O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum

We put up our Christmas tree yesterday. And it's lovely. All white lights, the tiny kind. Almost lacy. And bedazzled with many, many homemade ornaments -- some from Mike and Beth's earliest years in school. Lots of glitter, macaroni, cotton balls, and curly red pipe cleaners.

When our kids were young, I'd lead the family on an annual excursion to find a suitable tree. We'd spend a long, long time picking out the perfect Christmas tree. Some years we visited the Rotary Club's Christmas tree stand at the Shaw's parking lot. And other years, we'd traipse through the snow at a local tree farm. Before long, Mike and Beth were well trained to carefully examine any tree under consideration --



Back then, I preferred a gumdrop tree -- dense, not at all see-thru-able, broad across the bottom, and not too pointy on top. It had to have plenty of room for many lights and ornaments. And it had to look good all the way around. The kids knew that if they could see through it, they knew to move on to another. And they knew that Mom always had the final say. Yup. Me.


With age comes maturity, right?




This year's tree is simply splendid. Al and I chose it in about 45 seconds at the Boy Scout's tree sale in Bar Harbor. The tree has a couple of thinner parts--I can even see straight through to the wall in a few spots. But I love it because it's in our Maine house. It's our tree. And I can look at its ornaments and remember Christmases when Beth and Mike were young and still at home.

I think I'm a grown-up. Maybe.

Merry Christmas!

Lesson Learned

I use AOL's Instant Messenger daily. It's an easy way to keep in touch with friends and family. And I often post a "status" message when I'm working from home, when we've gone off to church, or when we've gone up to bed.

Yet on very busy days, I may not even get to my computer until very late in the day. This was a problem yesterday. I gave my sister a horrible scare and I feel terrible about it.

This was the Acadia Chorale Society's Christmas concert weekend. We had two performances; one was Saturday night, and the other was Sunday afternoon. Sunday was such a busy day for us, we left for church early (8 AM) and didn't return until after church, errands, concert, and after-concert party (7 PM).

All the while my status message on Instant Messenger said I'd gone to bed. We were in such a hurry to leave yesterday morning, that I hadn't used my computer before leaving for church. In fact, we'd never turned on our cell phones because of church and concert etiquette.
My dear sister, Anne, couldn't reach me by computer OR cellphone. Since I'd recently blogged about how we're now using wood and propane to heat the house, she feared the worst.

We were unaware of her concern (and the concern of many others) until we pulled into our driveway last night and a Hancock County sheriff's car pulled in right behind us. He'd been trying to reach us for several hours, had contacted our neighbors, and told us to call my sister as soon as we got into the house.

As the sheriff pulled out of the driveway, he rolled down his window and called into us, "You DO have carbon monoxide detectors, don't you, now that you're heating with propane and wood?"

"Yes," we called back. Hmmm...did we? While I was reassuring my sister on the telephone, Al checked our smoke detectors.

I'll be stopping at Home Depot this morning. Those carbon monoxide detectors will be in place this afternoon.

Thanks, Anne, for taking such good care of us. I love you!

A Flurry of New Friends

It's snowing here today. And it's breathtakingly beautiful. I love snow.

When I woke up this morning, I looked out the window and detected a few random snowflakes. VERY few. Came downstairs, made my coffee, and while standing at the kitchen window, noticed that the snowflakes were coming a bit heavier. Right now, mug o' joe in hand, in my favorite recliner, I can look out seven different windows, and I'm in a snowglobe! The flakes are playfully spinning first slowly, then frantically racing, and finally, coming down in earnest, covering the ground with icy lace. It's going to be a beautiful weekend. Three to six inches of the white stuff predicted for tomorrow. Ahhh. . . I really love it.

And we're enjoying a flurry of new friends here, too. We live in an area with quite a few retired/semi-retired folks. People are certainly busy but there is a noticeably slower pace of life here and it's charming. People are willing to take the time to get to know each other. Just my cup of tea since I love to meet new people. And, interestingly, we aren't identified by our professions; we aren't caught up in the trappings of the work that we do or did. And people aren't usually frenzied to get from one appointment to another.

Yesterday, we went to our doctor's office for our flu shots (better late than never!), and ended up visiting for quite a while with the nurse who gave us the injections. While the conversation went from needle size to platelet donations (I'm a regular), he shared with us the story of his wife whose life was extended by two years because of regular platelet infusions and a bone marrow transplant she had while valiantly fighting leukemia. We weren't in a big hurry so we stayed and visited with him for about twenty minutes. It was a breath of fresh air to meet and visit with James.

Ginny, Ben, Mary, Debbie ---some of our new friends from church choir. Bernie, Kay, Marty, Dave, Joan, Jim -- some of our new friends from our neighborhood. It's great fun to get to know new people, to spend time together, and to laugh together.

Taking time to really get to know someone is a luxury that we can enjoy during this time of our lives. It takes my breath away. Just like the first snow of the season.

Time to Get Cookin'

Attention, people! We're in a recession.

Sure glad we had the financial pundits let us in on THAT headline.

So, how can we respond? We've given all of this a great deal of thought lately.

Well, we're down to using one car. And it sits in the driveway much of the time.

We've been combining errands for fewer trips into town for months now. It's habit now.

We're wearing sweaters and warm socks more, and heating the house almost exclusively with wood and propane now.

