I'm ready for the new year to begin. I don't have a difficult time saying good-bye to the old and excited about what the new will bring. This is also the way I greet each waking morning, rain or shine. Christmas decorations came down when we arrived home from Florida. Yesterday was quite overcast but the temperatures reached a pleasant 58 degrees by 4 pm. Today the tree is boxed, lights and decorations are back in their bags for Cliff to store in the garage. My 2019 seed catalogues were in my mailbox before Christmas and yesterday's delightful air sent me flipping through catalogue pages looking for new seeds to try. This morning I returned to the gym. Did a half hour of Zumba and 15 minutes on the elliptical. Felt so-o good to be normal again. The down time in Florida did me good. Made a lasagna and a lemon blueberry loaf yesterday. Cliff is always looking for something to eat, especially in this dreary gloomy weather....
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Last Friday we left the dreary rainy chilly mountains for the flat land in Rockledge, Florida to spend Christmas with Mark and Jen. We always do the trek in two days staying in Valdosta heading south and Perry, GA heading back north. Purchasing the Sunpass was the best money ever spent making the drive through Atlanta easier, quicker, and less stressful for Cliff. Cliff with his Florida dogs, Schroeder and Ember. The dogs aren't really settled comfortably on a human's couch. Cliff also has a pug,Toby, in Virginia. Our weather was cool the first couple of evenings and days, breezy during most of the five-day visit, and high 70's during the last couple of days. Sunday we visited Sledd's U-Pick Farm. This time of year you can walk the sunflower maze and pick eggplant, cabbage, kale, peppers, broccoli, and a few other vegetable on her farm. I just picked kale and broccoli to bring home. Acres upon acres of happy sunflowers swaying in...
A few years ago my neighbor up the road was grocery shopping in Ingles when she felt faint, melted onto the store floor, and was transported to the ER, checked out, and sent home. Not knowing where this occurred or why she went to the ER, I saw her days later, asked how she was feeling and what happened. With a serious face she said she fell off the bar stool. I thought what a great response! If I ever fall down, that's going to be my response. Well, my opportunity came and went and I forgot to use that line. Saturday evening during the clean-up at Station Twenty-five's Christmas party, I felt my right foot hit something as slippery as ice. Both feet became air-borne with the body following. One of the volunteers said I looked like the slow motion sometimes seen on TV. My life raced before me, thinking in those seconds how to avoid breaking the fall with both wrists. When I landed on the concrete floor my right hip felt the imp...
This time of year leads me to the archive of my mother's handwritten letters. She loved the holidays. It was a family gathering time, a time for giving her home-baked wares to other, and a spiritual celebration. While thumbing through my photo box of old letters looking for something dated in December, a January 1996 envelope caught my attention because it was thicker than other envelopes. My mother often included newspaper article clippings that she wanted to share with me or Snoopy , For Better or Worse, Hagar the Horrible comic strips. She also signed off "drink more vodka" at the end of her love letters. My parents didn't drink wine or beer, let alone vodka. (I don't know where they got me.) Tucked inside this thick envelope was included a clipping " Fig- and mango-flavored vodkas seem to be the wave of the future." In Russia, where grain has been distilled into vodka for nearly 1,000 years, a flavored vodka ---- and they do flavor...