Post-Christmas/Pre-New Year

We survived the holiday madness so far, with just a few events to go. Regis is doing a wedding tonight at the Butler House in Mankato, tomorrow night we're watching the New Year arrive with Ella, and Monday we're going to Ella's 1st birthday party. We have to go back to work to get some rest!

The weather here has been abysmal. It's about forty every day, cloudy, and the last few days we've had a relentless rain. On our way back from Canby yesterday we listened to a book called The Worst Hard Time, about the Dust Bowl of the 1930's. By the time we got home, I'd have enough of all that gloom and doom. Peter has been able to work at Mount Kato but he says it hasn't been busy and they send a lot of people home. I suppose nobody thinks of skiing when it looks like April outside.

We had a good time in Canby with Mom, although we narrowly escaped an incident with a bad jar of pickled herring. I know some people think there is no such thing as a good jar of pickled herring, but that's beside the point. The jar wasn't sealed, the herring was soft, and Mom and I each had a bite before we realized it. I worried that I would have to be hospitalized with botulism or worse but there were no ill effects that we could tell. We managed to hit all the stores in Canby that had after-holiday sales and we had a beer at Parrot Bay. Their fryer fan was broken though so we had to sit in a gray haze of smoke that smelled like they'd been cooking weasels.

I'm puttering around the house today, filling big plastic containers with Christmas crap. It seems like that stuff multiplies every year. I didn't intend to put it all away today but once you start, it's hard to know where to stop. I think I'll leave the tree up because God knows we need the light. Every year, I complain a little about the mess and the work and the cooking, but I really enjoy Christmas and I'm sad when it's over.

Teresa