Christmas 2018 (Edited)

          For a long time now, I've been starting my letter blogs on Saturday, sometimes as early as Friday. I feel like I do a better job when I have more time; when I don't feel so rushed to meet my self-imposed deadline of Sunday night. However, this is Christmas week and we only get one of those per year. As such, I spent yesterday (Saturday) getting ready to celebrate Christmas with the Kipps. Now it's Sunday and I'm just getting started but I've decided it will get done when it gets done and I won't rush to try to get it done today, tomorrow is soon enough — or the day after.

          I happened to run across a bunch letters I'd written like ten years ago and I printed them off for my Miss Rosie. In one of those letters, I talked about a pumpkin cheesecake with praline sauce. "It sounds really good," Rosie says.

          And what do I do? "I'll make it for you for Christmas!" says me.

          "Let's have apple pie too," Mike says when he finds out.

          The pie wasn't any big deal. It was a frozen Marie Callender's Dutch Apple and as frozen pies go, it's pretty good.

          The cheesecake, on the other hand, was a little more complicated to make. It has a ginger cookie and pecan crust which works really well with the pumpkin.

          What am I going to do with this little bit of pumpkin, I wondered after I scooped out what I needed for the cheesecake. Then I remembered a recipe for dog biscuits that I used to make for Bandit, Kevin and Kandyce's Pekinese. Bandit loved those biscuits. I dug out the recipe and figured there was just enough pumpkin left in the can for a batch of homemade dog biscuits for Maggie, the Kipps' Bernese Mountain dog.  

          While measuring, mixing, and putting together the cheesecake, my mind drifted to gifts. I know that Rosie was painting me something although I didn't know what. We'd popped in one day for a visit. "What 'cha doin' today?" I'd asked Miss Rosie.

          "I was just painting on the back porch while it's a little warm out," she said.

          Nosy me asks, "What 'cha painting?"

          "I can't tell you that."

          "Why not?"

          "It would ruin the surprise."

          So I knew she was painting something for me and my heart soared! I love when she paints for me. I love when she paints for others too, but I especially love when she makes me something! I'm just sayin'.

          I found this cute little snowman and made it for Rosie's gift.

          I knew the Kipp girls were coming home and Jenn had already asked if I'd gift her a photo from my Arizona trip. "I love bridges," she told me.

          I got the picture printed at Wal Mart, found a rustic frame and I'm happy that she loves my photo enough to want it.

          For Marla, I made a snowman with a lime green scarf, one of her two favorite colors (the other is purple).

          "But you're not getting nothin'," I told Lamar when we were visiting a few days before Christmas.

          He laughed. "That's fine."

          Last year Lamar told me that I could make gifts for the girls and I didn't have to make him anything; he wouldn't be offended. He was sincere. So I didn't make him anything. But as I putzed around the kitchen, my little Christmas party rattling around in my head, it wasn't sitting too well with me. Besides that, Jenn is married and I didn't make her husband Mike anything either. I decided right then and there that I would offer the two guys a choice of stained glass ornaments that I had made — if they wanted one.

          I popped the cheesecake in the oven to bake for almost an hour and inventoried my suncatchers. I had a Santa,

 the bluebird with the Santa hat, 

a tree, 

and one snowman that wasn't spoken for.

         

           I should have more than one snowman. And that's how I decided to spend my Saturday. Rather than writing to you, I knocked out two more snowmen

and the dog biscuits for Maggie.

    

          Saturday evening I was ready for the arrival of the Kipps. Pumpkin cheesecake, praline sauce, and apple pie at the ready. Vanilla ice cream in the freezer, tea water at a gentle boil on the stove, tea bags laid out for the choosing, presents ready, all I needed was the Kipps.

          And I'll take another picture, I thought. Only I got caught up in the festivities and never took another picture.

          Oh my gosh! There is no one in this world who makes me feel more special than Miss Rosie does. I don't know how I got lucky enough to have the Kipps in my life but I'll tell you what, I am so blessed. I had not one but three gifts from Rosie and Lamar. The first one was postcards that I can color and send. "Guess who I'm sending them to," I said to Rosie as I thanked her.

