I think nor of the surest signs of adulthood is when you face this time of year as a series of chores rather than a time of excitement and expectation. When you’re a kid someone else does the shopping for the big meals. Someone else cooks and cleans up. Someone else digs out the seasonal decorations.
That someone else suddenly becomes you.
Yeah, I’m an old grouch. Too much to do… not enough time… ho ho ho.
Happy Moanday.
Thanks for starting this one off, Mom!
I’ve got a birthday (#67) in a couple of days, and then there’s Thanksgiving Day, and then there’s Christmas. Fine. I might string some LED lights along the porch rails before Christmas.
Then there’s another year, if I get that. And I’m hoping I do.
They’re just days, as far as I’m concerned, except for Christmas Eve service at my Church, which is worth the bother. Little else is.
Just the same, “Happy Holidays” to all! Peace and blessings.
Same here. I’ve come to hate the holiday season, especially Christmas. Thanksgiving actually isn’t too bad, since it’s just a meal with my family and we don’t participate in the contact sport known as Black Friday.
To make this even more fun, my company wants me to travel this week and return just before Thanksgiving. I said “no”, but will drive if they’ll cover the costs. Its fun being completely vested and nearing retirement. I no longer “take one for the team”.
Happy Monday everyone.
Happy Moonday!
It’s a still dark 34 degrees outside. Supposed to be cloudy and rainy today with a high of 48. I hope to get some yard irk done but who knows.
The cycle of irk never ends.
When you stop mowing, you start vacuuming, and when you stop vacuuming, you start shoveling.
Christmas stopped being fun when my son got too old to care anymore. That didn’t take long with him as he just doesn’t care about ‘stuff’. Other than liking hats and puzzles, he is a minimalist by nature. He doesn’t get too excited about food, although he does like pumpkin pie. Family get togethers are too noisy and chaotic for him.
My biggest annoyance it that Christmas starts so soon. How can I possibly enjoy it when it is shoved in my face months for months?
I was lazy over the weekend, so I have a lot to do today.
Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffeinatin’. YAWN I was a slug abed this mornin’ and didn’t arise until almost seven. Scandalous ain’t it! ‘Tis 52 Amurrkin out and rainy, with a predicted high of 70 and rain for the day. TWPTB say rain through Thursday. We shall see. Today I get to defilthyfy da cave. We shall sup upon chikin ‘n dumplin’s with some sort of vegetative matter TBD. This evenin’ I have Vestry meetin’ over to the church house. We have begun our annual pledge drive and I am supposed to give the talk to the Vestry tonight. Rah.
Like George said, except for the wonderful Christmas Eucharist (Feast of The Nativity) at church I could do without this whole season. Turkey Day is OK cause of all the good eats and hangin’ with friends, but a lot of work. I detest the commercialized “Christmas Season.” Christmas is a twelve day season from December 25th through January 5th. Also, I hope everyone at all those dreadful Hallmark channels suffer from permanent painful paper cuts.
Now I need more caffeine and rumbly tummy wants sustenance. Then, onward into the day. Rah.
Happy Moanday Y’all!
I’m single with no kids. My parents and brothers are dead; it’s just me and my sister. Holidays have much less stress now. I love putting up decorations and preparing for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don’t buy many presents. I spend Christmas Eve with my friends (they are married with no kids) and Christmas Day with my sister and brother in law. This Thanksgiving my nephew, his wife and daughter, and my niece will be i n town. I haven’t seen them in 2 years and am really excited to be with them. The one thing I miss is church. I haven’t been to one I really like.
I expect we’ll have fun at Christmas again when Roxy is a bit older. OK, and we do have fun with our goofy $10 gift game. But mostly, I can do without it. We’ve lived in this house for 14 years and never put up a tree. I understand we have to this year…
I’m OK with Thanksgiving dinner, altho there’s one BIL I absolutely don’t want to be around. I’ve known him for 35 years and I still can’t find anything to like about him. This year, my daughter and I intend to take most of the work away from my MIL - she’s 87 and going blind, so I don’t think she’ll argue too much. I need to call her today and talk about it.
