I got up early, cooked all morning. By 11:00 a.m. my guests started to arrive, and I cooked on while they communed in the living room. The scalloped potatoes were late because Gary told me I should put in 40 potatoes instead of 30. (He was right.) I cooked on. To keep grandson Evan occupied, he and I decorated the sugar cookies while I kept an eye on the stove. That done, I threw the broccoli into the microwave, the buns into the oven to warm. I covered the scalloped potatoes with shredded cheddar cheese. And then the cooking was over. I dropped exhausted and ate.
Chris meanwhile was working on a computer that Gary arranged for his sister Kathe. Her computer is ancient so she will like that.
Social time, chit chat and then Gary's family left.
Evan opened his twelve presents. Tisha and Chris brought me a calendar filled with pictures of Evan and bags and boxes of toilet paper and paper towels. They work at Kimberly Clark and bid on lots of paper products. We now have enough for 2012.
Then it was off to the cemetery with Chris, Tisha and Evan to place a candle on my parents' graves. Evan came along to see the tombstones and was disappointed that he didn't get to see any bones. We didn't go into any details about cremation.
Next was the 4:00 pm Christmas service. Evan went up to the children's sermon with the rest of the children. When the pastor asked any question about the nativity, Evan's hand shot up. He knew all the answers. He doesn't attend church, but his mother has read him all the Bible stories, so he has a pretty good idea what religion is about.
Next there was the birthday party for Jesus with cake for all.
When I got back home, Gary had cleaned up, doing all the dishes. Love that man!
In a few minutes, I am off to the church again to rehearse the choir for the 7:00 pm service.
When I get back, around 8:30 pm, I am heading straight for bed.
Tomorrow, nothing much is going on, to our relief.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Friday, December 23, 2011
Counting Down
With no weather forecast to support it (the forecasters were wrong again), snow is falling here in Seymour. More than a dusting this time, we will have a white Christmas. Gary and I took a ride through Seymour looking at lights. I noted that tonight, Seymour looks like Bedford Falls, the town in "It's a Wonderful Life". The snow transformed us.
I am ready to be cheerful. I posted my last depressing Christmas story at Black Coffee Fiction, http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com I expect my next stories to be more cheerful, though readers must understand that without something going wrong, there is no story. That is the nature of fiction...and life.
Meanwhile, we look forward. Tomorrow afternoon, our families gather here to celebrate Christmas, along with two church services. With Christmas over, I begin a fast and furious charge to the end of the year, organizing and planning, culminating in New Year's Day.
I still face the dreaded winter, but beginning today, I count the number of days until spring, as we watch the short days become long. We are planning events to help us through the cold. On January 20-21 there's the annual RV and camping show in Green Bay. Friends will come up from Illinois and join us in planning next summer's camping.
I will be taking a seven week fiction writing class beginning on January 28, seven Saturdays that will be force me to come up with new story ideas. I've been writing all my life, but these classes are like tune ups for the brain synapses.
Gary bought a new plant stand that will hold trays for seedlings by the end of March. Last year, we started 29 tomato plants, too many, but we certainly enjoyed those fresh tomatoes this past summer.
It is 89 days until the equinox and spring. As a gift to my friends and family, I do a daily countdown. I'll include it in this blog.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Cookies
Mid-December I started baking cookies for my Solstice party. I made peanut butter blossoms (peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses on top), pecan puffs and decorated sugar cookies. The party was not well attended and so there were cookies left.
I've been telling Gary that it must be awfully dry in this house because those cookies evaporated. Not a single one is left. With company coming on Christmas Eve, I've had to go back to baking. I made pecan puffs tonight and hid them from Gary. Tomorrow I will be making sugar cookies for my grandson to help decorate. I want to make blueberry scones, too, for another dessert.
I shopped for the party today, buying a nice sized ham, potatoes, milk and more butter for the scalloped potatoes son Chris loves and demands every and for his birthday. Gary went shopping, too. He bought doughnut holes dipped in chocolate and covered with sprinkles.
He bought vegetables, too. We do try for a balanced diet.
I've been telling Gary that it must be awfully dry in this house because those cookies evaporated. Not a single one is left. With company coming on Christmas Eve, I've had to go back to baking. I made pecan puffs tonight and hid them from Gary. Tomorrow I will be making sugar cookies for my grandson to help decorate. I want to make blueberry scones, too, for another dessert.
