Any day that starts out with two inches of cold rain and a visit to the periodontist, is a day when staying in bed would have been preferable!
Since it was going to be such a rotten day from the start, I tried to arrange for my overdue mammogram, too. Unfortunately, they couldn’t squeeze me in (pun intended), and I have to make an appointment and go back.
So, I had more than two hours to kill before another doctor’s appointment. I used it to get a little Christmas shopping done.
The day is incredibly gray and rainy, and this evening we are to take my mother to dinner for her birthday. I don’t want to cook, but I’m not thrilled about having to go out again. Mother deserves a more chipper companion than I’m likely to be.
I’ve had better days.

I had to con my cat today.
Ed does not care for parties. He actually likes a few of the members of my family, but he doesn’t do well when they come to visit in droves. He must have known something was up this morning, because there was cleaning going on, when we should have been having a quiet morning.
When the door was open a moment too long, he beat a retreat, and spent the day hunting outside. Since it was in the 40s today, I figured he would be fine outside, and generally ignored him.
As it got dark, someone managed to get him into the garage, but my Mother couldn’t get him to come into the house. I tried, and he snooted me.
So….I left the door from the mudroom to the garage ajar, and turned out the lights. Then I left the door from the mudroom to the rest of the house ajar. A few minutes later there was a streak of black as the cat flew through the house to the safety of my office.
It’s nice to know that I still have the touch! *G*

The past two weeks have been tough! Part of my family celebrated Thanksgiving here, so we started about a week before, cleaning and decorating. The day was quite a success.
Then, we had ten days to prepare for an open house for my mother, who will be 88 on Tuesday. Of course there was more cleaning, but we also needed to take down all the Thanksgiving decorations and put up most of our Christmas decorations. The Christmas tree in the living room will wait to go up until close to Christmas Eve. The house is so dry that a live tree turns to tinder in less thatn three weeks. So, we put up wreaths, stockings, Christmas quilts, and decorations, and I put garland around the front door, and swags at the carriage lights.
Early in November we sent out invitations to our family, to the Empty Nesters group at church, to our entire exercise group, and to a wide range of friends. She even invited her favorite doctor and her pastor.
Without an incredible amount of help from my nieces and one of my sisters, I could never have pulled it all off. My youngest sister and one of her daughters came Saturday and we prepared the ubiquitous toasted cereal mix. (I have TONS left!) We vacuumed and cleaned, and set up coffee, tea, iced tea, soda pop and wine stations around the outside counters of the kitchen.
Two of my nieces work for a large grocery chain and they arranged nine trays of finger food and 8 of desserts. We had dips, veggies, fruit, cheese, lunch meats, shrimp and taco salad. There were tortes, cookies, cakes, and fruit tarts. We covered the center island of the kitchen, and a good part of the dining room table. No one went hungry, and we encouraged guests and family to take food home.
The house was crammed with visitors. The Empty Nesters came early and departed in about 45 minutes, because they had to go to choir practice. The exercise group came next, and they stayed and chatted for most of the afternoon. Then family came in several waves. It was wonderful to have a full house!
Everyone gravitated to the kitchen, or to the two rooms off the kitchen. It doesn’t matter who we invite to parties….they all end up in my kitchen. It was a great party.
Most of the food has been refrigerated. I’ll wash wine glasses tomorrow, and I’ll get Dear Husband to take the recycling stuff out to the bins, and we’ll try to get back to normal.
Now, I need to get my Christmas shopping done. I wonder if I could do it by proxy???

