Checking It Twice

If it seems like there was a bit of a gap between the last couple of posts, well, there was.  One might think I've been scurrying around with my Christmas list, but as far as holiday prepping goes, this has been a most laid back year.  Most shopping has been done from the comfort of my office chair.

As far as getting the house ready, we take the plastic bag cover off the four-foot pre-lit tree, bring it upstairs, and plug that sucker in.  It's pre-decorated too, if that's what you call it when you leave all the bits and bobs on the branches from one year to the next.  Pre-decorated sounds better than lazy.

I do some other decorating on a minimal basis.  Each year it seems to get minimal-er.  Maybe change out the plates on the kitchen rack to the Santa Clauses, throw down a holiday table runner, pin up a festive wall hanging, bring out the vintage blow-mold snowman, a candle or two, and call it done.

I do like visiting with people who go all out at Christmas. Love to ooh and aah.  If that's your thing and you like to do it up like Liberace (or the Griswolds), then your joy is my joy.  Likewise, if you prefer to keep it simple, I'm cool with that. 

One year, I found this in one of my daughter's old notebooks and decided to frame it and hang it during the holidays.  It must have been an assignment to write a letter from the perspective of her future self in 10 years.

She was probably in fourth grade when she wrote this.  Amazing that she already knew what she wanted to do at that age.  She does indeed work with animals now, not only giving injections, but monitoring their anesthesia during surgery and their treatment and care afterwards.

(Click to enlarge)

As it turned out, she never lived with her girlfriends Alex and Sam during school, but I like how she anticipated having roommates wasn't going to be all fun and games. 

"How can a girl work when she has a bunch of horse for roomies!?!"  Indeed.  You have to read that sentence in the context of the previous one.  Horse.  As in horses, the animals. 

All is well by the end of the letter, though. "Alex and I bought a book and sipped on warm coffee which soothed our winter-frosted souls."  There's some poetry right there.  Pretty sure she didn't know about Starbucks yet, but books and coffee certainly can do wonders for the winter-frosted.

Checking It Twice

What has occupied some time lately, and what we did have to check twice, as in test drive, was a car.  

Recently we've had to do some car shuffling, owing to an incident a couple weeks ago which involved the deployment of an airbag.  Everyone is completely fine, thankfully, but daughter needed a vehicle so we sold her one of ours.

Thus began the search for a replacement for ourselves, and we finally settled that on Saturday with another Toyota Avalon, like the previous two.  It's a few years old but has very low miles and still a new car feel to it.  A total "grandpa car," except it's not a Buick.  I wish I could say it was as fun to drive as the Camry, which seemed zippy and sporty, but at the end of the day, I guess we're built for comfort.

RTFM
Poor Everett.  I neglected him for weeks and didn't even cut the tape on the box until the car thing was resolved.  Now that he's been busted out, I'm looking at him, realizing I haven't a clue how to thread the machine or wind the bobbin.  So between familiarizing myself with the car's bells and whistles and getting to know Everett, there will be some serious reading of manual(s) in the weeks ahead.  Looking forward to learning new things!

I hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday!