Merry Christmas

 

          First, before anything else, I want to say, 

MERRY CHRISTMAS! 

I trust you will be celebrating our Lord’s birth with loved ones.

>>>*<<<

Mike got me an old farm sink. Remember?

          “When do you want to put it in?” he asked.

          “After Christmas,” I answered. “I’ve got so much to do before Christmas that I’m not gonna get it all done. I’ve got to make three stained glass gifts and get my cards made.” Truth be known, I wanted to make a little somethin’ somethin’ for my church peeps but Christmas got here too soon and that didn’t get done either.

          I finished my last commission and started my Christmas cards at the end of last week. I thought it would only take a couple of days but three days later I was still working on them!

          Monday, the third day of card-making, I had twenty-seven cards done and decided to put a few in the mail.

          I’m sitting here, at my kitchen table, a pile of cards on one side of me, envelopes in a nearby stack, and my list of addresses.

          It took me a while to start, but start I did. I decided on a card, I decided on a recipient, I addressed the envelope, stuffed the card, sealed the envelope, and went on to the next one.

          I was partway through my stack when it hit me. I hadn’t signed the cards!

          Aye-yi-yi!

          “I didn’t sign my cards,” I confessed to Miss Rosie on a morning love call. “All I would write would be Lots of love, Peg and Mike. They can see my love in the card I made and my return address is on the envelope.”

          “All right,” she said, but I could hear disapproval in her voice. “They’re your cards. If that’s the way you want to do it.”

          It wasn’t necessarily the way I wanted to do it, but it’s the way I did do it.

          “How’s anyone gonna know who sent it when they clean out our stuff after we die?” Miss Rosie asked.

          I don’t expect anyone to keep it past Christmas! “They’ll know because they know I make things. How many homemade cards do you get? One?” Then I remembered that their daughter Jenn usually makes cards, too. “Two?”

          “I’ve gotten three so far,” Miss Rosie said.

          I had to think fast. “But I bet they signed theirs.”

          “Yes, they did.”

          Some of the cards I sent are signed, some are not. I made sure I signed Miss Rosie’s.

          Last year, if you remember, a bunch of my cards got eaten in the mail sorting machine and some of you never got one and some of you got just an empty envelope. This year I bought all non-machinable stamps. I didn’t realize they cost extra until I mailed a dozen cards.

          Tuesday morning, during our morning chat, Miss Rosie asked, “When do you want to come down for your Christmas gift?”

          We compared our schedules and decided on Friday afternoon.

          I’d already told Miss Rosie that her gift was going to be late. Instead of making the gift I was going to make, I decided to make hers. I already knew what I wanted to make her this year. That would save me an hour or more of searching the internet for something to make. I set to work, printed the pattern, picked the glass, and started cutting.

          “Peg! What are you making for her?” you wanna know.

          It’s a grouping of three snowmen. This is the pattern I worked from and I used Miss Rosie's favorite colors.

          It took me Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning to make it.

          Tiger helped.

          I was having problems with the orange glass. I’d score where I wanted the glass to break, put my breaking pliers on the edge of the glass, and apply gentle pressure. The brim of the hat has a deep curve in it but it’s cathedral glass, a translucent glass, and it’s usually easy to break where you want it to break — even on deep curves. After losing two to mis-breaks, I used the method I first learned to break curves. And that’s to take a little off at a time. It took me two more tries to cut the brim of the hat before I got a good one. And it’s a good thing too. I was on the verge of breaking out the glass saw to cut it! Then, two more times while cutting the scarf pieces, before my score even started to crack, I heard ping! The glass had cracked in a totally different and random place which messed up the piece I was trying to cut. I’m nothing if not tenacious, and stuck with it until I got good pieces.

          I don’t mind the time I put into this or anything else I make. So what if it took me three days to make? It was a labor of love.

          I soldered the last solder line and was actually pretty pleased with it. I did better than I thought I would. My lines were neat and even. No big clumps, no obvious stops and starts.

          Oh, you know what they say!

          “What’s that?” you ask.

          Pride goeth before the fall!

          I took it to the sink and stood there until hot water ran from the tap. The last thing you want to do is put cold water over hot glass. While washing away the flux used to join solder to copper tape, I saw it. Not one, but TWO cracks in the orange glass!

          “I don’t want to give her a broken piece,” Me says to Myself.

          “There’s no time to make new pieces,” Myself replies.

          Repairing broken pieces is a process. One that I’m not so good at. It would require the un-soldering of four connections. I can do it, but it takes time and I was out of time!

          “Don’t tell her,” Me says.

          “But she’ll see it! Maybe not right away, but sooner or later. Then she might think she did it and that wouldn’t be honest.”

          “Give it to her now and tell her you’ll fix it after Christmas.”

          “I’d rather make a whole new piece,” Myself says. “And I’ll keep the broken one.”

          Debate ended.

Decision made.

I talked with my brother-in-law, Cork. “I don’t know if I broke it while soldering it or when I washed it,” I told him.

