This morning there's frost on the vinyl panels that enclose the back porch, and a notification at the bottom of my screen says "Temps to drop Thursday." The heater under the table makes it tolerable out here, but my coffee's getting cold before I can drink it.
It was warm enough yesterday morning (Christmas Day) that folks came to Nanny's breakfast without a coat. Yesterday afternoon, the wind whipped up, and we bundled up to visit Son #2's family.
Half of the gifts I ordered for The Husband have not arrived, and the ones I bought him in the store either didn't work or didn't fit. Half of the gifts he ordered for me didn't arrive, either. Still, we had a good Christmas. My "big present" to the Husband was tickets to see ZZ Topp and Lynard Skynard in concert in March.
Heh. Turn it up. ;)
Christmas morning was special because The Grandson was here for the first time since he was a baby. We opened presents here, had a good breakfast and more presents at Nanny's, then we took him home. After that, we visited Son #2's house and enjoyed seeing all the loot that Santa brought for The Granddaughters. When we finally got home, we had a quiet evening and were thankful for the left-over soup for supper. We were pooped.
It was late Saturday afternoon when we finally put up two - count 'em, TWO - Christmas trees, a little one on a living room table, and the big "stick tree" on the back porch. It took us nearly two hours to clean and rearrange the back porch to accommodate the tree and our Christmas Eve guests, but the result was worth the work. It was warm enough that the relatives could be comfortable in their shirtsleeves on the porch, and the stick tree looked really cool and festive all lit up. And the porch is now so tidy.
I think the stick tree might live out here permanently.
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Last week was brutal on a genetically lazy old lady like me, and tomorrow I'll have to get moving early for "office day," but today I am enjoying a slow morning in my housecoat (which I may still be wearing when The Husband gets home from work). The Granddaughters gave me a bunch of watercolor paper that I am anxious to try out, and The Husband gave me a new paintbrush holder, so I might paint today.
Speaking of paintings, a few days before Christmas I mailed the best of the Christmas cards I painted before the holiday. The others I cut into gift tags. I'm patting myself on the back, not for painting the cards but for actually mailing them (albeit a tad too late for pre-Christmas delivery).
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Over the weekend, we hooked up a code scanner on the car that The Husband bought at the estate sale. He had bought the car despite the fact that the dashboard was lit up like a Christmas tree (which I had not known about because I was inside, rummaging through the dead lady's stuff). He/we figured that part of the lights resulted from the car having sat, undriven, for over a year, for the "car facts" report indicated that the car had been very well maintained. When the scanner returned the readings, the list was pretty long - this sensor, that sensor - but the estimated cost of repairs was not all that scary. Sunday afternoon, Son #1 came by and peeked under the hood. He took the cover off something and discovered that a mouse had gnawed a bunch of wires. The Husband did some web surfing and discovered that the wiring harness for that model (2007) is no longer manufactured. However, The Brother-in-Law, who works as an autobody repairman, believes he can find something that will work (he has "connections"), and the menfolk believe they can do the re-wiring. We'll see.
I wish they would get right on it, for I've been greedily eying that "remote start" button on the key fob (nothing else in the driveway has one). I expect I won't get to use it this winter, even if they find the right part right away, since the weather is supposed to turn cold in a few days.
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I hope to get together with my siblings on New Year's Eve or Day. In the past, I have invited them for a traditional Southern dinner centered around peas, greens, and cured pork, but when my grandchildren reached school age and began bringing various bacteria and viruses to family Christmas gatherings, I began getting sick by New Year's Day. We are all a little anti-social and germophobic to begin with, and now that we are old, it takes something special to blast us out of our dens. But we have fun when we get together, and we ought to do it more often. I should call them and invite them to dinner, huh?
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