The Blog: Spellbound by our own imperfect lives...

 I'm not a fan of rehashing the old year or making promises for the new year but as I stood at the sink yesterday morning doing a few dishes, this spectacular sunrise appeared. There isn't time to dilly dally with the sunrise, so I traipsed into the yard in my robe and slippers to take the picture. By the time I got back in the house, the colors had changed. Tiptoeing into an icy backyard at dawn is treacherous. It is an act of faith. Had I gone down, flopping like a fish out of water, it might have been a while before someone rescued me. Regis was in the shower and I prayed with every step that he would think to look for me should that be my fate. I made it safely back to the house. I'm pretty sure there is a metaphor here but I'm not sure yet what it is. This is the third metaphor I have identified in two days so I am either daft or quite perceptive. Ha! I had lunch with two friends yesterday, women about my age. We all said the holidays exhaust us ...

I think I've mentioned that sometimes I like to check out the statistics on my blog. I think they're interesting. A woman in a small town can amass almost a quarter of a million pageviews without much effort. Think about what a guy could do if he tried. This list shows pageviews: the number of times someone just looked at a page of my blog. Me included. Pageviews today 34 Pageviews yesterday 81 Pageviews last month 5,067 Pageviews all time history 243,560 Followers 12 This map shows all the places around the world where the pageviews have originated. The list is below the map. Almost 30,000 pageviews from the Ukraine. What? Posts get more readers if I share them on Facebook but I don't do that very often. I'm not sure what moves me to do that...not any sense of "Oh, this is a good one." It's more of an impulse. Entry Pageviews United States 125060 Ukraine 28737 Russia 17767 ...

So, that photo order I was mucking around with the other day. I want to make a little album for each grandchild so I put together an order for about 100 pictures. I had some in a folder on my laptop and some in a folder on my big computer. Yeah. I thought I was smart because I found a coupon code for 60% off. Yeah, great deal. Then I apparently ordered the same pictures twice. Once to be delivered by mail and once to be picked up at Walgreen's. I didn't discover it until it was too late to cancel because they print those things at the speed of light. Crap. I managed to order pictures from the wedding without similar calamity. I am not particularly distressed by all the famous people who have died in 2016. Folks are acting like they should send the remaining famous people who are not dead yet to the cave to protect them from the Grim Reaper for the next three days. That shit doesn't stop, you know. People will continue to die in 2017. My mom sent us a gift card for...

Achieved my goal of complete inertia yesterday. I put on my leopard pajamas in the morning and I didn't get dressed all day. I didn't do one dish. I took out zero garbage bags. I did no exercise and I ate not one morsel of healthy food. Utter decadence and debauchery. I'm doing better today. I have the sink full of dishes, the garbage has gone out, and I have a plan to go to the gym and the pool. When I come home, stoked up on that good exercise, I'll deal with the sweets that are languishing in the porch. I've started the transition to 2017. I worked on an order for photo prints this morning. It's painstaking and confusing work. And so easy to be distracted. I have, for the most part, abandoned any hope of having pictures organized, like a lot of other things I have abandoned organization of: addresses, music, stuff. You just look for it when you need it. It's easier that way. One thing that got my attention this morning was pictures of the sky...

Mom gave me a sewing machine a few years ago. Of course, it languished like a lot of my hobby supplies do. Gus needed a new Christmas bandana so, not being able to find anything already made, I bought fabric. The kiss of death. I get all set up to sew. The squares are cut and ironed. Discover no needle. Friend Marie comes to the rescue and tapes a package of universal machine needles to her office window. I set up again only to find that apparently, in thirty years, I have forgotten the sewing machine basics. So, the evening of December 23rd, I spent several hours hand stitching the hems of Gus's bandanas. Not too many dogs are treated this well. He just had half of my ham sandwich and he's taking a nap on the couch. Merry Christmas, Gus.

I'm in my fuzzy leopard pajamas, a gift from my friend Karen in NJ. 😇 My goal is to do as little as possible today. So far, so good. I have had multiple cups of coffee, many lefses with Hope butter, some Chex mix, and a ham sandwich. It rained freezing ice pellets for a little bit, then it switched to rain. The wind comes and goes. We have watched brave souls walking down the street like penguins. Don't go out if you don't have to go. That would be like for a scheduled heart transplant or something. A quart of milk...live without it for today. I spent an hour on Thriftbooks ordering the remaining Ian Rankin books that I don't have and a couple other mysteries by Scottish authors. I have three maps of Scotland coming so I'll know what's going on over there. Have you ever looked at some of their place names ? We had some birds and squirrels in the front yard but they even got smart and retreated to the warm and dry. I can feel a long read and a nap...

Ella is sleeping on the couch, I'm writing on my blog, and Regis is perusing the jail roster. Happy holidays. I'll just say this about the jail roster. Not all, but some of those folks look like they could be identified before they even commit a crime. I suppose that sounds like what they do in third world banana republics but really, a symbol for the white supremacists on your t-shirt in your mug shot? We had Zuppa Toscan a  and fresh bread for dinner last night before making fruitcake. We'll put the orange glaze on it this morning. Then we'll make the peanut butter cup dessert that is sure to please some members of the family, but not me. It has several ingredients I cannot abide: Cool Whip, instant pudding, box brownies. It sounds like chemical soup to me. Our weather forecast for the next five days is ominous. It includes snow today, rain and freezing rain on Sunday, an accumulation of ice, and high winds. I will be in the cave. I'm looking at the det...

Over the years, I have purged my Christmas decorations several times. Usually at the end of the season, I decide I'm done with something and out it goes. Years later, I look at a photograph and wonder what happened to this or that. Sometimes I go hunting and I find it. Eight years ago, we had a small fire in the living room involving a pregnant daughter-in-law, a votive candle, and tissue paper. It was scary, so for years, I didn't use votive candles. Seemed like a wise thing to do with small children in the house anyway. Yesterday I decided that the votive candles can come back into the decor. I rounded them up and have a plan to buy some scented candles today. Along the way, I discovered other things that had been stashed away for some reason or other. Some things I never find. My other thought is this. For the first 30 some years of my life, my mom kept Christmas for my family. Even after my brothers and I were married and started having families of our own, we tr...