Thursday, October 04, 2007

Christmas Cards

I got started on my Christmas cards tonight. Well, I've already been thinking about the letter, but tonight I signed the cards, so they'll be ready to insert.

OK, close your gaping mouth and stop pretending like I'm off my rocker for doing this in October. I'm a little late for my tastes. Do you think of the Christmas season as starting the day after Thanksgiving? Well, lots of folks do. And... news flash... Thanksgiving is SEVEN WEEKS FROM TODAY.

Yes, Thanksgiving is seven weeks from today. That's seven Saturdays, four of which are already committed to other things in my little world. So, it's time for me to be preparing for Christmas.

I don't like rushing around during the holiday season. I like to just enjoy the holidays. I don't want to be trying to get the decorating, shopping, cards, entertaining, cooking, cleaning and calling all done in December. So, I start early. Last year I did a lot of shopping in December and it was kind of fun to be in the rush - and I may do some of that this year, too - but I don't want to be doing everything last minute.

And we have the Christmas homes tour this year, so I'll be doing that the first weekend, and my open house will be the second weekend. Then there will just be one more until right before Christmas. It zips by quickly.

I am on a mission to move Thanksgiving to the end of September, which is really harvest anyway. Then we'd have Thanksgiving in September, Halloween in October and we'd start the Christmas season on November 1. I think it has great potential. And lots of people I mention it to like the idea. Of course, not everyone. Some people hate the holiday season, regardless of how long it it, and want nothing to do with extending it.

In other news today, I had lunch with Dorothy and it was a great talk. I agreed to be on the committee to consider developing wind energy here. And we had some fascinating conversation. I'm still mulling it over, but I will share more here soon.

Well, I'd best start going through the blog to amass the dreaded Christmas letter. Not sure there's much point these days when people could just read the blog, but I guess I'm in a transition phase.


Accidents and Nature

My brother, Jackie, recently featured here building an industrial strength Christmas tree stand for me, is in the hospital. He was helping with a construction job today and walked out on a board that broke, and he fell about 10 feet. The ball of his hip broke completely off, but he's expected to make a full recovery, with no loss of mobility. They will do surgery on Friday and on Saturday he will be walking. Wow.

Obviously, we'll all concerned about him, but thankful it wasn't worse and glad they can do something for him and that he will make a full recovery. Of course, in the meantime, he needs some serious pain killers and has to lay on one side in the bed.

Everyone has done a great job of keeping me informed. Cathy, Jim and Mary Ann all called me at various times today for updates, which I appreciated.

Before I knew all of this today, I took a few minutes for a nice walk at Dillon Nature Center. It was a lovely day, although it was NOT fall-like, as I mentioned I was looking forward to after yesterday's weather forecast. Weather people lie constantly. I swear, they must devote training to that.

It was supposed to be autumnal today. It was not. I know, because people were wearing shorts, no sweaters were in evidence, and I took a long walk outdoors in sandals. Not autumn.

On the upside, there were tons of bees and butterflies on these flowers they tell me are a kind of aster. They also tell me they multiply easily - that they planted about three of them. I think I need some. I like hardy plants.