Lovely weekend. :-)
Made mincemeat and apple jalousie, two lots of Christmas stuffing, cheese straws and cranberry sauce. I wrapped some presents, including gift bottles of mincemeat and of damson gin. We got all the Christmas decorations out, which is always a humourous process of elimination…
“Hang on. We’ve only got five boxes out, and I can see the outside lights, but where are the inside lights?”
“Aren’t they in there?”
“No, that’s got the garland for the landing banisters, and that’s big enough to fill that box.”
“How about that one?”
“Nope. It’s not heavy enough - the light curtain for the living room window weighs twice that, and I’m also missing the gold star lights and the Christmas tree lights….”
“Well there’s nothing else under guest room bed. The tinsel box came from the only space under the office bed. Which means…”
“Oh dear Lord no.”
“Yes. It must be under our bed.”
*both pause to picture the myriad of boxes lurking under the king size pine bed*
“What’s the betting it’s right in the middle?”
“I am NOT taking that bet.”
It WAS right in the middle. But we managed anyway.
Back to progress. I made good progress on the taxes, some progress on the MA stuff, and no progress on the writing.
Yes, you may kick me now.
But before you do…. it’s icy outside. Now, I seem to remember icy winters as the norm in my childhood. Now they seem to be rare and wonderful. We got all Christmas-excited and rolled right on from getting out the decorations to making the Lucia Household Illuminations happen, a complicated and technical exercise that involves eight seperate lighting features, three (so far, more will be needed before we’re done with the inside lights) strip sockets, three timer switches and a variety of hooks, clips and fastenings.
I was wearing four layers, including thermal underwear, plus a coat, scarf and gloves, and was still whimpering from the cold in toes and fingers. And I wasn’t the one up the freaking ladder. Poor Husband found icicles on the windowsills, and ice on the inside of the guest bedroom…. (don’t fret, it’s only minimally heated when we don’t have guests).
But the POINT is, it’s beautiful out there. Every leaf, every crunchy blade of grass, each starburst head of yarrow and fennel, is frosted as if dipped in powdered glass. They’ve gritted the village road (a VERY rare occurence!) which tells us how icy it must really be.
Everything is white. With just a little bit of silver.
It’s breathtaking, and I don’t mean the cold.
So it was good to be out in the frosty sunshine, hanging the Christmas lights, thinking about Christmas.
Really good.