I shopped for the party today, buying a nice sized ham, potatoes, milk and more butter for the scalloped potatoes son Chris loves and demands every and for his birthday. Gary went shopping, too. He bought doughnut holes dipped in chocolate and covered with sprinkles.
He bought vegetables, too. We do try for a balanced diet.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Solstice Birding Day
I don't have sleepless nights often, but sure enough, last night I had a bout of insomnia. By 12:30 a.m. I was wide awake and by 4:00 I gave up the struggle and came downstairs. I fortified myself with black tea and started the day. I would be tired, but there was no way I was going to give up a trip to look for snowy owls.
The Oconto Breakwater is run by the Oconto County park system. It is a narrow band that stretches along Green Bay on Lake Michigan. At this time of year it is popular with ice fishermen, who had their little tents set up inside the frozen water inside the barrier. They didn't seem to bother the birds because we were treated to a pot pourri of avian life. There were at least a hundred common mergansers out on the open water along with scaup, herring gulls, Canada geese and tundra swans.
On the breakwater rocks we spotted two snowy owls, our main interest. Every so often, hundreds of these owls descend on Wisconsin. It seems to have something to do with the lack of prey in the frozen Arctic tundra. When they arrive, they are often near starvation. These two, however, seemed perfectly healthy and much whiter than the photo shown here.
(Photos from Wikipedia)
On our way to the end of the breakwater, we spotted a Northern shrike, another visitor from the tundra. This little guy has the nasty habit of impaling his prey on barbed wire fences or any other spike it can find. It is only the second I've seen in my life.
As we were leaving, yet another treat, a couple of bald eagles, their white heads shining in the sun.
When the snowy owls show up in this part of Wisconsin, there is a good chance that the largest owl, the Great Grey, will be hanging around northern Wisconsin. We may take a winter's drive to see if we can find them.
From this point on, the sun will stay longer and longer in the sky. By the end of March the tundra swans will return and birding will be in full swing.
The Oconto Breakwater is run by the Oconto County park system. It is a narrow band that stretches along Green Bay on Lake Michigan. At this time of year it is popular with ice fishermen, who had their little tents set up inside the frozen water inside the barrier. They didn't seem to bother the birds because we were treated to a pot pourri of avian life. There were at least a hundred common mergansers out on the open water along with scaup, herring gulls, Canada geese and tundra swans.
On the breakwater rocks we spotted two snowy owls, our main interest. Every so often, hundreds of these owls descend on Wisconsin. It seems to have something to do with the lack of prey in the frozen Arctic tundra. When they arrive, they are often near starvation. These two, however, seemed perfectly healthy and much whiter than the photo shown here.
(Photos from Wikipedia)
On our way to the end of the breakwater, we spotted a Northern shrike, another visitor from the tundra. This little guy has the nasty habit of impaling his prey on barbed wire fences or any other spike it can find. It is only the second I've seen in my life.
As we were leaving, yet another treat, a couple of bald eagles, their white heads shining in the sun.
When the snowy owls show up in this part of Wisconsin, there is a good chance that the largest owl, the Great Grey, will be hanging around northern Wisconsin. We may take a winter's drive to see if we can find them.
From this point on, the sun will stay longer and longer in the sky. By the end of March the tundra swans will return and birding will be in full swing.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Solstice
Tomorrow is Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year.
These dark days are so difficult for me. I try to get the most out of the existing sunlight by waking up early in the morning. I take long walks whenever there is sunlight, as there was today. I have a light board here in my office. I take St. John's wort from mid-November through February. Still, seasonal affective disorder will eventually hit me and depression set in. I'll convince myself I have no friends and have some deadly disease.
Gary understands my affliction and thinks of ways to help. One way has been to decorate this house from top to bottom during the holiday season. The lights, both electric and candle powered, shine on until New Year's Day. The house is glowing tonight plus I look out my office window to the neighborhood light displays.
Exercise helps. We go to the fitness center to work through the machines. I swim.
Finally, we go out and look at nature, such as it is in this cold northern climate. With fine weather forecast tomorrow, we will spend Solstice driving up to the Oconto breakwater to see what kind of birds we can spot off Lake Michigan. There are reports of Harlequin ducks and snowy owls over there so we will take a look. If there is sun, it will sparkle off the lake. Sunshine doubled is just what I need.