          "Me?"

          "Yup."

          The second gift I opened was a beautiful ornament with a Cardinal on it.

          "It's beautiful!" I told Rosie. "Did you paint it?"

          "No," she answered as she turned to sit down.

          I believed her and thought, I should have known because it's too professional looking. And I thought that whatever she had painted must be in the third gift which was very heavy. Did she paint something on a piece of wood?

          Then I heard Lamar laugh. "Yes, she did. She painted the Cardinal."

          I'm just so amazed at how good Rosie's getting!

          We had a fabulous evening visiting with the...

         "Wait, wait, wait! You just wait a minute right there Peg," you say.

          What?

          "What was your third gift?"

          Well, if you really want to know, it's the cutest cutting board ever! I smile every time I walk past and see it sitting on the counter.

          Sunday morning rolls around. 

          Sitting in our seats before service, I leaned to Rosie and quietly said, "After service can I get a picture of all the Kipps? I forget to get one last night."

          And as you can see, that's what we did.

          I had half a cheesecake and half an apple pie left over and I needed it to be gone. I don't need to eat this stuff cause I'm fat enough! I called up to the Robinson's and asked if they'd like to come for dessert Sunday afternoon.

          They came.

          I forgot to take a picture — again.

          They left.

          The apple pie and ice cream got eaten but the cheesecake was only two pieces shy of being half! It seems as if most people don't care for pumpkin cheesecake.

          Lamar likes a bite of dessert most days so I called Rosie and asked if they'd be interested in taking it off my hands.

          "Sure. I like it."

          In other news...

          I had a bit of a scare last week.

          "What happened?" you ask.

          I use Blogger to post my letter blogs on the internet. Blogger allows me to see lots of information about my blogs.

        After I post a new blog I'll check and see how many people have looked at it. This morning my Stat page looks like this. Last week, under Traffic Sources and Entry it said camparadise.net/jessica97 and had 10 views!

          I wonder if I click on it if it'll show me who this person is.

          I clicked on it and was immediately confronted with a bare-breasted woman. Whoa! I closed it as quickly as I could. Later when I showed it to Mike, a scantily clad woman came up with a caution that there were nude photos there.

          "What's that all about?" Mike asked.

          "I have no idea, but why are they viewing my blog?"

          The next day I couldn't get on the internet. I disconnected and reconnected the internet from my computer, I shut my computer down and rebooted. It didn't work. It kept saying DNS server problem. Uh-oh, I thought. I got a virus. Stupid jessica97! I was thankful though that the whole system wasn't crashed. I still had all my beautiful photos and past letter blogs. Everything else can be replaced. Then I thought to check Mike's computer. A virus on mine won't affect his. And he couldn't get on the internet either. We disconnected the router, waited a few minutes and I'm back in business.

          "I'm glad you're back in business!" my beautiful sister Phyllis told me. "I hate stupid malicious people."

          Me too! That was really scary for me! I rely on my computer heavily, every day! I keep track of friends and family on Facebook, I send and receive emails, when I write I have to be connected to the internet for my spell check to work, I look up words, and facts, and recipes, art projects, it's our phonebook, and a lot of times it's the first place I see the news. And I use my internet to look up theological questions too. There are many good Bible teachers out there, such as J. Vernon McGee, evangelists like Greg Laurie, and apologists like Ravi Zacharias. They all have podcasts and I listen most every day.

          Today I see it's tiffany34 with five pageviews but I won't be clicking on any more strange links!

          Speaking of my computer...

          Mike has developed a love for Facebook Marketplace. It's a group on Facebook where you can post, for free, stuff you want to sell. And he won't have Facebook on his computer because he does banking on his. Facebook has a less than stellar reputation for being hacked and selling user info. I know that so we never do any banking on mine.

          Normally, in the mornings while I'm feeding critters and washing up breakfast dishes, he'll scroll through Marketplace. Wednesday morning I set his tea beside him to sip on while he scrolled and I fed. I finished my job, he finished his, swiveled the chair around, and knocked his cup of tea over.