I’m participating in my very first eBay auction.
I read a magazine titled “American Patchwork and Quilting.” Last year, they asked their readers to donate a 10″ square block of any pattern made in pink and white. The aim was to sew the donated blocks into quilts and auction them on eBay, to raise funds for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
The readers rose to the challenge, and the magazine has received more than 25,000 quilt blocks! Hundreds of quilt guild members, quilt designers, quilt shop owners and others volunteered to assemble the blocks into quilts. Batting, backing, setting fabric and time were all donated, and nearly 500 quilts will be put up for auction.
In the few weeks that the auction has been running, they have already raised $25,000. The auction runs until December 31st, with new items being listed every week. ALL of the money raised through the auction will go to research. None of it will be kept for administrative expenses.
I have never participated in an eBay auction, but I think this is an exceptional place to start. I’ve bid on two of the quilts, and I have about eighteen hours to go to find out if I’ve won either or both of them. I have a five year old niece who is addicted to pink. I can’t think of a better Christmas gift for her. She will be cozy, snuggled into her own pink and white quilt, and when she is older, I can tell her the significance of the gift. It’s definitely a Win-Win situation!
This is an exceptional way for women to show solidarity. Women pieced blocks, women quilted the quilt tops, and the result of their efforts may one day save women who are facing breast cancer. That doesn’t mean we discourage men from participating. We hope everyone will help in some way to wipe out this dreadful disease.
If you’d like to participate in the auction, or even if you’d just like to see what is being auctioned, go to www.ebay.com/apqqfc.
Wish me luck!
UPDATE: YEEEEEEEEEHAWWWWWWWWWW!! I WON my first quilt!

My mother will be 88 very shortly. I’ve probably said that fifty times in the past six months. It’s amazing to me that she will be EIGHTY EIGHT!
About six or seven years ago, Dear Husband and I went to New Orleans for a few days rest and relaxation. We had dinner in a fabulous restaurant called “The Courtyard of the Two Sisters.” We enjoyed our elegant dinner so much, we returned for lunch the next day. Ever since, I have been trying to persuade my mother to hop a plane for two days and a night in the Big Easy to celebrate her birthday at the “Courtyard.”
This year, she announced that if she made it to ninety, she wanted to celebrate in Paris! I like a woman who thinks BIG! *G*
Since we are not going to Paris this year, Mother has decided to do an open house. Two of my nieces work for a major grocery chain, and they are organizing trays of finger food from their deli and bakery departments. One of my sisters and her daughters will be coming for the weekend, and she’ll organize the flowers and give me a hand getting ready. I’ll be adding things like shrimp trays, beverages, and holiday decorations.
To that end, we will begin decorating tomorrow. I have ornaments to hang from the chandelier, and I’ll swap Christmas themed wall hangings for those that normally cover our walls. I have evergreen swags and bows to put up on the carriage lights, and I plan to buy garland to drape at the front door.
I have one wreath, but I need four more. I use a lot of dried flowers and weeds when I make up wreaths, and sometimes I add silk flowers to the mix. Most of it is pretty understated and mellow. We’ll put up a tree in Mother’s sitting room, but the tree in our living room will have to wait until closer to Christmas.
I’ve tried for years to get Dear Husband to trim the roof line with white lights, but it’s never going to happen. We finally resorted to hanging the icicle lights in the front windows, and some years an angel made of grapevine, covered with tiny white Italian lights, greets our visitors.
So, tomorrow will be the start of our decorating season. Just call me Martha.

Dear Husband earned his halo today. He took the day off. I think this is the first time in 18 years that he has not gone to work the day after Thanksgiving. Since it was raining, it was a wise choice. He was spending a lazy day until I came back from my errands.
“Sweetie, could you give me a hand bringing up the Christmas decorations?”
I bet he made a dozen trips. I’d go through a box or two, and hand him what needed to be taken up the stairs, and he’d make the trip. I need to spend a morning downstairs repacking the Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations for the year, so that when the Christmas stuff goes back down, it won’t be so difficult to reorganize it.
Dear Husband has been muttering that he shouldn’t sit and watch TV after dinner. My solution to that is to have him join me in the basement, organizing what needs to be saved, and collecting what needs to be thrown away. I think he’s delayed that chore because he knows that he will get to carry the trash upstairs.
Wait until he discovers that I have five or six boxes of mismatched mugs downstairs. I’ve been saving them incase we should ever open a coffee house. Maybe it’s time to learn to make coffee.
We need a conveyor belt! I think I’ll go browse on e-Bay….

