After a half a pot of coffee and half a box of Kleenex I'm beginning to join the living. I think.

I have come down with ANOTHER cold. That makes 2 since I've been at Mother's. Before that, I couldn't tell you when I've had a cold. But I'm outdoors a lot now. No matter the weather.

I have to walk the dog and take him outside to the bathroom. He has a gigantic bathroom now. The whole world. I don't just take him in the front yard then we're done. Oh no. We go all over.

The property meets with the 14th hole on the city's only Golf Course. If no one's coming down the fairway, we walk out to the pond and up to the 15th tee on the cart path. We occasionally find a stray golf ball. (When I was young, we'd snag golf balls and run a stand to sell them back to the golfers. We sold koolaid with real glasses and brought them home on horseback to wash them.)

My childhood home, as you can see, really brings out the memories. [sniffle, sniffle.. blow, blow .. cough, cough] Oh, I could tell you so much more about the golf course. Another time. Maybe.

Back to walking the dog... My next door neighbor, Penny, usually is taking her dog, Rogie, out each morning around the same time. We say hello, both standing there holding leashes with our darlings on the end. Bleary-eyed and wild-haired, usually with our pjs on and a coat over us.

"How's your Dad doing, Penny?" I'll ask.
"He's doing better. How's your Mother?"

Her home once rang with children's laughter and bikes and swingsets and now they've grown and moved on and she's back home taking care of her Father (she's an RN). So we have a great deal in common.

That's all the 'thrills a minute' from my little corner of the world.

Cookies and Eggnog

I'm waiting on my Mother to get through in the kitchen so I can began on some chocolate chip cookies. And sugar cookies. She's baking and cleaning and generally buzzing around like usual. I'm constantly amazed at how agile she is for an octogenerian. Living away from her was somehow easy to imagine her feeble and doddering around. I must have only remembered things about her when something was wrong with her. Her gait is much slower, but she still carrys on and that does my heart so much good. I want to barge in and volunteer for some tasks, but try to keep the balance between helping out and letting her do her thing like always.

Anyway, back to the cookies and refreshments. At the grocery yesterday she bought some eggnog. We ALWAYS have egg not at Christmas time. The liquor cabinet is still stocked -- It used to have a lock on it. Let me brag a moment and say that I haven't even looked to see if it's there. I'm a recovering alcoholic, as most of you know. I DO still have one or two drinks every 6 months or so. Never more than one and seldom finish it. I realize that I'm playing with fire, but I know that my strong desire for alcohol isn't what it used to be. To make a long story short, (too late) Mother came to me with a bottle of Johnny Walker and said

"Will this be alright for eggnog?" I said, "That's probably scotch, Mother. See if you have something else brown."

She returned with a bottle of Crown Royal to which I announced,

"That'll work!"

So she and I will toast the evening with a spiked eggnog with fresh nutmeg this evening and be thankful that we have each other.

"Prett-ttty, prett-ttty, prett-ttty, prett-ttty..."

Does anyone watch Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO? The more I watch it, the more I enjoy it. Larry David is a scream. I don't currently have HBO at my house (hubby's always switching from Showtime to STARZ to HBO, etc), but Mother has it over here and I missed out on many of the shows.

Comedy Gold.

I've been tagged by Shirl to CONFESS: Yikes!!

#1 - I confess that I'm still in drug and alcohol recovery and I see a counselor once a week.

#2 - I confess that I am sports nut. Love UT (University of Tennessee-home of Peyton Manning) football, and Duke and NBA basketball most of all.

#3 - I confess that I pretty much follow that Holiday Diet I posted. Really could lose a little, or perhaps a lot of weight.

#4 - Ooooo, everything that comes to mind I need to take the fifth on. They may get me in trouble.

Intrigued?

Below is a repeat of a Christmas post from EBC on Dec 19, 2002. Mother and I had a coupon for a FREE coconut cake from the Ingle's bakery the other day and so this diet looks far too familiar to us both this week.


Holiday Stress Diet

The following diet is designed to help you cope with the stress that builds up during the holidays.

Breakfast:
1/2 grapefruit
1 slice whole wheat toast
8 oz. skim milk

Lunch:
4 oz. lean broiled chicken breast
1 cup steamed spinach
1 cup herb tea
1 Oreo cookie

Mid-Afternoon snack:
The rest of Oreos in the package
2 pints Rocky Road ice cream nuts, cherries and whipped cream
1 jar hot fudge sauce

Dinner:
2 loaves garlic bread
4 cans or 1 large pitcher Coke
1 large sausage, mushroom and cheese pizza
3 Snickers bars

Late Evening News:
Entire frozen Sara Lee cheesecake (eaten directly from freezer)

RULES FOR THIS DIET:

1. If you eat something and no one sees you eat it, it has no calories.
2. If you drink a diet soda with a candy bar, the calories in the candy bar are cancelled out by the diet soda.
3. When you eat with someone else, calories don't count if you do not eat more than they do.
4. Food used for medicinal purposes NEVER count, such as hot chocolate, brandy, toast and Sara Lee Cheesecake.
5. If you fatten up everyone else around you, then you look thinner.
6. Movie related foods do not have additional calories because they are part of the entertainment package and not part of one's personal fuel. Examples: Milk Duds, buttered popcorn, Junior Mints, Red Hots and Tootsie Rolls.
7. Cookie pieces contain no calories. The process of breaking causes calorie leakage.
8. Things licked off knives and spoons have no calories if you are in the process of preparing something.
9. Foods that have the same color have the same number of calories. Examples are: spinach and pistachio ice cream; mushrooms and mashed potatoes.
10. Chocolate is a universal color and may be substituted for any other food color.
11. Anything consumed while standing has no calories. This due to gravity and the density of the caloric mass.
12. Anything consumed from someone else's plate has no calories since the calories rightfully belong to the other person and will cling to his/her plate. (We ALL know how calories like to cling!)

