Merry Monday, Christmas Eve

In keeping with my personal holiday tradition, today I’m posting Christmas videos from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. If you’ve never seen them before then you’re in for a treat.

And just to save you the trouble of checking out my other blog, I’m posting this to both of them so no one misses out. :-D

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Wizards of Winter



Christmas Canon



Christmas Eve in Sarajevo

Molinary Monday

molinary ~ of, like or pertaining to mills or grinding

You know, it’s a little hard to get into the spirit of Christmas when it’s so freaking warm outside! Forget the gloomy grey skies – I could deal with the gloom if we were getting snow instead of rain. But we’re not. It’s been raining off and on for the last several days.

I got new snow boots delivered last Monday and I wore them once, just because I could. But it’s really been too warm for boots. It’s too warm for the flannel shirt I’m wearing too so after I finish this post I think I’ll go change into a tee-shirt . . . like I wore all last week.

Speaking of deliveries…I thought we were supposed to be in the middle of a postal strike? You sure couldn’t tell from the amount of mail we’ve been getting. The post office is even delivering on weekends to catch up to the back log. I’m still waiting on a few deliveries, but I think that has more to do with the companies who’re sending the stuff than our postal service.

And remember that beautiful dragonfly blanket I ordered at the end of August? I’ve pretty much given up on it. Not because of our postal service, but because the company no longer exists. Buyer beware when it comes to the internet. Chose your products (and the companies they come from) wisely.

Just to round out my Christmas angst…I have a sick cat on my hands too. Taz is 18 years old and at first we thought he was just feeling his age, but he started having problems moving his hind quarters so off to the vet we went. He has a compressed disk near the base of his spine so he’s on painkillers for now and we’ll probably start him on steroids this week.

Is it any wonder I’m not feeling the Christmas spirit?

So just to cheer everyone up, here are a couple of Christmas videos:

I'm Climbing Up the Christmas Tree



Animals of YouTube Sing Deck the Halls

Minimism Monday

minimism ~ inclination to reduce a dogma to the least possible

You know, the problem with having a busy weekend followed by a day off from babysitting is that Monday tends to feel like Sunday. And you’d think despite spending the day shopping, followed by making the usual big dinner for the daughter and her family Sunday would have felt like Sunday, but nevertheless, this is why today’s post is late.

Not only does today feel like Sunday, I actually slept in this morning. Okay, not so much slept in as lounged in bed for an extra 45 minutes because it’s another grey, miserable day outside today. Plus I’m feeling pretty grey and miserable myself with a sinus infection. Good thing I get to see my doctor this week.

The Christmas shopping, and most of the wrapping, is done. The hubby and I went up to Peterborough (about an hour’s drive north) yesterday and as we were headed from one mall to another I suddenly realized we were supposed to go to Oshawa (about an hour’s drive west) because Peterborough doesn’t have a Toys ‘R Us and we needed to exchange one of the grandbaby’s gifts.

Notice how all our shopping seems to be about an hour’s drive away from here, no matter what direction you take?

The decorating, such as it is, is pretty much done as well. The hubby put lights outside around the windows, and a row of candy canes in the garden. We also have two of those light projectors – one with just green and red lights, the other with green and red candy canes that kind of dance around on the side of the house. I also sprung for a real wreath for the front door – I’ve been wanting one for years.

Inside the house is not quite as festive. One of the pitfalls of the hubby being retired is that he no longer brings home a poinsettia from the office, so I went out and bought my own. And then, on Saturday morning, after much plotting and planning and rearranging of things in the dining room (mostly just getting rid of crap that didn’t need to be in there), I went out and bought a real, live Christmas tree.

I can’t remember the last time I had a real Christmas tree, but I found one that’s small enough to fit on the drop leaf table that divides the living and dining rooms, and as I proved last night we can still all eat at the dining room table. So far I only have the lights on it, but I’ll dig out the rest of the decorations today and post a picture of it next week.

Meanwhile, the other goal today is to get all of the out of town presents in the mail. Well, all except for the ones for my sisters. I ordered theirs online and I haven’t got them yet.

Sorry, sisters! You gifts might be a little late this year.

Malleiform Monday

malleiform ~ shaped like a hammer

Whew! I did it. I survived another National Writing month. And for my efforts I have another unfinished novel to add to my collection. LOL

So, since I did not have to spend Saturday chained to my lap top frantically writing those last few thousand words, I did what any normal person would do with Christmas just three weeks away, I went shopping.

First I hit the thrift stores where I picked up a couple of Barbies (to go with the small Barbie house I got for free) as a pre-Christmas present for the grandbaby. I also picked up, uh, three ski jackets for myself.

I have a nice winter coat, but it’s not really suitable for when I play in the snow with the grandbaby. So I found a blue, car-coat length one at the thrift store I usually have good luck with coats in, and then I found two more in a different thrift store. I wasn’t really sure if any of them would fit but I figured at least one of them would and I could just donate the others.

Unfortunately, they all fit and they each have their appeal. I like the blue one because it’s easy to move around in and it’s a little longer. I like the beige one because it doesn’t have a hood and it’s a little shorter. And I like the black faux leather one because it’s dressier and it has a hood. Yes. I’m keeping them all.