Friday morning, I went to my computer to check my mail, and discovered that it wouldn’t boot up. It would get part way into the process and then stick, beep a signal at me, and then start all over again. I didn’t have the faintest idea what had happened since the night before. When I’d closed the computer down and gone to bed, it was working.
Luckily we were expecting number three son to visit, and he’s been given the IT position in our household. So, I practiced my patience. His first question was, had I added any new programs, or had I deleted anything the night before. Nope. I told him that I was having some problems with the computer recognizing my DSL line, but otherwise, there was nothing I could tell him that might guide his search.
He tried booting up, and noticed that an error message was being displayed for one second. He rebooted repeatedly, getting one word of the error message at a time, until he could determine that the problem had to do with the keyboard. We swapped keyboards and, sure enough, it booted right up.
I contacted Dell, and they were willing to order a new keyboard for us, but they needed several pieces of information. It took me until today to supply all the information, and I can expect a new keyboard in five to seven business days.
Their response was very timely, but five to seven business days if the keyboard is in stock, seems to be pretty slow service. I’m lucky that we have several computers in the house, both new and old, so that we can swap parts.
It’s a bit awkward, having to go back to an older keyboard, but it works. I’m relieved that I was only out of contact a day or so.
Thanks #3 Son! We appreciate your expertise.

Thanksgiving dinner is over, and the last of my family have left. About 90%, or maybe more, of the cleanup is done, and I have the first of two loads of table linens in the washer. The rental chairs have been collected, the recyclables gathered, and the dishwasher is running as we speak. Most of the dishes were hand washed by my nieces, but I’m cleaning up the dessert plates and a few pans.
It was lovely! One of my nieces said that this is the most incredible meal our family has during the course of the year. I think it’s because everyone rises to the challenge and brings their finest recipes. As a family, we love to try new recipes, so there are always too many appetizers and desserts. We have food left over for days of meals, and I have to surf for ways to use up leftover ham.
I got to see parts of my family I haven’t seen for several years, and I played with a one year old who wore me out just watching him. I love Thanksgiving.
Thank you, to my family, for making it such a wonderful day.

Are you a sale maven? Do the words “the day after Thanksgiving” bring joy to your heart? Then get your rest tonight. The BIG sale day of the holiday season is upon us.
I won’t be joining you. Personally, I’d rather go to a mall on a Tuesday morning at 9:30, when not another soul is around, other than the sales people. I don’t like the hunt or the crush, and I don’t need to know that I ripped the very last Baby Bumpkins out of another woman’s hand, to win the shopper of the day award.
That doesn’t mean I don’t like to make purchases for less. I’m not convinced that you can’t save just as much on other days of the year. The traffic alone is enough to make me shake in my boots. The thought of all those accidents just waiting to happen, and all the road rage, is all I need to keep me firmly planted at home.
So, tomorrow, when all of YOU are out there, braving the crowds, I’ll be at home working on quilts. I’ll finish the Thanksgiving clean up, and I might even start some of the holiday decorating, but I WON’T be shopping.
I’m giving my feet a rest, and having a mental health day too. I encourage you to give it some thought. Let’s start a “Down with Shopping the Day After Thanksgiving” society. You have my permission to buy as many gifts on-line as you want prior to Thanksgiving. In return, you promise not to shop the day after Thanksgiving.

To my blog family, I wish you all the happiest of Thanksgivings, even those of you who may not celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow. The idea is the same worldwide, even if we choose different days or ways to celebrate.
Tomorrow 27 of my family will be here to share a meal and say thanks for all that has happened in the past year. Dear Husband’s youngest kid gave birth to our beautiful granddaughter. One of my nephews married, a niece had a baby boy. My god child also had a little boy this year. We feel very blessed.
I have pumpkin bread in the oven, and my Sicilian husband is making lasagna, which is his contribution to our meal. The element on one of my ovens has died, but we’ve found clever ways to get around the problem, and I know that our meal will be incredible. I come from a family of wondrous cooks.
I hope you have something for which you can say thanks. It doesn’t have to be something big. It could be the smile a child gave you, or a rose from your sweetheart.
I’m glad that I met Cop Car and Hunky Husband and have been voted into their family. I’m glad Dr. D. and Mad Bull came through the hurricanes safely. I’m glad for Desiree that things seem to be working out for them. I’m glad that Stephanie came home to recharge, and that the boy is doing fine, Billy. Jamie, I’m glad that I haven’t heard any stories about a mother in the Dallas area going on a rampage! lol
I’m looking forward to catching up with you all on Friday. I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!