          Sigh.

          I got a towel and wiped it up. It didn't appear that much of it had gone onto the keyboard. That's what I thought until I went to send my morning loves to my sister. I noticed that every time I hit an ay, I got an ay and an ess. I thought it was me hitting two keys at once. But no matter how careful I was I kept getting an ess every time I hit ay. I finally tested the ay key by using the one finger method. It wasn't me! Tea most have gotten into the keyboard. I turned it upside down for a while but nothing came out. I'm just glad he doesn't put anything in his tea because I heard once that it's the sugars that really gum up the works. I figured it would be fine when it dries out. The next time I tried it, my ay was working fine. No tag-along ess on it. I opened a new window and the search bar started filling with esses! I wasn't even touching the keypad and my ess was going crazy! It would type a whole line of esses and just keep going forever and ever! I hit buttons until it stopped then I'd have to delete all those esses. It would be okay for a minute or two then take off again.

          "I tried to pop the key off to see if I could dry it out," I told Mike, "but I was afraid I'd break it." Mike took the key off. Mike broke it. He felt really bad about spilling his tea and now he feels really bad about breaking the key. I don't. I'm amused. I know! I'm weird! But getting upset about it won't change a thing.

          The next morning my ess still wanted to take off and run occasionally. I was chatting with an old friend on FB when it happened. I was hitting buttons like crazy to make it stop and hit enter sending her all those esses.

          "I thought a snake got loose," she said when I apologized and explained.

          There's a hole where my ess key used to be, but it works so it's all good and not the end of the world. I was prepared to live with it when I picked up the key and tried to put it on again. I flipped it around, put it in place and was rewarded with a click as the ess seated itself. It's not broke. I was just trying to put it on upside down. An easy mistake to make with an ess, that's for sure. And all is right in my world again.

          Speaking of my world, I made an effort to take pictures for you this week.

          A flock of Starlings under my feeder.

            A pretty sunrise.

            Our herd.

          On the way to breakfast one morning I took a picture of the frost on the treetops.

          The afternoon warmed and I decided to take Ginger for a walk, something we did all the time in Missouri and hardly ever here.

          You see this picture? This is at one of the neighbors. He died a few years ago and his place sits mostly empty. I walked down once after the big flood and checked his house but this is the first time I'd walked down to the creek. Do you see the creek bed in the background? Yeah? It's new. There used to be ground there and it's all gone. The flood swept it away and started a little side channel.

  

        Looking up at the cabin from the creek.

          Looking up a shagbark tree.

          A machine of some sort.

          This section of creek was making such a weird noise as it rushed over the rocks. "Blurrrump, blurrrump, blurrrump."

          You may recognize this next shot from a picture in the computer versus tea story. It's my desktop photo.

          We have a pretty creek, don't you think?

          Do you see anything in this next shot?

Let me help you out.

            Ice pictures.

          The force of the water bent this tree around another tree. 

           I walked around and took a picture from the other side too. Okay, it's more splintered than bent but it's all the same tree.

          I head for home. Walking past a culvert that passes under the road, I spot a huge strange-looking pink rock in the creek.

The flood must've washed it out from somewhere, I think until I zoom in on it. Those look like ribs — those are ribs!

          Some dumbshit tossed his deer carcass into our creek.

          And what the heck is that other thing? I can't make any sense of what I'm seeing.

  

        On down the road I go. Another neighbor who used to breed German Shepherds and only has one left.

          A flock of doves under the feeder this day. There's a Jay and Starling in the mix but mostly it's doves.

  

        I wasn't the only one watching the birds either. Spitfire tried to creep up on them but they all took off, save one.

  

          The sun!

          We've not seen it much this year and the cats took advantage of the warmer temps. We were warmer here this day than they were in the South!

          It didn't last.

          Rain clouds moved in over the Luby's mountain home. Like we haven't had enough rain this year! The pond is full-to-over-flowing.

          Enough rain!

          I want some snow!

          I may come to regret that.

          We'll see.

  

          Let's call this one done!

Merry Christmas!