It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

April and I got the tree decorated and I've started decorating the rest of the house.   Mac, as always hauled the tree in, attached the stand, tied it to the wall (see earlier notes on cats and Christmas trees) and put the angel on top.  He also found the power cord for the lights.  Then we got to work.  While I was fixing dinner she also  put together my Gingerbread house.  Swearing all the time she had not handicraft skills she did a great job on it.

All the Christmas bears and critters have come out of their boxes, I particularly enjoy the cow that moos a Christmas song.  The stockings are hung, but not stuffed.  My next project will be to 

start wrapping packages and I'm so not good at it.

It was wonderful having April here, I really miss having her to do things with.  When people ask me if I had a good Christmas or Thanksgiving I always say that if our daughter comes then it was a good holiday.

Let Christmas Begin...

Thanksgiving was wonderful, we had prime rib and it melted in your mouth.  Though April's plane was more than 4 hours late, fog in Virginia--she was flying from Dulles--, she arrived safe and sound and we stuffed ourselves and watched really bad football games and great Mythbusters.

But Thanksgiving is over and Christmas begins, not just 12 days, but lots and lots of days.  I love Christmas I love buying presents, wrapping them, watching my family open them in delight, dismay, shock or awe.  I love Christmas carols and the story of Christmas.  I love the smell of Christmas, the colors, Christmas trees with packages underneath.

I don't do Black Friday, except online, but we'll be off tomorrow to shop and get a Christmas tree.  We always have a real tree, I know I could save a lot of money if I'd just break down and buy an artificial one and they have some gorgeous ones, but I love the smell of a real one.  This will be the first time in about a million years that I'll have April here to help decorate it.  When she was growing up it was always she and I who did the decorating.  Mac drags it in, I always get a huge one,  secures it to the wall--cats you know always want to climb your tree-- and places the angel on top, that's his job, the rest is mine and now I have my favorite assistant to help  me.

I have on the first of my many Christmas sweatshirts, so let Christmas begin!

New Paintings

Mac is such a talented artist!  He has just completed two wonderful paintings for our Bonus room.  The first of a female Flamenco Dancer is extraordinary, the light in it is just beautiful.  The male Flamenco Dancer is excellent too, if it were not for the female painting I'd be raving about it more.  

I think the female painting may be the finest painting he has done, and he has done many good paintings!  The pictures don't do the paintings justice, but they give you some idea of how fine they are. 

Thanksgiving Almost ...

Thanksgiving tomorrow.  I like Thanksgiving, always have.  It's the time of year when, to me, things slow down, just before they go racing off to Christmas and New Year's. I love the colors of Thanksgiving, the browns, yellows and oranges, all the colors I can't wear (they make me look too weird) but I can decorate the house with.  I like cooking a feast and sharing memories of Thanksgiving past, of drinking a toast to family and absent friends. 

 For many years it has just been Mac and me for dinner, but last year April, our daughter, started coming again and that makes it even more special.  For many years she spent Thanksgiving with friends.  I've always tried to not be a nagging Mom or dump guilt on her about family, so though we missed her very much we never said anything about her coming to us instead.  And then last year her plans changed and she came, and though we all got sicker than dogs, no it was not food poisoning, it was so good to have her here.  She'll be in tomorrow morning just in time to devil the eggs.  Having her here is one of the things I'm most thankful for.  That and the boatload of food and football games, can't get too mushy!

It's Been Funghi

Mac went out and took a load of pictures of the mushrooms growing in our yard yesterday..  Now I don't want to say we've had a wet year, like h**l I don't,--it's been wetter than h**l this year, the ground never dries out-- and  our backyard is beginning to resemble a funghi smorgasbord.  

I like eating mushrooms, fresh or from a can, but I would never eat a wild one, even after reading about which ones are safe and which are poisonous and looking at about a  million pictures I still think I 'll leave them to the squirrels.  I know that deaths head are the worst, but to me they just look like mushrooms.  Mac says he doesn't think we have any poisonous ones and truth to tell I haven't seen any dead squirrels with bits of mushrooms clinging to their paws, but I rather be safe than sorry.

Vet Visit

Miss Kitty has her annual Vet visit today and it got me to thinking about all the animals we'd had through the years.  Some came and went while others are still with us, at least in our memories.

The first was a cat that Mac had given me before we married, his name was Ping and he was unloved by everyone but me, and in return he hated everyone.  Before we married we found him a new home with, of all people, the head of the local Hells Angels in Oakland, California, who knew they had a soft side. 

The first time Mac was sent to Georgia in the late 60's we had a little mutt named Major, cute dog.  Don't know how we could afford to feed him we could barely afford food for ourselves, Army pay being so generous.

We briefly had a cat and dog while at Ft.Ord in California but had to give them up because we were going to Germany.  Giving up pets was a theme of Army life.

Returning to the States, Texas to be precise, we got a small black dog named Pooh who disappeared.  We then had rabbits and hamsters who lived in a chicken coop in the backyard.  The cutest thing in the world is a baby hamster, they're born "motoring".

After that we had a pair of German Shepherds named Duke and Duchess, one of them, can't remember which, use to steal Mac's underwear off the clothes line and sleep on it.

We also had a Manx cat named Tiger, named before we knew which sex she was.  She survived being bitten by a cottonmouth snake and when we sold our house the people who bought it took her too.

