#1:   

Of all the beautiful Christmas traditions passed down through the years, Christmas carols have definitely got to be at the top of my list.   Some of my most pleasant memories are standing around our big old piano singing while Mom played..    We had soprano, alto, bass, 1st and second tenor, and baritone and there were only seven of us!    Mom used to sing tenor.     We would turn off all of the lights except the Christmas ones and sing carol after carol after carol in the soft, warm glow from the fire.    It was beautiful … absolutely beautiful … the colors, the atmosphere, and the singing.     (Click here for lyrics and music to 51 Christmas carols.)

#2:

Gift giving is one of the joyful traditions of Christmas.   After all, it was from Jesus Christ that we received the greatest gift of all. 

A couple of years ago I received a little wooden plaque that puts it into perspective: 

 “The magic of Christmas is not in the Presents, but in His Presence.”  

#3

My sweetheart’s unselfish acts of service to me are making my season bright.    

From the moment we pulled into our driveway after spending our five months in Washington, I have been ill.   After several trips to the doctor and one test after another at the hospital, we still don’t know for sure what is causing my extreme weakness and shortness of breath.    I’m on oxygen now, day and night.     I can take care of my own personal needs but to shower and get dressed has to be broken down into four segments so I can rest and catch my breath between.   Walking from the bedroom to the family room leaves me out of breath and exhausted.  I spend my days sitting in a recliner with my feet up.   

It could be very dreary around here if Lynn let it happen, but he doesn’t.    He is cheerful and helpful at any hour of the day or night.   He puts extra thought into preparing foods that will tweak my appetite, checks on me often to see if there is something I need or want, he does the dishes every night before he goes to bed, does the laundry, runs the vacuum, runs the errands, brings me books and movies, covers me when I fall asleep, sits by me now and then to hold my hand, tells me interesting stories, makes me laugh with his silly jokes and comments, and watches movies with me late at night because I am in less pain when I sit up than when I lie down.     He lets me shop on line, brings me diet cokes, walks the dog, changes the litter for the cat, feeds & waters them, has hung the Christmas lights, decorated our tree … and all with a joyful countenance.  

One day I apologized to him for being “such a burden”.   He was quick to put his arms around me, express his love, and assure me I am not.   It might have been hard to believe him … except for the wonderful way he treats me.     Anyone would be hard pressed to find a better man than the one I am married to.       I am so grateful.

#4

Thank goodness for the “Falala Lifetime”.    In case you are unaware, it is one of the television stations showing G rated “Harlequin” type Christmas movies one after another after another.    Click here if you would like a listing of movies and times.    I think I’ve seen them all.  

Tonight there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and we drove down onto the beach and watched the sun disappear right into the Pacific Ocean.    Sunsets on the beach are different every time … all beautiful.     It was a reverent moment when just as the sun slipped beneath the waves to the west, the tip of the moon peaked over the trees in the east.    I watched it balloon into full bloom and just have to say:   Nature and all of it’s beauty and power leaves me in awe.   

We’ve been remembering … and remembering … those we love who are gone, those we love who aren’t gone … those we love who have loved and fought for their country both through wars, and through righteous living and hard work.

This week the motor home was meticulously washed and waxed by Angi and Steve … We have been packing and unpacking and packing …

The roof isn’t finished but you can see how it will look.    It isn’t going to be done before we want to leave …

Today we got more insulation blown into the attic but I forgot to take a picture of the big truck and the hot, HOT workers.

The temperature around here is moving well past the hundred mark … Time to move on …

       Work has started on our new roof.    Tiles and wood strips have been removed and tomorrow they start the rebuilding.    Soon we will be known as the house with the red steel roof.    As soon as we get back from our summer voyage I’m going to get the same color of paint for the doors.  

       Speaking of voyage … We are now counting down on our fingers!   Ten days and we should be on the road!    We and little girl dog are excited for the trip.    I am determined to keep a better journal of it this year.    Last year I got too caught up in relaxing!

       I’m already missing CSI, Criminal Minds, Law and Order Criminal Intent, and NCIS and just for the record, I hate when the season ends with cliff hangers!     It makes you wonder where Medium is headed as the older daughter begins to move into more and more psychic episodes of her own.    Personally I’m glad “24” is over … probably forever.    I don’t even think I’ll miss good ole Jack Bauer the wonder, cape-less super hero.  

       Thank you, Mark, for sending Lynn the machine to keep his legs iced.  Two months down the road from surgery he is doing remarkably well!   This past week he’s started doing amazingly well.    He is up and about most of the day, practically walking like a normal person.    Occasionally I have to remind him to bend his knees when he reminds me of the Gestapo, but that doesn’t happen very often anymore.     

