No, I mean it…

I really do hope that we all have a happy and healthy and prosperous new year 2009.  I am thankful that I have a job in this economy.  I am thankful that my husband and kids are gainfully and happily employed, each in their fields.  I am thankful for the family reunion we had this last summer, up in Maine.  I am thankful for the two kittens who came to live with us this year; they have grown into beautiful and independent young cats and bring us such good laughs.  I am thankful for my online friends who have shared so many years of life with me.  I am thankful for my “offline” friends, the few but fabulous!

It is snowing on this final day of 2008; I do love the snow and the foot and a half we got two weeks ago was gone by Christmas.  I’m extremely happy to have a series of days off with nothing planned other than cooking good food and eating good food and watching a lot of football!  Of course, we need to shovel the steps and front walk before it freezes into a sheet of ice, but that will be followed with hot chocolate and espresso, so it will be worth our while.

Happy New Year’s Eve to all and to all a good night.

Dribs and drabs…

I have opened my blog every day since Christmas and haven’t actually written a thing.  I have nothing interesting to share.  We had a quiet Christmas day…we didn’t eat breakfast until almost noon and opened presents after that.  The in-laws LOVED the digital picture frame we got them, with an SD card full of old photos.  Dad-in-law was so impressed, he offered us the contents of the family albums to be scanned…I am very excited.

I got a gift card to my favorite store, Chicos, so I will be off to the outlet mall next weekend to splurge.  I got yummy Alaskan smoked salmon and goat milk soap and something in a jar I haven’t figured out yet, among other fun things.  Nice, quiet, understated holiday.  I’m really looking forward to doing absolutely nothing on New Year’s Day.

My kids both had happy holidays, which means a LOT.  Funny how everything is so different when the kids are grown and gone.  Hmmm…I think I have said that a number of times lately.  I don’t miss living with my kids, but I am very happy for them when things are going well.

Now, in the shameless plug division, check out my daughter’s blog, http://sillytatertot.blogspot.com/…she keeps adding all these new things…very interesting, at least to me.  Let’s see what y’all think.

Happy Christmas Eve, all…

It is a quiet holiday this year.  How it changes when the kids are grown and gone.  We are sharing this holiday with my in-laws, so the week is more about good food and conversation than gifts and noise and excitement.  We are so thankful for good health and a comfortable home and jobs…thankful that we have good and loving kids (our two kids and their significant others) who live good and loving lives…we are thankful that we were able to enjoy the recent foot and a half of snow without losing power…the list goes on and on.

Happy holidays to all!  Here’s hoping your list of good things is a long one.

And the snow just keeps coming…

Saturday snow

Saturday evening snow

Sunday morning snow

Sunday late afternoon snow

Be forewarned, photos of kitties…

Phoebe leads the way, Puck follows...

Puck and Phoebe watch the world...

It should be a white Christmas…

What a beautiful storm it was!  It started as tiny little flakes outside my work window at about 1pm.  I left then and it picked up as I drove home.  By the time I got home and settled in front of the scanner (yes, I am still scanning madly), it was falling steadily.  By the time we went to bed, we had LOTS of snow piled up on the deck.  Now, at 8am, it is still flurrying…actually, as I look out, it is doing more than flurrying!  YES!  We are on our way out to shovel the front steps and walkway…I’ll upload photos when we are done.

I LOVE SNOW!!!!!

Just another day…

I love our scanner…we are buried in photos right now, slowly but surely scanning the thousands of memories we have accumulated over the years.  I will admit now that we went overboard with both the taking and saving of photos since our kids were born, but oh my, they were so cute!  I am loving the look back.  I am especially loving looking at photos of me in my skinny days, when I thought I was 5 pounds too heavy (where were those 5 pounds, my dear?  A phantom 5 pounds).  Looking at that long ago me made me realize that there has never been a time in my life when I thought I was not too heavy, that my face was not too round, that my hair was good, that my teeth were white enough…very sad, methinks.  I hope my daughter was raised better than that…she is beautiful, has been from birth…it is important to me that she knows that about herself.

Not little kittens anymore…

Our kittens are growing in size, but are still behaving like amazing, amusing babies.  Phoebe (on the left, lots of white), is small and wiry, and was originally called Jump by my husband…since we got her at 6 weeks, she has been fearless.  She is always first and fights with tooth and nail (and we bear the scars to prove it).  Puck (on the right, lots of gray) is a solid, heavy cat with unending patience.  She follows her sister into every kind of mischief, but usually a number of paces behind.  She loves to sit in the window and watch the birds at the feeder and I suspect that she is the one who has gifted us with two dead mice (we think the third mouse, a live one, was originally brought in by their older brother, Buddy, the Maine Coon cat-looking grumpy old cat below, and the girls adopted it as a play toy.  Needless to say, we captured that one and took it outside.  The girls are confined to the indoors until our Friends of Animals spay certificates arrive and we can get the girls fixed.  It will be interesting to see what they think of their first New England winter!

Ahhhhhhhh…

It’s over for another three years…a day of no food yesterday, nothing to drink overnight, system grossly clean this morning, a round of magic happy juice in my IV, a gentle and easy wake-up featuring 3 cups of blessedly cold and sweet apple juice and two packages of graham crackers, my wonderful husband’s cheesy scrambled eggs, toast and two pieces of turkey bacon, a day of sleeping it all off…nasty migraine started this afternoon, so I’m trying to rehydrate myself and sleep it all off.  But no more nasty evil awful gross hideously unpalatable magnesium citrate for three more years!!!!!!!!!!!

That said, I felt really lucky yesterday while I was studiously not eating.  I had food in my pantry and in my refrigerator.  I was hungry by choice.  So many folks out there are not.  I am so fortunate in the life I live and I do not forget that.