We’ve taken my car in to be checked before the kids take it to FL on Sat. When we get it back, we’ll take FCD’s car in for an oil change and brake check. Somewhere along the line, I’ll attack the leaves. And I need to pull something out of the freezer for supper. Or I’ll get a rotissed chickie from Food Lion - decisions, decisions…
I like Thanksgiving, but December you can pretty much have.
Me too, but for what I didn’t get done on Sat, not what you didn’t get done.
It’s quiet here this morning. Everybody is asleep but me. The dog and cat are sleeping within inches of each other. Now that it’s getting cold out the cat wants in most of the time.
I have to remember to go get my prescriptions today. I hope all of them are ready so I only have to make one trip.
I’m with you on the hm channel Swampy.
Although I’d go with something a lot stronger than paper cuts.
Mrs. Cardigan says she actually doesn’t mind preparing Thanksgiving Day feast and even looks forward to it. We’re a pretty progressive couple, but for some reason we tend to play rather traditional gender roles on T-day. Like she does 90% of the cooking-related work (I might help lift the turkey and change the thawing water, and stir a few things and help clean dishes afterwards, but she pretty much does the rest. When we were younger her mother used to help out, but she’s contributing less as the years have gone by and the last few years her assistance has consisted of ‘supervising.’ Meanwhile, the Guys all drink beer and watch football in the other room. Like I said, that day is pretty 1960’s in essence.
I’ve lost (just over) 60 pounds in the last seven and a half months. (Been hovering around the same weight for a month now.) In 2015 I was really fat. None of my clothes fit anymore. Here’s the thing: I work from home most of the time, so I got little use from my ‘dress’ clothes. I think one pair of new dress trousers I wore twice. Maybe once. There were also some lightly-used shirts – including a ‘Magnum P.I.’ aloha shirt 
Saturday I had to run an errand. I’d had the clothes in the back of my car for a week, waiting for an opportunity to donate them. There happened to be a Catholic church near where I was on my errand. It was closed, but there was a woman there loading up her mini-van with stuff. She said they don’t have a donation bin there, and they’d already had their rummage sale; but the Catholic church in the town where I live has one. She was going up there anyway (with her load of stuff), so she said she’d take my clothes there. 
I have a love/hate with this time of year. I love decorating, baking, spending time with my kids and family… I even kind of like wrapping presents. Put on a good Christmas movie and just go to town. But I have seasonal-affective aspects to my bipolar that always get me down this time of year. Plus, there’s the worries of the finances of it all… affording Christmas presents and such. Even though I’m working this year and we have a little money to spend, I’m still anxious about it all after years of having nothing to spend. Plus now I have the worries of getting my work deadlines met so that I can enjoy the holidays.
And on that note… back to work.
Leaf suckage and mulchage is done! What a job!! And I discovered that the wheels on the mulcher/vac need to be replaced. I filled them with air, and before I was done, they were running on rims. Dammit.
Plus my car needs some $$$ work, but I’m glad to have it done before the kids take it to FL on Sat. And I know it’s in better shape than their car. Anyway, I won’t get it back till late today. Dammit.
Always something. **FCD **is taking me to lunch, so there’s that.
Serenata - my mom had bipolar (and she thinks her dad had it too) so I understand what it’s like.
My mom always loved Christmas. This will be my first Christmas without my mom. It’s been a little sad, sometimes, going into stores and seeing Christmas items that I think my mom would’ve liked.
My mother was separated from my dad, and lived apart from my family, but she’d usually spend Christmas with us. My family had a bit of an awkward relationship with my mom, so it was a bit uneasy for us that she’d come over at Christmas, but she enjoyed spending time with us at that one time of year, so it was nice that she was happy.
She didn’t have an easy life - a hard childhood many physical and mental health problems, and I hate saying this, but in many ways, she wasn’t an ideal mother. But she did love her family. At least she is at peace now.