Do you have a neighborhood in your area that does the lighting of the luminaries? You know, the votive candles set in sand inside a white bag that line the streets? Mother's neighborhood does that every year. Someone collects the money for the candles and bags and delivers them and you put them out on a certain date. This Saturday at dusk til 11pm is our time for that. Cars come from all over the place and drive with their parking lights on only. It's bumper to bumper and the cops direct traffic. Quite a sight. They usually get an aerial photo which is astounding. With all the Christmas/Holiday controversy, and non-Christians that also live here, I'm a little surprised they named the event "Lights For Jesus" but no one's said anything about it.

I DO have the Christmas tree all assembled. And it's so beautiful. I brought down the decorations from the attic and the lights and other items that go throughout the house and outdoors. Next I'm going to put out some outdoor stuff. Mother's finishing a burgundy velvet bow to go on the gold and burgundy decorated outdoor straw wreath. She's the bowmaker around the family and master present wrapper.

Are you a good present wrapper? I'm not so good at it myself, but I always enjoy wrapping presents so much.

It's Called Love

Her 83 year old hands break up the bread for bread pudding. Mother's always been a fantastic cook and was featured in the daily newspaper once for 'Homemaker of the Year'. I've always been proud of her being a career nursing professional and Cordon Bleu-schooled cook, and also that she made most of our clothes as long as we wanted her to. It all came from love, which was always evident.

Once in 5rd grade I admired a classmate's hooded yellow top, with a drawstring waist and cool looking pockets. I turned to Diane and said, "I like your shirt." She ignored me, but I continued, "Yeah, I have one just like it." She just rolled her eyes and said, "Oh, really? Well, why don't you wear it tomorrow then?" To which I probably replied, "Maybe I will!"

Oh, shit! What have I done? Why did I lie to her? She was so pretty with dark eyes, smooth olive skin and long, dark, wavy hair. She had an athletic shape with coltish legs that could scurry around the bases in baseball and still look feminine while doing it. The boys were always angling to get next to Diane at every occasion. I was so desperate to talk to her that I told a big fat lie to her the first chance I got.

When I came home from school that day, my Mother could see that I was upset as I reluctantly told her what I had done. I cried and cried-- embarassingly admitting the big fat lie I'd told at school.

Mother took me straight to the fabric store to pick out some nice yellow fabric, but I was pretty skeptical about her pulling it off. She made that yellow top according to my specifications and I held my head up high as I walked into the classroom the next day with my beautiful yellow top on. Just like Diane's.

I soon forgot about that incident, but years later I find I often drift back to that memory. It's just one example of what my Mother did for her children. It's called love.

Thought this looked like fun and wanted to post the url for others who may want to use, too. You have many options to choose from on Christmas. Also for other events. I think snowmen are my favorite holiday symbol or whatever you call it!

Ticker Factory - [via]

Sean Dockery made a 3-pointer from about 40 feet with less than a second left giving No. 1 Duke a 77-75 victory at home against Virginia Tech last night in the Atlantic Coast Conference opener for both teams.

Even the New York Times reported on the heart stopping Duke basketball game last night against Virginia Tech. Message boards are freaking out because Duke fans stormed the court. Evidentally there's a time and a place to "storm".

It wasn't technically a "storm", like you would get when a team beats a rival in March Madness. Hell, I stormed the house with glee myself. It was a "storm the court" like you get when there's 1.6 seconds to go, your team is down 2 points and the ball's thrown in from out of bounds to a player who has to shoot from (think center of the court) 40 feet away and makes the 3-pointer at the buzzer. For the love of the game and acknowledging the great last moment shot, some fans were about to explode with excitement.

They came onto the floor to congratulate their Duke players for always finding a way to win.

I'm in heaven until March with College basketball in full swing now!

See Dockery's Shot!

Going to go with my Mother to church this morning. It's a sweet little neighborhood Episcopal church that's had a handful of priests since I began going there in 1982. We also held Robin's service there last Saturday. The only thing I dread is all the kneeling. Not good if you have a bad knee, but I'll suck it up.

TEST POST---My EBC site won't publish this morning, so I'm trying to run down the problem. Looks like it's my server which seldom has outtage probs. Not like I had anything earthshattering to proclaim. But when you pay $72 a year for them to keep their server running at all times, a 6 hr and counting outtage just downright sucks.

Still in Tennessee. I'll probably stay until the end of the year. Then? I don't know. I would move my family over here if my daughter would come, but she doesn't want to. A seventeen year old girl being asked to move away from her friends to another state? Now just where have I heard that one before?

It was June of 1970 and my situation was a little different. I moved from this very house (which was leased for one year to someone) to Asheville when my Dad was relocating because of his job. We moved into a beautiful, old, 3-story home on a hillside in Asheville. Three months later I would be moving out on my own via my old VW van, into a dormitory on the ETSU campus in Johnson City, TN. But that's another chapter in the SJ saga.