Busy Week Ahead

Our fun weekend is over, and the only people leftover (snicker) are my sister and Daisy. They are staying across town with youngest sister, so we're at home, alone, preparing ourselves for a medical week.

I get to visit my dentist tomorrow----a routine, not an emergency. So aside from getting there on time and keeping my mouth open, there isn't much preparation. Except I have to remember to take antibiotics for all dental work since I had a knee replacement.

But Good Guy has surgery in Green Bay on Tuesday afternoon. He's classified as an outpatient and we will probably be released by evening. But we'll stay in a motel there overnight, so he can sleep off his anesthetic in peace and we'll drive home in the morning. So I need all my entertainments around me. Netbook, knitting, book, stationery so I can catch up on letter-writing. You'd think he was having a two day procedure done. But you never know what you will feel like.

That's all the medical stuff, but our week is built around it. I'm supposed to have a bunch of quilt squares done by December 1, and I should have been working on it this weekend, but I was just hanging out with my family instead. Lucky me.

In an entirely unrelated subject, the weather has turned wet, windy, and cold. Going out to walk takes real will power---or a frisky puppy. (Daisy got me out for a while this morning.) My walking partner has had a house full of company, so our usual time hasn't been convenient for her. I am pretty dependent on her for getting me out, and vice versa.

I will return and all will be well. Hold that thought.

The Annual Thanks-Fest

Ahh, tomorrow! The annual favorite holiday of many! No presents to buy, just food, family, and football.

While my kids were growing up, the feast took second place to the fact that it was the beginning of the firearm deer hunt in Wisconsin. Our hunter couldn't wait to get down to his deer camp---the tiniest little shack I've ever seen.

But after staying out in the cold watching for deer from dawn til dusk, it was comforting to touch base with family and have a big carb loaded dinner. The very one we are all looking forward to tomorrow.

I will forgo my favorites, which would be dressing, green bean casserole, and apple pie. But there are a great many other delicious things to look forward to.

I have hopes that the Pack will beat the Lions, but I am not confident enough to place any bets on the outcome. Anything can happen.

Of course, the main event is really is in the title of the holiday. Giving Thanks. And I try always to count my blessings, which adds immeasurably to my happiness in life. I have a very long list of things for which I am grateful, and my good friends are close to the top of this list.

My family and faith, friends, health, are just the beginning. I hope you have some quiet time to reflect on the many reasons you have to be grateful tomorrow. (You can even start early---or extend the thankfulness beyond the holiday if you wish.) I'm pretty sure the Lord is pleased with our gratitude all the time.

Happy Thanksgiving from our house to yours!

The View From the Couch

Our fun day with kids here is over and we are recuperating. But there will be more mischief afoot with youngest son returning for Thanksgiving week accompanied by his nephews (who are also my grandsons, of course), and the East Coast Girl is still home until she leaves on Wednesday.

Above we have a blurry shot of my grandsons with East Coast girl, and the parents of the grandsons. (The dear DIL, who brings baked goods with her.) This time she brought pumpkin pie, a pan of brownies, and a banana bread. She's a keeper, for sure.

Our "view from the couch" concerned a full Sunday of football. Our team is the darling of the talking heads. They have won 15 straight---and they are bound to lose a game because the defense is porous at times. Yet, they keep on winning. So we listened to that game, the Packers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. At the same time we watched the Detroit Lions finally defeat the Carolina Panthers. Ugly, but effective.

After that----well, you get it. I could go on and on. I have to laugh at the McDonald's ad where the girlfriend confronts her boyfriend with the choice. Face the facts, girl! It's the truth.

McDonald's: Sundays Are For Watching Football? - YouTube:

The day wasn't wasted though. I'm almost done with some Christmas knitting, and I sat with my Christmas lists on my lap trying to think of clever and useful gifts. Perhaps I thought it would get filled in by osmosis. Since some of my giftees occasionally check in here, I won't divulge whether I had any brainstorms. I do think I'll knit some more lined mittens. I do have people who have to be out in the cold.

Another place I visited over the weekend was the beautiful gift shop at our local Rainbow's End alpaca farm. Their shop is just beautiful, well stocked with yarn and finished items, both hand knit and manufactured. (When I win the lottery, it's at the top of my list to visit.) I could make a big dent in my Christmas list there.)

But not today, I think. I'd better toddle off and fill the washer instead. Hope your day is a happy one!

Friday Again

You know how this works:

You sit down and ponder what trivia has passed through your mind and been discarded as a possible blog subject, then you recapture it and link it up to Friday Fragments. Our friend and hostess, Mrs 4444's hosts this link every week. (Thanks, M4)

Good Guy has been sick this week with a really bad cold. Saint Bev had surgery in Marshfield last Friday and hopefully will be back home today. She said they would keep her about a week. My walking partner's mom who is in long term care, and quite elderly is failing. I feel surrounded by medical crises.

I feel lucky that I was born in an era with so much medical care available---even if it isn't much help with a cold.

We loaded up our bird feeders this week and were promptly invaded by squirrels. We have a neighborhood senior citizen squirrel named Stubby who has lost a good portion of his tail. He was "first on the scene".

It is hunting season in Michigan, but its a treat to see six venison denizens on the hoof on Wednesday at Kay's for quilting. Kay's guy placed some corn outdoors for "bird feeding", clanked on the flower pot three times, and as soon as he came indoors the deer appeared. Magic!