I’ve been trying to prepare for Christmas. Been working on Christmas crafts, mostly at the last minute. Had a good craft fair this past weekend. I should work on some Christmas music as well.
today I’m trying to catch up on a lot of stuff I haven’t done in the past while due to preparing for the craft fair (and being sick and exhausted.) It’d be easier if I didn’t have an oozing head wound, but I’ll try to book some time at a clinic sometime in the next few days to have it looked at.
Wishing a good day to all.
As we’re an ungrateful bunch this side of the pond, there are no no significant events until Christmas. I don’t directly have to organise anything other than getting myself there and buying presents, but getting there is now a multi-day event, so it’s still a bit of stress.
If I did it in one go, and the traffic was all OK, it could be as little as 6 hours, but I’m driving solo, and that’s right on the limit of how far I’ll drive myself in one day. As there’s always some congestion, it’s normally closer to 8 hours (sometimes over), including breaks, and there’s just no point doing that if I don’t have to.
I am seeing the cousins (and associateds) this year again, which is nice. That’s been the Boxing Day tradition since before I was born, except last year, when my uncle got ill, convinced himself it was far more serious than it really was and insisted his wife had to concentrate on looking after him rather than see the rest of the family (I’d have been more sympathetic, but a)it was no wonder he got ill, he wasn’t even trying to look after himself, he’s got diabetes, refuses to exercise and keeps trying to cheat the diet ‘his wife puts him on’ and b) the year before my Aunt had both knees replaced a few days before Christmas and that wasn’t a good enough reason for him to suggest cancelling it, in fact it wasn’t a good enough reason for him to so much as get his own beer from the kitchen, even their 3 year old grand-daughter was trying to help get things 'cos Nana couldn’t walk properly, but not her husband).
Anyway…
More tiny plant wrangling today; it was jam packed there, with 3 other students all trying to set up projects (including one who didn’t seem to have any clue what she was doing and didn’t seem to be able to think with her mouth closed) in what really isn’t a very big space. Still, I got my stuff done, managed to help a little bit with maintenance of some of the existing plants, and hopefully started organising a trip to the (plant) nursery on site for the student society next year.
It’s another branch of our college, and we’re actually welcome to go pretty well any time, but as it nearly an hour’s drive away and many of the students don’t drive, a lot of them haven’t ever been. There’s a bit of a daft situation where that site has loads of stuff perfect for our course, like a commercial plant nursery, as the course was run there for years before it moved 4 years ago, but they no longer have any students studying horticulture; whereas our site has students but, as it’s new and currently squeezed into existing buildings, doesn’t have that stuff.
There are other things on our site which are great and were not available at the old one, but still…
I have a wheelbarrow and two furniture dollies with pneumatic tire on them and they’re all flat. It seems to be endemic with those little tires. The onliest solution seems to be to bite the bullet and buy solid rubber tires. Someday I’ll get right on that.
:eek: I know that head wounds tend to bleed a lot and often look worse than they are, but most people keep their brains in there and you really need your brain! Please get that seen to soonest. (And report back).
When we were all younger the kids and grandkids would come to our house and it would be a big chaotic mess. but these days everything happens at the kids places, for which I, at least, am grateful. All we have to do is show up with presents and coconut cream pie. (It’s a tradition. :D)
Hopefully I can convince Wifey to shop for the aforementioned presents in advance this year, or at least share the list with me so that I can get them, but I’m not gonna hold my breath on that account. :dubious:
And now, onward. Wifey wants me to take the old truck over and get a load of mulch. I’m charging the battery even as we ‘speak’ and get right on that. In a minute.
Happy Moanday!
