All is quiet this morning.  It's been a nice few days.  I've been sleeping in later and later, then visiting, and enjoying buffet meals.  Christmas was fun with family and the six grandgirls, dinner at one house Christmas Eve, and breakfast and gifts at another Christmas morning. They were kind enough not to start until 8am this year.   My eldest was working both days and made his Christmas on Boxing Day and came over to open gifts.  Then we went to see "War Horse."  It was good.  I get into my movies, found myself crying at the end and a bit weepy at the beginning to pondering all those young men going off to war.  It's one of my favorite kinds of Spielberg flick and a horse movie as well with a race between the horse and auto on an English country road.  I love a horse race.

My first attempt at making some kind of candy treat came off well and eldest and I ate quite a bit.  Dark chocolate bark with bits of orange peel and chopped pecans.  The tiny Christmas tree continues to shine on. 

The temperature last night post-movie was 48, not the 25+ we've been having.  Delightful. 

I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Peace on Earth

Merry Christmas Everyone

I bought this Nativity set at The Grotto in Portland over ten years ago.  My sister Grace and I visited this Botanical Garden and Catholic Shrine.  You can take a glass enclosed elevator up a cliff to the gardens and a viewing platform, quite a view.  And they have a huge gift shop that included 100's of Nativities both for sale and not.  I fell in love with this one.  Lately at the end of the evening I turn out most of the lights and have been enjoying various Christmas concerts on the telly by the light of the Christmas tree.  There is something so peaceful about a darkened living room in the glow of Christmas decorations. 

We've had quite a week, still are having one.  My daughter (in-law) had her appendix out Sunday.  Grandkids came to my house and her Mom's house, all were worried about Mommy.   She came home that night and is mending, we kept the girls so Dad and Mom could rest awhile.  My van is still in the garage and may be until Thursday or Friday.  Other family members had things surgically repaired.  A dear friend loaned me her car until Monday while she was out of town so I could fetch children, get groceries, finish shopping, rent movies, buy glitter, and do those odds and ends of things that appear right before Christmas Eve.  Now Great-grandma has loaned me her car. What would we do without our friends and family?

Glitter, glitter everywhere.  The Grandgirls made Christmas ornaments.  We glued, pasted, and painted foam balls and pine cones, and sprinkled glitter on them and ourselves.  And sequins, and self sticking jewels, and little bells, and stuff.  I found red sequins in the kitchen sink and blue glitter in my hair.   We sparkle from stem to stern.  I have now seen The Smurfs movie twice now, it was  surprisingly entertaining, and Shrek 3, and one more that I've forgotten already.  I was really tired last night but this morning the house seems, well, empty now that they've gone home.

Saint Silouan Orthodox Church through the spiky lace on a tree.

The air is still and thick.  Fog hugs the ground, the temperature lingers just around 25.  The fog freezes and falls dropping tiny little flakes.  Everything is covered with fine, tiny spikes of ice.  When I picked up two of the grandgirls from school today we could see the gold onion dome of this Orthodox church shining through the trees.  It surprised me with its shine, you can't even see the sky today.  They stayed at my house until it was time to pick up their mom and my van.  For snack we ate the scalloped potatoes I'd made ahead for dinner.  They were good, little onion, little bacon, warm out of the oven.  There was even a few left for dinner, great food for a cold day.  Then one girl finished decorating my Christmas tree.  It looks good, and its dark enough in the afternoon to turn all the lights on.  I don't think I've ever put up a tree this early before.

It's been a week of events.  Something happened to the fuel injection mechanism in the van and it went in for repairs Thursday.  Then the estimate came in at around $300, I was expecting something worse, I was kind of relieved.  In the evening I got a call announcing the arrival of the newest member of my youngest son's family.  They received a three month old boy they hope to adopt.  They been waiting awhile for him, and little does he know he now has six older sisters both homegrown and adopted.  They are all daffy for him.  This afternoon I got to meet him.  He just smiled.  Kind of like getting a baby in your Christmas stocking.  I got my van back and it runs fine now, the gas mileage should improve some. The baby, well, he eats, sleeps, and poops. That's his job.

Saturday is supposed to be the last total eclipse of the moon for a couple of years, with the peak view showing around 6am here in the Pacific Northwest.  A doable time of day if the fog lets up a little.  I will be up to look just in case.  You can read about it here.  Eclipse  Meanwhile it feels like everyone is waiting quietly for something to happen.  Christmas?  A bit of clear sky?  Makes me want to hibernate.  If I eat many more scalloped potatoes and meatloaf I will sleep all winter.

"You are the sunshine of my life."

Had a fuss budget morning.  The van is in the garage with the emission control system warning light glowing brightly.  On the other hand I just got a nice refund check for an overpayment.  The van will probably eat that up.  Should I be sad my refund will be gone, or happy that it showed up just in time to fund this upkeep on an older car that I intend to keep until forever?  The choice is mine.  This old house is drafty.  This old house is paid for.  Went out looking at condos, found two in my price range but the cost of selling and rebuying would fund many winter heat bills, not to mention more insulation and wool socks.  And there's condo fees.  And when it hits 100 in the summer this house actually stays reasonably cool under its steep roof and wide overhanging eaves.  And it's on a pretty street, with good neighbors, mixed ages, people from 90+ down to a toddler.  I can walk to the library from here, and now the library is serving coffee. 

