Santa has hung up his hat for another year.
There really ought to be a name for the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I mean, you just spent weeks in a wild scramble to decorate, buy gifts, wrap the gifts, plan a special meal, attend a Christmas cantanta, do some partying if you are so inclined and then Christmas comes and all the gifts are opened, the family comes, the family goes and in a few hours, it’s over. I spent the day after coming down from a complete high. Nothing to hurry to get done. No cleaning to do. No where to go. Ahh, sweet, sweet nothingness. Sleep in, read, knit just for the enjoyment. Work on a new little project I was chomping at the bits to start before Christmas. But I still felt a little lost. Like something was missing. The week of nothingness. I just wish Christmas had lasted longer. And all the tv has is reruns. Glad we have Netflix, but we finished the final show in the series of Longmire, which had quickly become my favorite show on television. I understand there will be a sixth season of it so will have to wait until it comes on Netflix. If you haven’t seen it and like good stories, good acting, handsome men and the west, you will love it. Lou Diamond Phillips is in it and he’s a hunk and the star, Robert Taylor isn’t bad either. (Hope David doesn’t read this!) If we didn’t have Netflix, we probably would not watch much tv. I am trying to cut back and do more reading. I’ve put several books on my Kindle. Does anyone else who has Kindle feel like they read faster than when reading from a book? I feel like I fly through books now. I got Kindle Unlimited because I was buying so many books. Now I can read as many as I want for the price of one book. There is an author I discovered, George Mahood, who has written books about things he has done like bicycle from the bottom tip of England to the top tip of Scotland with no money, no bicycle and no clothes, except the shorts he had on. No bicycle, you ask? You will have to read the book. He and a friend did it in three weeks with absolutely no money in their pockets. He wrote a book about a trip he took through the United States which was really good and made me love my country even more. That book was called, “Not Tonight, Josephine.” You will have to read it to find out who Josephine is. It’s nice when someone from another country says so many nice things about my country. Another book he wrote was about different holidays no one has ever heard of before and he tried to celebrate one each day of the year. Did you know that January 2 is cats’ new year? It’s called Happy Mew Year. If you want to laugh out loud, read one of his books.
We are the grandparents of four brand new golden retriever puppies. Our daughter’s dog had them on my grandson’s, her son’s birthday. What a gift. We haven’t seen them yet, but hope to see them this week. I will get some pictures to show you.
Now that the new year is here, I am planning. One of the things that makes life worth living, is to have something to look forward to. I read that somewhere. Someone to love, something to do and something to look forward to. I have been blest all my life with all three. I am always planning. I have known friends who were still making plans on their deathbed. I think that is the human condition. We make plans. Of course, life almost never goes as we plan it which is what makes it so interesting.
This Christmas almost everyone got socks that I had hand knitted. It became a running joke as each person opened a package and there were socks. My youngest grandson looked at me with a worried look and said, “Grandma, I hope I’m not getting socks!” He didn’t. All the younger boys got train sets this year. And Nerf guns with plenty of Nerf bullets.
Here is a picture of those who got socks this Christmas, or at least their feet.
From the leftover yarn I am knitting patchwork socks. I already have a pair ready for next Christmas!
Yes, it was a sock year.
Once you have worn hand knitted sock, you never want to go back to store bought. They are warm and comfy and stretchy. One year I bought a couple of pair of socks from the Ralph Lauren store that were really cute, but when I got them home, they had absolutely no stretch in them. I could barely get them over my heels. Sad, too, because they were really, really cute. I have no trouble getting hand knit socks on and off. I hope they last longer than store bought socks also.
Not to say we have been doing nothing this week. I made a big pot of potato soup with jalapeno and cheese sausages.
David and I spent a quiet New Year’s Eve. We went to an Italian restaurant and ate dinner. That night while watching one of the New Year’s shows I suddenly got hungry for pancakes. “I’ll make some, ” David said. And he did.
With strawberry preserves and whipped topping. Yum. What better way to end one year and start the next. I just said we were having breakfast extra early.
The project I have worked on this week were these little trees Patchwork pines. Tattered Trees. They are the creation of Ann Wood, a blogger I just discovered who makes the cutest things out of used things, paper machine and anything she can find. She provided the pattern for these for free. I, of course, could not make just one and ended up with a little forest of them.
Then I put them with little houses my daddy had made years ago and made a little village on our mantle.
With kissing Grandpa and Grandma, of course. Ha.
Besides all the other things going on, we had three birthdays in December and on Christmas day we celebrated our youngest grandson’s eighth birthday. It’s hard for me to think he is already this old. Just seems he was born and he’s half grown almost.
I made him a cake with a banner with his name on it.
He seemed happy with it.
And just because we have nothing else to do, David and I started a puzzle this week.
I ordered this from the Current catalog months ago and we said we’d wait until after Christmas to start it. It is really a fun and interesting puzzle to do. Not sure about the marijuana leaves on it, but some states have legalized it. Even though I was a teen and a college student in the sixties, I can honestly say I have never tried marijuana and don’t plan to start. I have always been careful about the drugs that go into my body. I don’t like taking aspirins too well, but will if necessary.
This is a pretty big puzzle. I like how the light is shining on it right now.
Spread out on two tables. David is really the puzzle maker in our house. I get impatient and frustrated after a while and have to leave. David will sit for hours working on it and he is not intimidated by all the white pieces in this puzzle.
Well, we don’t know what this year will bring. Just living it one day at a time and trying to enjoy every moment. I hope January goes really slow. We will have a presidential inauguration and David’s birthday on the same day. That will be fun.
This is the year I am going to start walking again I was up to five miles a day a couple of years ago and then I hurt both my legs at different times and it was hard to walk a mile without pain, so, this is the year I am going to try to get back to walking again. I will start slow with a mile or so and work up from there. I will keep you posted and maybe you would like to start this journey with me. After all, a journey begins with just one step. Bye.