ugh
My sister is disabled and on a fixed income. Her ‘husband’ is ‘disabled’, but was turned down for Social Security once, so he refuses to apply again. :rolleyes: Last year they got solar panels for their house. They were told they would only cost $159/month. The cost of the solar panels are paid for through her property taxes. I send her a certain amount of money each month so that she and her family can live. I also pay her property taxes. These ‘cheap’ solar panels added more than $4,000 to her tax bill. I told her I’d have to reduce her monthly allotment so that I can have the money to pay her taxes. She called me crying this morning, saying she can’t live on that. ‘I have $40 for food for the rest of the month!’ I told her I cannot reduce her allotment, and she can save the money herself and pay her own taxes. No, she knows she’ll spend it. Or, I can reduce the amount I send her. ‘No, I can’t live on that!’ Or I can not reduce the allotment, and she can figure out how to pay taxes on her own, fail, and lose her house. She ‘inherited’ dad’s JetSkis, and I told her she’d have to sell them. (Not that she’d get much; dad died in 1998.) She has a camper that she thought she might end up living in. I said she’d have to sell that. (I think she’d be lucky to get $5K for it.) And she’s going to have to figure out how to live on what she has. She admits she was ‘stupid’ and made a mistake with the solar panels. She probably just signed the papers without reading them. (She owes nearly $30K for the panels, and the 20-year loan she didn’t know she was signing up for will cost her $60K by the time it’s paid off.)
There is a bright spot. When she sent me her tax bill, she also sent me mom’s IRA statements. I’ve started a thread to try to find out how to get an attorney in Arizona so that we can go through probate and distribute the accounts.
Life note: Don’t ever have relatives.
Blurf.
Finally coming down from the weekend soccer (coached 4 games, refereed four other games, out in weather that ranged from 32-52F, sunny and cloudy in turn, with a chilly wind to boot). Girls finished 4th and got medals, but we were 45 seconds from winning our semi-final and going to the championship game when the other team scored to tie us. Overtime was even, so we went to penalty kicks and after 10(!) tried, they scored…and we didn’t. So we were a bit demoralized for the 3rd place game.
Still, the girls got a gift from me in being able to shave off my beard (they did pretty well), and so I am sans beard for the first time in a year or so (it tends to be cyclical thing with me). But soccer is done (at least until December, when indoor soccer starts up).
Woke to rain this morning. Still raining this afternoon. Good day to curl up with a book, so I went to B&N and bought one (Uncompromising Honor by David Weber, the last(?) in his 25-year Honor Harrington series).
FCM, Bumba, add me to the flat tire on wheelbarrow brigade. Just don’t use it enough to go to the bother of replacing it.
I don’t do much for T-giving and Xmas, since I go up to my brother’s for both so I let them do the ‘stuff’. With all three kids out of the house, I expect that they will be dialed back some.
Nut, your uncle sounds like a…can’t think of a good British term for a jerk. And don’t worry, they’ll figure out they need to move the plants to where the students are in another 15 years or so.
Midget, hope the head is healing–did I miss a bulletin last week? And I know what you mean by Moms. I really do.
Juliet, keep an even keel; know it’s hard but you can do it.
LAJohn, good on you for the clothes donation. I have a group (Purple Heart) that comes around ever ycouple of months and they get my extras.
Sweater(don’t know if you (or Johnny LA for that matter) have a Mumper name yet, so I’ll hang a temp on ya), I think my one job was mashing to potatoes at Thanksgiving, outside of that the TV and beer was about right.
Checked out the window right now. Yep, still raining.
Midget, I’m sorry for your loss. It’s bittersweet when you’re reminded of those you lost, especially at such a happy time of year.
I may have found an acceptable substitute for the Holiday Spice Flat White I’m so desperately missing this time of year. While it’s nowhere near the same flavor profile or level of awesomeness, the Toasted White Chocolate Mocha is pretty alright. To me, the Holiday Spice Flat White was an A, but the Toasted White Chocolate Mocha is a solid B+. A bit sweet for frequent drinking, but tasty nonetheless. I also really liked the Snickerdoodle Hot Cocoa, but I can’t add shots of espresso to it from the order ahead feature of the app. So I’ll just steal sips from my daughter when I get her one.
Howdy. Sneeze, blow, sneeze. This is my day thus far. Stupid allergies.
Holidays! Thanksgiving is cool and hubby is getting excited about it as he is already buying the food we will need. It’s just the two of us. We will cook the traditional feast of turkey and all the trimmings. Christmas is a pain. I really don’t want to participate this year but always feel guilty if I don’t. So I shall do the minimal and call it a day. Bah Humbug.