Holiday wrap-up

Also known, I suppose, as That Was The Break That Was.

* It was cold. And snowy. We missed, much to my chagrin, the Christmas Eve service because 6 inches of snow fell Christmas Eve Day and the streets in town were horrible. (Many churches - though not the one my parents belong to - cancelled services. I think their church did not cancel because the pastor lives a few blocks from the church, and could walk it if he needed to).

* My brother and sister-in-law were very late arriving for Christmas (though not because of the weather). We were opening gifts at 9 pm on Christmas night, which was really kind of late for both my mother and me, as we'd been up early doing the last of the cleaning, and we had both kind of rushed around getting the dinner together.

* It made me a little sad when I opened up the box where the stockings were and saw the ones my mom had made for the (now gone) cats. (Yes, the cats in the family had stockings. My brother and sister in law's big cat has one). I hope it's a good long time before any of the other stockings have to be "retired permanently."

* The little knit shop in town in bustling; the owner bought out the stock of a shop that had closed so now she has (at least for a time) all kinds of yarns from distributors she hadn't been using. I got six skeins of Silk Garden on a pretty good deal; I think I am going to make a simple at-home type shawl (to throw over my shoulders when I read at night and get cold) out of it. It makes me happy to see the shop being a success.

* I wound up having to mail lots of stuff back. If I could check bags through to Mineola that wouldn't really be a problem (I could have put most of the stuff in an extra suitcase) but I can't so I don't. I hope everything arrives OK. We insured what we could (the stuff we had receipts for; there's not much point in insuring stuff you don't have receipts for, apparently).

* I got a lot of books for Christmas. Most of them are being mailed back to me, because of the weight issue. I did carry back a book of crock-pot recipes I got because I thought I might want to use it sooner than it would take for the boxes to arrive. One idea I had never thought of: you can bake potatoes in a slow cooker, it takes 3 hours or so on high or 6-9 hours on low. I rarely bother to bake potatoes because the time between my getting home and my wanting to eat dinner (or my needing to eat dinner, as when I have an evening meeting) is usually too short to wait the hour or so it takes a potato to bake - and also there's the issue of heating up the oven for just one potato (if that's all I want). (I know, you can microwave them, but I notice a difference in the texture). I'm going to try the slow cooker and see how it works.

I also decided I need to eat more protein. My father is on a higher-protein, lower-carbohydrate diet now and I kind of ate what everyone else ate while I was up there, and I do think it was better for me. I probably don't get enough protein when I'm by myself. I plan to use the slow cooker to do more meat-based meals; most of the meat I can get readily is low-marbled, and tends to be tough, but slow cooking should take care of that.

* I also got a big bulky sweater kit from KnitPicks - it's kind of a fake-Cowichan sweater, with various designs to work in, so you can pick and choose what you want (deer or owls, snowflakes or hazelnuts)

* I also got a very nice small drawstring bag - made from fabric coming from one of those "fair trade" or "self help" or whatever you call them co-ops in Guatemala. It's for carrying knitting in, and the nice thing is you can put your ball of yarn in the bag, pull the drawstrings, and loop it over your wrist to hold while you knit and walk. I foresee that being used for knitting-while-invigilating in the future.

(It's funny, but that's probably my favorite gift, even though it was probably one of the less expensive ones. It's pretty, and it will be very useful)

* I also got a set of Haikubes (large dice with words on them that you can use to make haiku; kind of like the fridge-magnet poetry). I didn't really take time to play with them like I should have, but I will once they arrive here.

* I drank a lot of tea while up there. My schedule here doesn't always permit me to drink much tea; I've found I can't drink caffeinated tea after 4 pm or so or else I don't sleep.

* It was very dry. Very, very dry. We had to run a vaporizer almost constantly and even at that my skin got very dried out and flaky. (It's dry here, too, but at least it's not cold and dry, which I think is worse for the skin).

* I dug out my old set of Little House books and re-read sections of them while I was up there. I think perhaps a lot of my interest in "doing things" (and also the sort of vague, "back to the land" ideas I have from time to time - where I think it would be interesting to try to rely on my own skills and talents - though realistically I know I'd probably give up with the first failure to grow/find food, or when the t.p. gave out - probably came from those books. I always enjoyed reading the descriptions of how to do stuff - how to build a smoker and smoke meat, or how the bread was made. And I realized, re-reading part of Farmer Boy, that maybe my dimly-imagined desire to learn to weave on a big heddle loom, and maybe try to make a living at it, may actually have been a dimly-remembered image of Mother Wilder weaving at her loom.

* Squirrels are amusing to watch but dang can they go through a bag of sunflower seeds in no time.

* Taking down my own Christmas decorations somehow does not make me as sad as helping take down my parents' did. (And I really need to get back to it; I'm about 3/4 done).