Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Thises and Thats, Pt. 9

After several months of freakish spring-like temperatures so warm that the trees got confused and tried to bud, we've finally got winter here in southern Indiana. It's 15 degrees and getting colder, and it really makes me wish we'd gotten the chain saw fixed so we could have cut up the big tree that fell down in the back yard in a windstorm two years ago. Tonight is a woodstove night. Well, actually, it's a woodstove full of wood night. See how important one small element can be? Half is not good enough. Even with ten points thrown in for self-esteem purposes, 60% of this equation isn't going to put a fire in a woodstove. The woodstove doesn't care who you are or who you know, either. Sigh. Brrrrr. We're too broke cheap to move the thermostat from the 65 degree setting it's so used to in the winter, so there's nothing to do but put on some warmer and more sensible clothing whine.

Hub goes back to school tomorrow. I go back on the 14th. Yay, college!

I fully intended to take down the Christmas tree yesterday, but it was just so beautiful glowing and twinkling there in the big window, and I was sewing and looking at it and at my magic and mindbogglingly awesome wireless digital picture frame on the table next to it, and the next thing I knew it was four in the morning and who wants to take down a Christmas tree at four in the morning?

I can't take it down tonight, either, because, well, we're still looking at it.

The people down the road who decorated their home like a gingerbread house haven't started to take theirs down yet, either, and I don't want to give them any ideas. I love driving past that house; it's absolutely gorgeous. I just know that Hansel and Gretel are in there somewhere, Gretel slaving in the kitchen and Hansel in his cage being fattened for the witch's dinner. . . .

My sentences are not abiding by the parallel structure rules, but I'm off duty until the fourteenth.

Later tonight, I'm going to make a lot of fudge to send to my brother. I can't do it now because the only pan I own that's big enough is in the dishwasher, and I have to wait for the cycle to finish. If you go to Idaho State and know my brother, please don't tell him he's getting a big package full of fudge in a week.

For the past thirty years we have spent New Year's Eve with our best friends, and this year was no exception. Janice the Menopausal Loan Officer and her hubby are just simply the greatest.

I'll be spending the weekend with my Tumorless Sister and some mutual friends, and I'm looking forward to that very much. My sweet little niece is having a belated New Year's party and I'm looking forward to that, too.

This has been a lovely holiday season; we did nothing extravagant or large, but we gathered with family and friends and we're still gathering, and most of our best memories are made up of little things, which are, of course, really big things in disguise.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly