Into the New Year

           Happy New Year!

          This is my twenty-fourth year thinking of and writing to you every week. It’s been my habit to start the new year by giving you letter facts of the previous year. How many stories I wrote, how many words, pages, and pictures that entailed. Let’s break with tradition this year and just say I wrote to you sixty-two times last year. Yes — to you. You are all in my heart and I do this for you.

Over Christmas my turn came to read Where the Crawdads Sing. I got the book on December 24^th and started to read it. At first, I thought it was too ‘flowery’. I read for a couple of hours Saturday morning and really started to get interested in the story, even came to appreciate the floweriness because it involved nature. Then I switched over and wrote my letter blog. Since I didn’t write so much that week, I actually finished pretty early on Sunday. That means I could spend the rest of the day reading and that’s exactly what I did. I spent the entire day at my desk just tearing through the book as fast as I could read. It was so so very good. I returned it to the library eleven days early.

I have to tell you. I belong to two libraries. I think I told you that. I had this book on hold at one of them when I got a notice saying I could get it sooner if I went to the other library. So, I did that. I got the book, read it, returned it, and never canceled my hold at the other library. It’s due to me in eighteen weeks and I think I’ll read it all over again.

I interrupted reading Watership Down to read Crawdads and since I still had four days left on my loan, I finished that one, too. Boy! Those rabbits certainly had an adventure!

“My favorite book of all time is A Man Called Ove,” my Miss Rosie told me. “I could read that one a second time.”

I went to the library and put it on hold. “I can get it in three weeks,” I told her. The other readers finished and returned it early or couldn’t get into it and returned it. Either way, I got it early and that’s what I’m reading now.

“How do you like it?” I hear you ask.

I like it. I do. I find the writing style interesting. I’m sure it’ll sneak into mine in some way. When they talk about money in the book it’s not dollars it’s krone. That’s the basic monetary unit of Denmark, Greenland, and Norway.

I’m reserving judgement on the book until I finish it.

Do you think they’ll be books in heaven? 

Our week started off with a bat in the house. Mike and I were watching TV when he let out an, “Uh-oh!”

“What?” I asked.

Two or three cats came tearing into the room.

“There’s a bat in here,” Mike said.

I started to ask where when the critter circled around the ceiling fan and flew out of the room, the cats hot on his tail.

I jumped up. “I’ll get the net!”

Before we finished our ceiling, we had an occasional bat or bird come in. We could open the door and chase them around until they flew out but for good measure, we bought a fishing net. I never had a chance to use it until now.

I took a swipe at him and he flew behind the TV, landing on the floor. I couldn’t get to him but Bondi could. I could only peek between the TV and wall and watch as she cautiously approached and gave him a sniff.”

“Don’t let Bondi get him!” Mike was incredulous. “All bats have rabies!”

“They do not,” I said.

“They do so. Margaret said so,” Mike said of our friend in Missouri.

“Margaret worked in the health department. I’m sure all of the bats that were sent to her to be tested did have rabies.”

 Then the bat was off, circling the ceiling fan again. I took a few more swipes, missing every time, until he went behind some breakable stuff on the bookshelf. He stayed there the rest of the night — until the middle of the night. Around two, a herd of elephants went stampeding through the bedroom. I knew it was only the cats chasing the bat. I got the flashlight from the headboard and confirmed my suspicions.

The next morning, Mike had had breakfast and was heading in to the bedroom to get his pills to refill his weekly pill planner.

“Whoa!” he yells. “Peg! That bat is dive-bombing me!”

I got the net and this time, after two or three failed attempts, I nabbed him and took his picture.

Then it was outside where I shook him from the net. “Go on now!” I talked to him the whole time. “You’ll be happier out here.” It actually took me longer to get him disentangled from the net then you might think. 

You know something?

I really hate it when I put things away and forget where I put them. What’s more, I really hate when I can’t find something and don’t even remember that I’d moved it!

The only newspapers that come in the house are the free ones that show up in my mailbox a couple of times a week. I save them. I’ll use them to wipe grease from a pan, clean up a spill (instead of paper towels), stuff in the toe of wet sneakers, protect the table while doing craft projects, or as a last resort, I’ll pass them on to Mike’s bud Vernon. He uses them to start the fire in his fireplace.

The newspapers get tucked between the plastic bag bag and the side of the cabinet. I noticed the papers and bags were starting to get out of control. I pulled the bag of bags out, took one off the top, and stuffed the newspapers down inside. Then I took another bag and stuffed it full of bags to recycle. Our grocery store has a recycle bin in the foyer for them.

“Let Vernon know there’s newspapers here if he wants them,” I told Mike.