Continuing my shopping binge, Saturday afternoon the hubby and I drove an hour east to the mall in Belleville to do a little Christmas shopping. Actually, we did a LOT of Christmas shopping. At a rough guess, I’d say we knocked off about two thirds of our Christmas list.

As the hubby pointed out, it was probably the most painless Christmas shopping experience we’ve had … ever. A few things we considered early on and made note of to come back to if we didn’t find something better, and some things we just bought on sight. Surprisingly, the two stores we’ve usually had such good luck with in the past – Winners and Toys ‘R Us – were duds this year. We bought nothing at Winners, and we only bought a couple of things at Toys ‘R Us, one of which was for me. ;-)

Then Sunday while the hubby was at a bowling tournament, I spent the day wrapping what we bought. It took the entire day (minus the amount of time it took to buy more wrapping paper) but it was worth it. No frantic wrapping marathon on Christmas Eve for me!

So how about you? Have you started your Christmas shopping yet?

Mucorrhoea Monday

mucorrhoea ~ discharge of mucus

Monday, already? Where did my weekend go?

Oh, that’s right. I spent it writing, trying to catch up the 5,000 words I was behind on NaNo. And I didn’t do too badly either, but once again there was no time for doing my blog posts ahead of time.

And then I slept in this morning – something I almost never do. You see, my inner clock and I have an arrangement. I tell it what time I want to get up, and I usually wake up within about 15 minutes of that time. Except for this morning.

I blame the cold pills I’ve been popping. I started getting a wicked bad cold at the end of the week – stuffed head, sore throat – and by Friday you could add watery eyes, coughing and sneezing to the list. So I started taking over the counter cold medicine.

Now the thing about over the counter cold medicine is that it usually comes with some kind of pain killer included – I guess to help with the aches and fever – usually either acetaminophen (wasn’t even close on the correct spelling of that one) or ibuprofen (little closer on that one). In otherwords, either Tylenol or Advil.

I can’t handle Tylenol unless it has codeine in it, so Advil For Cold and Sinus it was (which doesn’t usually make me sleepy but it did this time). Then I treated myself to a pajama day on Saturday so I dozed and wrote, wrote and dozed. Sunday I was feeling better so I sucked it up and did some laundry too. And now, here I am – still stuffed up, still tired but with many words written and clean clothes.

So. . . how was your weekend?

Muddled Monday

muddle ~ bring into a disordered or confusing state; an untidy and disorganized state or collection

Oh, look – it’s Monday and I don’t have a post for you. There’s a very good reason for that:

Here’s a link if you’d like to learn more about it - NaNoWriMo

And I’m about 4,000 words behind. This is not unusual for me as I usually spend the month of November falling behind and catching up and falling behind again until the very end when I put on a burst of words and trip over the finish line.

This year is a bit more of a struggle than previous years so not only am I not doing a proper post today, I probably won’t do one next Monday either. Just so you know.

In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy one of my favourite things about – NaNo cats!

Monoculus Monday

monoculus ~ one-eyed person

I hate the time change. I don’t care if I gained an hour of sleep this time, tell it to the cats. Going to bed at “10 o’clock” instead of 11 is fine, but I’m waking up at 5 instead of 6 and as soon as I stir the cats think it’s time to be fed.

Since I’m pretty sure I go off on a rant like this every time the time changes, I’ll spare you this time – you’re welcome – but I don’t make any promises for the spring. LOL

You know how most places get several days of sun or sun and cloud and only a day or two of rain? We’ve been getting unrelenting grey with wind and rain for several weeks now, and if we’re lucky we get a token sunny day in there, but only one.

So what gives? Is it all the hurricane activity to the south? Global warning? An alien plot to drive us all crazy? Inquiring minds want to know!

I tried doing a Google search for answers, but mostly what came up was stuff about the stock market. The most interesting link I found was for a place called Gloomy Lake in Ontario. It’s way over to the west near the border between Ontario and Minnesota.

So then, being easily distracted the way I am, I started searching for information about Gloomy Lake and I have to tell you, there wasn’t much.

Then I got sidetracked by a site that claimed to offer the most depressing places in the world, so naturally I had to take a look at that. And yes, Gloomy Lake was on the list. I think, however, that the places on the list were chosen for their name only because it was filled with things like: Depressed Lake, Sad Lake, Disappointment Island, Unfortunate Cove, Crying Child Island, the Sorrow Islands, Spiteful Geyser. . . you get the idea.

And just so you know, these are all real places – I looked them up. :-D

After wasting way too much time on that (okay, so I had to force myself to stop, but I’m pretty sure I’ll revisit the search at some point) I tried to search out images for Gloomy Lake and again came up empty. There were lots of images, but none of Gloomy Lake itself. I even tried looking up satellite images, but they weren’t helpful either.

Maybe one of these days – like in the summer when we have nothing better to do and a lot of time to waste – the hubby and I can take a road trip to Gloomy Lake so I can take my own pictures. In the meantime, here’s one of the images that came up for my gloomy lake search.

Looks pretty good for a gloomy lake, don’t you think?