Weight Watchers has a program in place called "Lose for Good" wherein money gets donated to food pantries for every pound lost by members. In addition we have been collecting non-perishable food items to donate locally. (It's a good way to redirect our food obsessions.)

Quite naturally, the meeting subject yesterday concerned strategies for dealing with holiday eating, leftovers, etc. Our leader gave us some point values for some of the "standing temptations" of Thanksgiving----dressing, gravy, pie, green bean casserole! (I'm allowed 29 points per day. Her meal added up to 62 points...............(burp!)

I've been writing to my adopted soldier who is a career Army person and was delighted to get a letter back! It's so much easier to write when you know something about the person!

I'm looking forward to reading Other Fragments! Have a great weekend!

Curb Your Enthusiasm

I am so excited and pleased.

My Out East daughter is on her way to her homeland (here) as I write this and we are using this occasion to round up as many family members as can get here for Saturday and a nice big (but easy) feed-for-all. My other DD is close by now, so she can be here, and the Green Bay Group will come after my grandson completes his band performance.

We will even have over nighters, which doesn't happen very often. We have a hide-a-bed which gets used for one guest at a time, but we don't have groups unless they are very understanding and can make do on air mattresses. Fortunately these guests are kind and understanding in capital letters.

So maybe I'll have Good Guy take some pictures and I'll show you some of my beautiful descendants. It could happen! You never know!

Oh, you want to know the menu? Shredded porketta on crusty buns, calico beans, tossed salad, and whatever delicious dessert my daughter-in-law brings. She is a World Class baker!

I am hoping that your weekend holds some happy times too!

A Lovefest

Once upon a time, in the land across the border, I was a wife to a nice man who was the father of my children. He had two equally nice brothers, and was the cousin of a family of a Great Many Children.

Now this nice man wasn't particularly sociable or gregarious, and as time went by, I was the person the cousins came to know. Many of these cousins who were about our age, had dear wives who became my close friends.

Yesterday I attended a family event just because i love this family dearly, even though I don't see them very much anymore. It was very gratifying to be welcomed and hugged by so many old friends.

It was fun to see the younger generation----and see who resembles which parent. It is helpful if their faces still resemble the children I remember them being, but that's not always the case. They have grown into lovely, gracious people and I love to see that, too.

So, you see, it was a love fest all around. As we get older, and begin losing our old friends, it's important for me to maintain these old connections. We can never have too many people who love us. Don't you agree?

End Of Innocence

Weeks ago my sister told me I had to watch a program on TV which aired last night. This is noteworthy because, first of all,she never tells me what to, and secondly she doesn't recommend television shows very often.

But this show was on Point of View on Public Television was done by a local film maker about local young men who joined the National Guard---for something to do----and to get an education paid for. The film follows them from the decision making through deployment in Afghanistan and their "safe" return home again.

No more happy-go-lucky young guys returned. Even though they returned with all their limbs, and their eyesight, they were profoundly changed by their experience.

For many of us, it takes decades to become adults with a realistic point of view about the way the world works. For these young men, all that and more was accomplished in a matter of months. We may have more sophisticated ways to fight wars than lining up in ranks and marching straight for the enemy, but there are wounds anyway.

I wonder if there was ever a conflict where the participants were not thinking, "Why are we going through this again? What will this prove?"

However, in honor of Veterans everywhere of every age, my heartfelt thanks for your sacrifice of time. Thanks for putting your life on hold to do whatever they asked you to do for your country. I pray that you will or have regained enough equilibrium to be happy again in our society, or that you have the will to help us remedy its many problems and flaws.

God bless you real good.

Food for Thought

Good Guy was just sorting through jackets and coats in the front closet and he came upon an old notebook in the pocket of a trench coat.

These are always great finds for me, since I tend to write a lot of stuff down so I don't forget.

Today I found these old gems: None of them are original with me, though I don't have any way to attribute them to the witty folk who thought them up.

"Lottery: a tax on the math impaired."

"We have enough Youth: How about a Fountain of Smart."

"Consciousness: that annoying time between naps."

A motto for the IRS: "We've got what it takes to take what you've got."

And on a more serious note, this was attributed to Buddha:

"What you are is what you have been. What you'll be is what you do now."

Hold that thought.

Snuggling into Wintertime

Unknown Mami hosts a Sunday party known as Sunday in My City. Which I'm not linking up to, since I don't have any pictures to contribute, but after I read them it got me to thinking.

It is possible that it seems more like Fall/Winter today because of the end of Daylight Saving Time this morning, but suddenly it feels as though winter is staring me right in the eye. Most of the leaves are down, and the city has swept up the leaf piles left at the curb. Every morning while we're walking we can see migrating flocks of geese.

Our yard squirrels come up on the railings and peek into the kitchen window above the sink. What's up? Why no seeds out here?

We haven't suffered any snowy indignities that other parts of the country have experienced, so we are fortunate in that regard. But we have had some cold, cloudy, blustery weather nevertheless. Mornings are frost-laden and we wait to walk until nine o'clock, when there's some chance that it's a bit warmer.

We are finding, though, that when you get outdoors every day, you do get accustomed to the cold. Sort of. So far. What we won't get accustomed to is walking on slippery surfaces, so we are trying to plan ahead. We talked about exercising at the Y, and perhaps it will come to that. Yet we do have exercise equipment lying about unused, so we are going to do that together.

But for the time being, we are still good with walking in the great outdoors.