Damon seemed to think that waxed paper would work just as well as parchment paper on the cookie sheets. WRONG! I came home just in time. Damon and Paul madly scurried to scrape the cookies from the melted wax. The cookies were a bit deformed but tasted great. Not even waxy.
Christmas morning was bright and sunny. We enjoyed our traditional Christmas breakfast in the Belly Acres room and then we opened our gifts.
Paul always manages to get one silly looking hat for Christmas.
Who else but Paul could find a biography of the American Rifle so fascinating?
All this gift un-wrapping is pretty wearing on Paul and he had to pause for a power-nap.
Late in the afternoon we enjoyed a ham dinner by the lights of the Christmas tree. The only thing missing was a raging snowstorm. Maybe next year!
The day after Christmas found us motoring (that's a really old fashioned word, isn't it?) to Boston to visit Kara and Sean and the grandchildren. We opened more presents, had a nice lunch and then drove back home.
The sky tonight was a "Mrs. Santa Claus is baking cookies" kind of sky. A beautiful but cold looking December sky. It's a wonderfully cozy looking sight when you are sitting inside by the fire looking out. 
So now it is back to just us two. It's quiet. It's a little lonely, just a little. But we have some happy Christmas memories to make us smile. It's been a busy and wonderful Christmas.