Our next home, after Germany again, was in Colorado and we went to the pound and got a cat we named Fang.  He stayed with us until we'd made an appointment to have him neutered and then he disappeared.  We replaced him with another pound cat we named Louis.  His name had been Dooley, but that was just too lame.  Louis was around 2 years old when we got him and stayed with us 16 more years, moving to Germany, Georgia, Turkey, back to Georgia and finally out to California.  He was quite a cat!

April had her first pony while we were in Colorado, his name was Waco, sold when we left for Germany.  I also  had a horse,  Partner, who had to be sold.

Also in Colorado we had a rabbit named PRab.  He was given to friends when we left.

In Georgia Boober joined us, he was the only cat friend Louis  ever had, not being very fond of cats himself, but when we went to Turkey we could only take one cat and that was Louis.

Returning to Georgia we had  several cats one of whom, Mudge,  was the mother of Bear one of our very special cats, loving in ways that cats usually aren't.  We also had Nisa a long haired beauty and I can't remember what happened to her, gave to our daughter or the pound I think.  Louis hated her as he hated all female cats. Bear and Louis moved to California with us.

While living in Georgia during the 80's we also had the only dog I ever claimed as mine, an English Sheepdog named Charlie.  He was only with us a year or so but became very dear to me.  I cried for a half an hour with the Vet when he died.

We also had a couple of horses, a minature Sicillian burro and a couple of goats.  We had a couple of horses who I don't remember very well.  I do remember that Mac built a barn right over the top of one of them.

In California Louis died and we got a cat to replace him, though Louis was irreplaceable.  The new cat was Oscar, a strange young man who never improved.  When we moved back to Georgia we brought him and Bear with us.  Bear died that summer and Oscar several years later.  I cried, and said I'd have no more pets, but Mac made me go to the animal shelter and pick out a new cat.  I decided I'd get a Tabby because that's what Louis had been and a Tuxedo because that's what Bear had been.  I definitely wanted male cats, they're cheaper to neuter.

Well at the Shelter a small female Tabby stuck her paw out, cried,"Take me home."  and that's what we did, her name is Miss Kitty, frequently called The Kite' and she completely stole our hearts.  We had never bought toys for a cat before and now our house is full of hers, she rules the house with a velvet paw and we couldn't imagine life without her!

My Christmas Cactus...Or Not

I have a Christmas cactus with an identity problem.  The first year I bought it in bloom around Christmas, so it was a Christmas cactus.  The next year it didn't bloom until almost Easter, masquerading no doubt as an Easter cactus.  The next year it didn't bloom until Martin Luther King Day, thinking it had a dream I guess.

Last year it bloomed at Christmas and it was beautiful, we even took a cutting off of it and started another one.  But, alas, this year it's back to its old tricks and it looks like I'm going to have a Thanksgiving cactus.  It needs to make up its mind!

The Bug Man Cometh

The bug man is coming today.  It happens 4 times a year.  If you live in the South, in a swamp, the reality is that you'll have all kinds of insects coming in to live with you.  Mac is a kindly soul and catches them in a jar and puts them back outside.  Ms Kitty rips their little legs off and spreads them about.  Me, well I have pest control come in and spray enough insecticide to do in every crawling critter for at least 3 months.  Between us we keep most of the natives out of the house.

Allergies

It's autumn and our allergies are running wild.  Mac has been living on Benedryl forever and I'm using prescription eyedrops for allergic conjuctivitis.  It's miserable.  The weed pollen count has been very high all month and now the mold has really kicked in.  Of course the 97% humidity couldn't be a factor in that. The lagoon out back is yellow with pollen, it's fall Mother Nature, not spring, get over it.

I know that living in the South means you'll deal with allergies, but they were almost as bad when we lived in the desert of California.

Quite frequently I end up with laryngitis in November from allergies.  I need all the plants, mold spores and pet dander to move to Florida for a while.

Monday, Monday ...

It's a beautiful Monday in the neighborhood (with apologies to Mr.Rogers).  We didn't get up till 9, though we heard our neighbors all leaving for work much earlier.  It's partly cloudy, big fluffy clouds in a high, blue sky.  I'm retired now and have the time to appreciate mornings finally.  I've never been a morning person, hate alarm clocks and would have taught Elementary Night School if there had been such a thing.

But now I wake up, have coffee and toast in front of my computer, instead of standing at the kitchen counter and trying to curl my hair and sip a bit of coffee.  After checking to see that the government hasn't completely given the country away I wandered off to the kitchen, searched for the cookbook that goes with my breadmaker (Mac finally found it shoved away in a corner of a rather obscure---meaning I don't use it for much---cupboard), and made some chocolate chip/walnut zucchini bread.

While that was cooking we went for our 2 mile walk through our neighborhood enjoying the antics of squirrels and the smell of fall.  Coming back to our house I noticed that I should probably give the lawn one more mowing before we put the mower away for the winter.

Now I'm eating my warm zucchini bread and thinking life is grand.  Do I miss working?  Yeah, about like a fish would miss his bicycle.

Dining Room

The paint turned out to be much bluer than I expected, but I like it.  The white makes everything so clean looking!

I like painting, I don't like setting up to paint and I hate the cleaning up, but I actually enjoy the painting, it's fun to watch the color unfolding.  

No more projects till after the first of the year then we need to finish the bathroom painting, put wood floors in our bedroom closets and install a closet system in Mac's closet.  Until then, enjoy the holidays!