“It could be a flaw in the glass,” he said.

I have zero experience with that. If I’ve had flawed glass before, I never attributed my mis-breaks to it.

          When it was time to head down to the Kipps’ I hid the snowmen inside my jacket. Miss Rosie wasn’t expecting her gift now so she would be super-duper surprised!

          We sat at the table and Miss Rosie came out with a huge gift bag!

          “Holy cow!” I exclaimed.

          Miss Rosie gives the best gifts! My favorite thing by far is the painting she made of all the birds at a bird feeder. It’s fabulous!

          And now, my conscience is pricked.

          When my best old friend came to visit last October, she brought me such fabulous gifts too! And much to my chagrin, I didn’t show them to you. I should have. But I didn’t know if Trish wanted me to show them. I’m proud to have them. I love them. They’ve all found homes in my home. And I think of her when I see them. Rather than ask how she felt about me showing them, I erred on the side of caution and didn’t.

          “Close your eyes,” I told Miss Rosie after I’d opened all her gifts. She knew something was coming. I pulled the snowmen from inside my coat, got my camera ready, and said, “Okay!”

          “OH!” she exclaimed. “How cute!” and she laughed in delight.

          I pointed out the cracks in the orange snowman’s hat and scarf. “I’ll make you a new one after Christmas,” I promised.

          “No need,” Miss Rosie said. “I can’t hardly even see it and as long as it doesn’t fall apart, I’m okay with it.

          If she’s okay with it, I’m okay with it. 

>>>*<<<

          Mike and I were out on mail duty when the distinctive whomp-whomp sound of a helicopter came to our ears. We watched and waited for it to come into view. There’s something about the sound of these mighty machines that conveys power and maybe instills a little fear, too.

          Can you imagine what it must be like being in a war-torn country like the Gaza Strip or Ukraine and hearing the sound of helicopters overhead? It would take on a whole new meaning. What if what’s happening there comes here? What if war comes to the shores of America?

          After the sound of the first helicopter started to fade, we heard the approach of a second one. We don’t have a lot of helicopters pass over us and having two at the same time is extra unusual.

>>>*<<<

          We had rain. It wasn’t that we had a lot of rain, the issue was how fast it came down. It caused flooding because the ground couldn’t soak it up fast enough.

          Once the rain stopped, the township guy came around and cleaned the ditches. Mike and I can’t believe how deep they made the ditch in front of our place. It’s at least three feet deep. If you get off the road and into this ditch, you ain’t gettin’ out!

          Crossing our little bridge by the Kipps’ house, the water was up in the yard. See the brush in the middle of the picture? That’s where the bank is.

          “It was higher than that this morning,” Miss Rosie told me.

          Crossing the Rainbow Bridge, you can see where the Susquehanna has left its bed.

          We were heading to the dental office in Tunkhannock for a test fitting of my new partials.

I got in the chair and Robbie, the assistant, put the test partials in. “They feel funny! Like I’ve got a mouthful!” I complained, my speech muffled.

          “These are just to check the bite,” Doc told me. “Your partials should be thinner.”

          After we left and were heading back to the car, I noticed something I didn’t notice on the way in; tags hanging from the streetlights.

          I’m gonna guess they’re commemorative.

          Overnight it turned cold and our pond acquired a skim of ice on it. I thought the patterns it made were interesting.       

  

          Mid-week our girls had an appointment at the vet. How about a couple of road pictures?

          The face of the rock grows bittersweet and icicles.

          “Wow! Look how high up they are!” I exclaimed. 

“I bet they sway up there,” Mike said.

We had a scissor lift for our business in Missouri. It went thirty-five feet in the air and swayed with every move you made. I hated it! And these guys are way higher than that.

          Bondi got her shot and I had Dr. Robin look at the spot on her back.

          “It was red and raised at first,” I told her. “Now it’s a dark spot and doesn’t grow any hair.”

          “It was likely an infected follicle.” She bent down to examine it a little closer. “It does have hair, it’s just dark. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”

          I had her check Raini’s backside. I know that fleas carry diseases and we had a problem with fleas even though she’s had a Seresto collar on.

          “We’ve had a lot of complaints this year that Seresto wasn’t doing its job,” she told us.

          Raini’s backside sometimes feels hot to the touch and if I scratch her too much, welts pop up and sometimes it feels damp.

          “It’s not mange. It’s just an allergy to the fleas. Give her Benadryl to reduce the itching and stop her from chewing on it and pulling her hair out,” Dr. Robin said.

          “What if I give her too much?”

          “It won’t hurt her. If you give her too much, she’ll go to sleep.”

          I felt better that both the dogs had their issues checked by a vet.

          “Peg, what happened to Dr. Lori?” you ask.

          Dr. Lori is our normal vet but when I called two weeks ago for an appointment, they couldn’t see us until March, so I went someplace else.

          Let’s end with a sunrise picture. It’s not all reds and oranges but it was beautiful nonetheless.

          Done!