       I’m having this thing with “time” lately.    It rolls around me and suddenly it’s another week, another month … another year.    I was always told it moves faster the older you get and they were right.    To me it seems to spin at an accelerated rate while it flirts around my grandchildren slowly so they can learn, smell the roses, see the butterflies and rainbows, and play in the sunbeams.    Time is soooo … mysterious.

AND … that isn’t all … !!! My favorite lazy-boy recliner is clean too!    The one hidden from the main flow of company because it looked so bad but is so comfortable I can’t part with it.   

The carpet is so clean that now I’ve got to paint the walls!    Gotta pick out some paint with a bit of that money we saved.    Hubby slipped and told me a day or two ago that if we didn’t get the new carpet we’d put the money in a home improvement fund and ya think I’m going to let him forget that?

I prayed about this carpet.   I prayed I would be able to get it clean enough I would be satisfied.   After at least forty hours of me trying to clean it. I’d about decided the answer was, “You need to learn to endure”.      Thank you, God, for clean carpet.   Clean enough for grandbaby feet!

Thank you Bryce Hunt for bringing that awesome cleaning machine over and making it happen.   

It was just one of those really fun mornings!  

“Do you mind if we run that pile of limbs at the front of your property through the chopper so we can get our equipment back and around your motor home?   We need to clip the branches of your tree that are resting on the power line”

Did I mind?   We actually had two piles of branches that I’d been stewing about ever since we’d gotten home in December!   One pile had been pulled to the front of the property so we could load it in a trailer and haul it to the dump, but the other, bigger stack, was hidden in front of the motor home on the other end of our yard, right beneath the electrical wires going into our home.   With Lynn being laid up with his knee surgeries I’d didn’t know how long it would take to get those branches taken care of. 

The next thing I knew their machines were humming and chopping up the branches on the ground and zipping through the gnarly, heavy ones that were playing havoc with the power lines  every time the wind blows.   When they were done there wasn’t a single branch left on the ground.    I wanted to give them a standing ovation I was so pleased!  I know they were getting paid to do the job but you don’t run into people very often who are pleasant and willing to go the extra mile at the end of a long, hot day of hard labor.

I don’t suppose they thought they looked like angels, but I thought they did … even if they were a little incognito.   We appreciated the “Good Deed” and will remember to “Pass It Forward” when we get the opportunity.

That mean old March wind gusted fiercely the other night and uprooted a sweet little tree that blossomed beautifully in our neighborhood every Spring.   With its roots broken and exposed, it didn’t have a chance of recovery, but in one last burst of energy it gave the neighborhood one last gift of delicate, fragrant blossoms.     So sad to see it end this way after all of Larry’s tender loving care and hard work to help it grow straight and beautiful.      I didn’t think Susan would mind if I clipped a couple of the small twigs to brighten up a corner of my living room.  I love trees and I am often reminded of the poem I memorized in my first year of High School.   I’ve written about this poem before but feel it’s a fitting eulogy to this faithful little friend on our block.

Trees … by Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see, a poem as lovely as a tree. 

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed against the earth’s sweet flowing breast.

A tree that looks at God all day, and lifts her leafy arms to pray.

A tree that may in Summer wear a next of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain, who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.

Went to the doctor today for a smorgasbord of ailments and came away with a smorgasbord of prescription changes plus a 2 week trip of intense prednisone because my body has “inflammation” in diverse places and I am complaining loudly about it.   When in pain the world will know it … I don’t go down quietly.    But now we have another problem.  Prednisone keeps me wide awake 24/7.    I mean WIDE awake.   We’re talking really alert awake.  It also makes me really hot.   Not hot as in “hot mama” either.  Hot as in “hot flashes” (as if I didn’t have enough of those already!  Give me a break!)

I liked the new doctor today.   Female and friendly.   She’s probably younger than me but she could be my age I guess and just be really healthy which would make her look younger.   How would one know the age of a healthy person?    I hope she stays around and doesn’t move or retire like everybody else.    I even wanted to call her by her first name … but I didn’t.   I didn’t call her anything because it just didn’t seem like I should call her doctor after we’d become such bosom buddies (hypothetically speaking of course), and I didn’t really dare call her Kris yet.    Maybe by the 2nd visit …?