Now, you have to know that I abhor plastic bags. Most times I remember to take my cloth bags in the store with me but I’d sooner carry two or three items out in my arms then bring a plastic bag home if I don’t have to. Still and all, I end up with quite a few.

“Why do you hate plastic bags?” you wanna know.

I know that in many households, plastic bags are put to good use. Empty cat litter. Line a trash can. But I’d be willing to bet that most people still have an abundance of plastic bags. They end up hanging from trees, faking me out, making me think it’s a bird. Or, what’s worse, in our oceans, around the necks and in the bellies of our sea life.

I cleaned out the cabinet, Vernon stopped for the newspapers, and the bags got recycled.

A few days later, we make a trip to the store. The sun was shining but there was still fog in the valleys.

I only intended to get one maybe two things so I didn’t take a bag in with me. Turns out, I thought of more things to buy while in the store and I had to bring a dreaded plastic bag home.

One of the things I bought was a bag of apples. I always put my apples in the fridge and trying to do that speedily and efficiently. I dumped them directly from the bag to the door of the fridge.

One apple got away from me and rolled away down the floor.

Darn! Now he’s gonna be bruised! I thought.

I decided to unload the rest from the bag to the door one apple at a time.

Closing the fridge door, I went looking for the lost apple.

“Woof!” Bondi says. I could see her back end as she stood on the other side of the cabinet in front of the door.

I abandoned my search for wherever the heck the apple rolled and went to let Bondi out.

And don’t’cha know, there was the apple. Bondi had claimed it.

What the heck, it’s already bruised. I let her have it and opened the door. “What are you gonna do with that?” I asked. She does like apples but would she be apple to get a bite out of a whole apple? I didn’t know but thought it would be fun to find out.

Bondi picked up her apple and went trotting out on the patio.

Up over the step she goes and drops it on the other side where she likes to bury things. The apple rolled away.

“I don’t think you can bury that!” I told her.

I had more groceries to put away. “I’m going in,” I told her.

She picked up her apple and came back in with me.

After unloading the groceries, I wadded up the bag and when I went to stuff it in the bag bag, it wasn’t there. There was only a big empty spot.

What happened to my bags? I wonder. Did I recycle them all? I checked the staging area where I put things that need to go to the car, but there wasn’t anything there. I’d already recycled the bags. I did intend to keep a few, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out where the bag of bags went!

Bondi soon tired of her apple. I washed it, liberally cut away the bruises and little doggie teeth marks, which weren’t very deep. I had about half an apple when I was done!

Two days later I spot the bags in a corner, on a bottom shelf, in the utility room. I have no memory of moving them but obviously I did. No one else in the house would’ve moved ‘em.

That same week I went in to the washer and dryer nook to start a load of laundry. With just Mike and me in the house, I don’t do a lot of laundry. I’ll wait until I have a couple of full loads before I even think about washing.

I sort the laundry, fill the washer, and when I reach for my homemade soap, I have to push a bottle of the store-bought stuff out of the way. I’m standing there, puzzled. It was a full or almost full bottle and I have no idea where it came from.

“Maybe the laundry fairy left it for you,” you say.

I know, right!

Getting old. It’s not for sissies, that’s for sure!

This week, in the line of crafts, I finished another Dream box.

You know, I could really call them anything and make any stencil I wanted. I could do LOVE, HOPE, JOY. But aren’t those all things we dream of having?

I thought about calling it TREASURE because it is a box you could put treasures in but the word itself is too long for the space I have.

I wanna make more.

I made a blue elf and a snowman this week.

“He looks cold,” my Miss Rosie said of the elf.

He was a special request. 

Speaking of special requests…

My best girl Joanie hung her Santa and her elf with the other Christmas suncatchers I’d made and realized she was missing a year.

“I’m missing a 2018,” she told me and sent a picture.

“I don't know what I made in 18,” I told her. But didn’t add, I don’t know if I even made anything in 2018.

“Me either but I must have been a bad girl, Santa didn’t bring me one.”

I checked with Miss Rosie. Even if I didn’t make one for anyone else, I thought I’d probably made one for her.

“I got two that year,” she told me. “Both of them snowmen.”

I dug through my patterns and found the snowman Joanie was missing. What makes hers more special is instead of stickers, I’m using glass paint. There is something special in glass paint to help it adhere to the glass better than regular paint.

Do you think Joanie would’ve gotten it if she hadn’t've asked?

Me either.

Lastly, look at this handsome guy, would ya! My nephew Farley has been sent overseas to Iraq to serve our country.

          “Can I show your picture?” I asked.

          “Of course,” he answered. “Tell everyone I said hello.”

          Farley says hello and he hopes everyone had a good Christmas and has a healthy and prosperous new year.

          We love you, Farley.

          Let’s call this one done!