This is a great time of year to cut back on 'eating out' to just once a month (unless we're traveling, of course). There aren't too, too many restaurants open on the island during the winter anyway (there are plenty, but not nearly as many as at the height of the summer tourism time.)

And we've decided to be much more frugal with our dinner meals when we eat at home (not that we've been big spenders in groceries, but every little bit helps). We're going to try the following on each week's menu:




One night a week, an egg-based meal, e.g., omelets, scrambled eggs, souffle, strata, waffles;









One night a week, a SOUP and bread meal (we LOVE home-made soups, often make popovers from scratch, and just pulled out our old bread machine);











One night a week, a stir-fry meal (we unearthed our wok, too!);









One night a week, a main-course salad with grilled chicken or shrimp;







One night a week, a pasta or grain based meal (whole wheat pasta, quinoa, etc.);








One night a week of chicken or fish; and











One night a week of beans and rice (Please! Send your favorite recipe).


We can certainly live simply, more frugally, and still eat well. VERY well. I'm poring over the vegetarian and soup cookbooks we have -- I'm a sucker for those color pictures and want to try everything!

When do we eat?

Thanksgiving Grace

This has been a lovely, lazy Thanksgiving Day. And I have so much for which to be grateful.

Last week we traveled to Corning to be with our son, Mike, daughter-in-law, Laurelyn, and our two grandsons, Graham and Dean. The night before we left, we enjoyed an Indian dinner at a wonderful restaurant in Corning. On Sunday, we drove to Stamford and had a quick visit with Al's folks. I also had a wonderful Greek dinner out with my sister, Anne, and two of her wonderful friends, Miki and Sandy. It was a fabulous way to really stretch out our Thanksgiving celebration.

On Monday, I took the 7:43 Amtrak from Stamford to Boston for an afternoon work meeting in Cambridge. Lunch at my boss's favorite Indian restaurant. Dinner that night was at an Afghani restaurant in East Cambridge; it was amazing!

Seeing a theme here? International. Eats.

We're back in Maine now. And today is Thanksgiving. But it's quiet here. We lost power several times from the horrible storm that came through on Tuesday evening. Trees down everywhere. Thousands of customers lost power. Our power was out Tuesday night overnight into Wednesday afternoon -- out for 12 hours or so. Came back on for 4 hours, went back out for three hours. Neighbors not too far from here are still out of power.

We had decided several weeks ago that we'd enjoy our Thanksgiving dinner at the Quietside Cafe in Southwest Harbor. The owners, Frances and Ralph Reed, open up the diner to the community for a free Thanksgiving meal every year. Any leftovers go to a nearby soup kitchen. The spread was amazing --- turkey, ham, dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips (fabulous!), broccoli, beans, gravy, cranberry sauce. And the pies! Oh, the PIES! Frances' baking skills are world-famous --- people travel to MDI for vacation and make a point of going by the diner for her pies, cookies, and macaroons. Today, she outdid herself! Every kind of traditional Thanksgiving pie you can imagine, but I swooned over a piece of Espresso Pecan pie. Wow. I'm sure I'll still be wide awake at midnight, but it was worth every morsel.

Thank you, Frances and Ralph, for a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner! Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Travels in Storyland . . .

I love children's books. And, of course, I love our grandsons, Graham and Dean, to pieces! So the opportunity to read book after book after book with Graham and Dean is always a highlight of our visits. It's a winning combination!! Grandma and Grandpa have unlimited time to read story after story after story --- and a number of favorites are read over and over again.

Dean is still more interested in chewing on books, but Graham is now helping us to read! It's so much fun to re-read a familiar book to Graham and leave off the last word in a sentence he knows well. He LOVES to supply the missing word, and during this visit, I've started leaving out entire phrases. He'll play along for awhile, and then plead, "YOU read, Grandma!"

The Southeast Steuben County Library (formerly the Corning Public Library) is a treasure trove! It has one of the largest children's rooms I've ever seen -- Graham is so comfortable there, and loves nothing more than to choose new books and CD's! You can choose as many as you want to borrow (Really! No limit!) and this week he picked out 13 new books and 2 new CD's. The Travels of Babar, Babar and Father Christmas, and Curious George Gets a Medal are three favorites this week. We all (the adults) got a good chuckle out of the not-so-politically-correct "fierce and savage cannibals" that tie up Queen Celeste (Babar's wife) and hold her hostage. The book was indeed written back in the early 1930's.

Better than just about anything. Reading books with our grandsons. Ahhh...

The Verdict is In and . . . I'm OFF!

Yup. Looks like the glucosamine-chondroitin is the nasty culprit. But, it's amazing to me how long it takes to get rid of edema in your feet. So, I'm faithfully carrying my pillow wherever I go so that I can put my feet up. I've gotten quite used to working in a nearly-reclined position.

And, I'm breathing a huge sigh of relief that it looks like our travel plans to see Mike, Laurelyn, Graham, and Dean are still intact. Ahhhhh. . . I can't wait to spend this coming weekend with my NH friends at our twice-a-year rughooking retreat. I'll be continuing to work on a special rug for grandson Dean. It's a scene of barnyard animals and here's what's done so far. Lots yet to do but it's just SO much fun to work on! And then we'll head right out to Mike's after that. :)

Hope all is well with you and yours! Appreciate your health EVERY day!