I’m back to pouring anti-fungal lotion in my ears.   What a crummy thing to have to admit, that I grow mushrooms in my ears!   Well, she didn’t call it mushrooms, she called it fungus but I figure it’s about the same thing.   I also have eczema in the ears … clear to my navel.    I sometimes lay in bed thinking things like “If I get so old I can’t take care of myself and/or communicate … how will I tell my caregivers that my ears itch?”   Sometimes I would like to get a bottle brush and stick it in one ear and pull it out the other and push it back and forth a while to stop the itching!     It runs in our family apparently … the itchy ears.   I don’t know if the others actually have a garden in their ears but I do know when we get together there is always a discussion about the itching.    That’s because we all inherited tiny ear canals.     We also inherited jumpy legs, our 2nd choice of talk topics.   When we tire of that we talk about not being able to sleep … unless we are trying to watch a move, of course.   When we run out of health issues there is always creeping underwear.

I found a really good sale at Wally-Mart today and loaded up … on valentines.   I don’t know why.   I got these cute little mail box looking things with 32 valentines tucked inside (14 of them).  Like I said, I don’t know why other than they were cheap … only fifty cents each … and that did include 32 valentines!    Then I saw the Maxwell chocolates in red heart tins.   What would you have done if you saw them sitting there for fifty cents each tin?    Each one probably holds maybe 4 or 5 chocolates.    I thought I could freeze them for next year and give them out to my friends and everybody in the family, but Lynn informed me that won’t work  because they will go funny.    Keeeeeerap.   (That’s a carry over word from my dad.   I figure it’s not really cussing because of how it’s spelled.)   So now I have … drum roll please … 48 little red tin boxes of chocolates.    Yes, I said 48, and that’s because I didn’t get 72 so don’t give me any lip.   I guess I’ll be handing them out a little early.    They don’t say “Happy Valentine’s” on them so does it really matter?   I mean, can’t we say I love you with a red box of chocolates other times of the year?  Like for St. Patrick’s Day maybe?

Oh, if you don’t have a disability permit thing hanging in your car don’t park in the disability parking!   I saw a parking lot cop leaving this gal a ticket on her car today and danged if she didn’t come RUNNING FULL THROTTLE across the parking lot to stop him!      But it was already too late.   The ticket was written in the book with multiple copies and it couldn’t be erased.     Now she has to go before the judge and show her permit (which was in the car but not hanging) or pay $100 in a fine.    That’ll teach ya little old lady with short term memory loss who could sprint fast enough to qualify for the Senior Olympics.    Don’t forget to hang the permit!

Poor little doggy is here beside me and she is so tired she keeps asking me to go to bed with her.    I told her she could go without me but she is so loyal she just can’t do it.     There is nothing as sweet as this little girl dog.    She has love written all over her and it shines out of her eyes like  … gee, I don’t know … like a goo goo ga ga lovesick teenager.    It is really pathetic, actually, how she can’t control her love.    Imagine if I were to act like she does every time Lynn walked in the door … panting, rolling around, wagging my behind back and forth so fast I can’t keep my balance … jumping up and down trying to get him to pick me up so I can lick his face!   True love if I ever saw true love.

I have to admit … it may be 3:21 in the morning but I’m feeling pretty dang good right now.   Better than I have in a couple of months.    If everyone wasn’t asleep I believe I’d start cleaning the house.  (Whew thank goodness they are!)

And that’s about it ….

It was funny … Lynn and I moved the motor home out of the back yard and left it running while we went into the house to get wallets and purse and when we came in the door our little doggy, Fresca, was almost beside herself for fear we were off to parts unknown without her.     When I asked her if she wanted to go with us she almost did a backwards flip she was so relieved.     When I opened the door she literally flew to the motor home, her little feet only touching the ground about every four or five feet.

They tell us on the news that we’re going to have four days of heavy rain and have warned about flooding.    It doesn’t look like a storm out there yet but my body is telling me it’s on its way.    The older I get the more accurate I am at predicting the weather.      I remember the song I used to sing when it rained when I was a little girl:   “Rheumatism, rheumatism, how it pains, how it pains.   Up and down the system, up and down the system.    When it rains, when it rains.”    I didn’t know how true it was! 

We finally got our Christmas decorations put away.     Why is it so much more fun to decorate than un-decorate?    

I love January sales.    I love them so much I am going to have to ground myself before I go broke saving so much money.     Lynn’s starting to look a little worried.     It’s so hard to pass up a 50% off sale that has an additional 30% off.    It seems to me that much of a savings should actually put cash back into your wallet!   Lynn disagrees but what does he know?

24 started its season tonight and we recorded it … and it’s time to go start picking it apart.   I think it’s our favorite show to mock.    I mean how fast can a person recover from extreme torture after an after death experience to fight off eight or so bad guys while hanging from a helicopter with two broken knee caps?   Ya gotta love it!