So at the risk of being a Pollyanna I started thinking about what is right with life right now.  My two sons for one thing.  That is them many years ago in face paint at a campout at Lake Kachess in the Washington Cascades.  The eldest has on a souvenir of a time when my alma mater made it to the Rose Bowl with success.  We often camped here in the summer when they were young, and I have lots of warm, sunny, memories of those times.  Scrambled eggs and bacon, Grand Marnier in the parent's coffee in the morning.  Anchoring the tent on the hill that sloped down to the lake.  Once we put the tent on several of those cheap floating air mattresses when it rained thereby diverted the water running down the hill from entering our tent, and we still had the air mattresses under us.

My daughter-in-law picked me up at the garage and brought me home.  When I told her about the condos, she asked what was I looking for, and asked was I just feeling "itchy."  I told her about the concerns I had for when I turned 80, or 90.  Once I said them they seemed to dissipate.  She is a perceptive young woman, I'm lucky to have her in my life.   I remembered that it will soon be a year since my divorce and how those kind of anniversaries bring on discontented itchiness for me.  I am indeed feeling itchy, and my "inner child" always wants to pack up and leave and see something new.   We moved constantly when I was growing up and staying put is still rather a novel experience for me.  I think I will go back to stripping the wallpaper in the bathroom and find some "new" that way. 

It's cold, not quite winter but it feels like it.  I got out of the house and took a little drive past the edge of town and parked looking over someone's post-harvest wheat field into the foothills of the Blue Mountains.  People hauled their wagons if they had one, down over those sharp hills and the mountains behind them.  Here lies a route of the Oregon Trail and also the Nez Pierce trail that Lewis and Clark followed through here.  Parts of both paths are visible today.  Looking east this way makes me think of Walt Whitman's "O' Pioneers." 

In April of 1837 an world wide economic crash occurred.  As a cure the president and advisors pulled the government out of the banking business.  The banks proceeded to quit loaning and began hoarding their cash and nearly 40% of the banks in USA collapsed.  The commodity wasn't oil and its dependent industries but cotton and wool.  Australia suffered its worse depression ever.  Here the rush to move west ramped up.  There was a presidential election in the midst of this economic depression, unseating Van Buren and bringing the first Whig, William Henry Harrision into office.  There were issues of immigration and religion, this time Catholic Irish and Germans in particular were coming to the USA.  Businesses in large cities bore signs saying NINA, "Irish Need Not Apply."  Sound familiar?  It's the new ones' fault.  The countries, languages, and religions change, but apparently we haven't.

Many people came west to escape it, looking for a more secure life, some with enough resources to exploit it.  Some succeeded, some starved on the way.  Many things and people thrived here consequently and many people and things were destroyed.  I have more questions than I have answers.

I'm not the greatest historian but the familiarity of this disquiets me.  Where can people go now to make a life?   Not many of us is far from living on the street the way things are going. Don't we ever learn anything?  And how could a man like Gingrich gain a following in this country?  A man who claims poor children are taught to be lazy and ought to be cheated out of what little play or study time they can have to be janitors in their schools.  Such monumental stupidity boggles my brain.  No wonder I need to just sit and watch the wind blow around for a bit.

I broke my favorite cookbook, my 1967 edition of "The Joy of Cooking."  I dropped it on the floor and it disassembled, just barely staying in one piece.  The spine is exposed, the front cover is loose, it's just sad. Waa, it's my favorite.  I learned to cook for my family using it and it has my grandmother's potato salad recipe glued to the inside cover.  The banana bread recipe page is covered with specks of dough from probably hundreds, maybe thousands of loaves of banana bread.  I taped low fat and low sugar versions to the opposite page.  I experimented with their recipe, I could never get them to taste the way I wanted with both low fat and low sugar.  The 1967 serving sizes are just right for me, in later versions they upped the serving sizes as the population started eating more.  At my age, if it ever was, more is not a bonus. 

I typed "1967 "Joy of Cooking" ' into the search menu and woo, woo, several came up on Amazon.  Some with dust jackets, I can't remember if mine ever had one, if it did it disappeared early on.  So, I'm crossing my fingers, Amazon don't fail me now.  I bought a one listed in "very good" condition (what? didn't they use it?, good for me).  Last night I got an email that it had been shipped.  I'm so excited, yes, that's what makes me happy.  I'm very attached to my cookbooks.  This and my "Laurel's Kitchen" are my favorites, although I did get a 1956 Good Housekeeping Cookbook at AAUW book sale two years ago that I've come to love.

That's the last of my lottery money.  I actually cashed in on one of my once a month lottery tickets for $100.  I bought new slippers, some used Dana Stabenow paperbacks and now a "new" "Joy of Cooking."  Merry early Christmas to me, from me.   

I've tackled my slow going dollhouse project again.  My grandgirl Alandra and I got a tiny Christmas tree for it and she's decorating it so I decided it must be time to put the roof shingles on it.  It was kind of fun.  Next I'm making sheets for the little beds that go in the loft above the kitchen.  As you can see below even my doll house has dishes in the sink.