From tomorrow on, the days will get longer. Somehow I will make it to spring.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Nook Redux
Today, Wade, my fellow short story writer and computer guru, helped me figure out the Nook. By the end of our meeting, I was able to download a book from the Gutenberg Project (gutenberg.org), free e-books available to download, most of them classics.
I downloaded Henry David Thoreau's Walden. A month ago, I picked up a hard cover edition at the Muehl Public Library's book fair, and I still have my well thumbed paperback, so that's three Waldens, and each one has this paragraph about living truly:
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to route all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world."
The words are the same in paperback, hardcover or e-book. It is the words that tell us how to go about living. The words are important, not the delivery system.
Wade also helped me download an e-book mystery from the Outagamie-Waupaca Library System, and of course, there's Barnes and Noble and that's more books. I can collect hundreds of them. I can be a packrat yet have all my acquisitions in one slim easy to dust Nook.
Three sources for literature, never ending reading. Marvelous.
I downloaded Henry David Thoreau's Walden. A month ago, I picked up a hard cover edition at the Muehl Public Library's book fair, and I still have my well thumbed paperback, so that's three Waldens, and each one has this paragraph about living truly:
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to route all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world."
The words are the same in paperback, hardcover or e-book. It is the words that tell us how to go about living. The words are important, not the delivery system.
Wade also helped me download an e-book mystery from the Outagamie-Waupaca Library System, and of course, there's Barnes and Noble and that's more books. I can collect hundreds of them. I can be a packrat yet have all my acquisitions in one slim easy to dust Nook.
Three sources for literature, never ending reading. Marvelous.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
The Nook
We change with the technology. As my friend Norma points out, learning new technology is a way to improve our synapses. The same age as me, she is learning a whole new computer system at her work. It takes us a bit longer, but we are adapting.
I've been reading Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, which came with the first Nook e-book order from Barnes and Noble. The last time I read Little Women , I was in grade school. I had forgotten all the moral lessons Marmee preached at her daughters. Did I find them as annoying back then? I know I much preferred Jo, the tomboy, who is so much like me.
I find that a Nook is no different than a paper book. Both are delivery systems for words, nothing more. I am enjoying the system of turning pages and when my eyes are tired, it is simplicity itself to make the font bigger
I remember books similar to Nooks from "Star Trek, the Next Generation". (It was Captain Jean-Luc Picard who was considered odd because he had some very old fashioned paper books.) Now I am there with the rest of the crew of the Enterprise.
I still haven't figured out the library connections for the Nook, or how to access the Gutenberg Project but I'll get there. The Nook holds 1400 books, according to Chris, which should prove to be enough books to last me the rest of my life.
In January, I start putting together a collection of my columns which will be available through Barnes and Noble so the Nook is essential as I explore the ways and means of doing so. I've already done a book for the Kindle through Amazon.com, but the Barnes and Noble system seems easier in every way.
I can feel those brain cells expanding. Either that or I'm getting a headache.
.
I've been reading Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, which came with the first Nook e-book order from Barnes and Noble. The last time I read Little Women , I was in grade school. I had forgotten all the moral lessons Marmee preached at her daughters. Did I find them as annoying back then? I know I much preferred Jo, the tomboy, who is so much like me.
I find that a Nook is no different than a paper book. Both are delivery systems for words, nothing more. I am enjoying the system of turning pages and when my eyes are tired, it is simplicity itself to make the font bigger
I remember books similar to Nooks from "Star Trek, the Next Generation". (It was Captain Jean-Luc Picard who was considered odd because he had some very old fashioned paper books.) Now I am there with the rest of the crew of the Enterprise.
I still haven't figured out the library connections for the Nook, or how to access the Gutenberg Project but I'll get there. The Nook holds 1400 books, according to Chris, which should prove to be enough books to last me the rest of my life.
In January, I start putting together a collection of my columns which will be available through Barnes and Noble so the Nook is essential as I explore the ways and means of doing so. I've already done a book for the Kindle through Amazon.com, but the Barnes and Noble system seems easier in every way.
I can feel those brain cells expanding. Either that or I'm getting a headache.
.
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