Happy Holidays and an Update

Happy Holidays to all!  We're 9 days out from Christmas, and I'm getting close to ready.  All the shopping is done, some of the wrapping is complete, I'll be baking more this weekend, and the two families that we've done 'Christmas' for this year - both refugee families - are starting to recieve their warm clothes and supplies.  The first drop off was this morning, and I'll do the last one on Christmas eve morning.

I love the holiday season - the lights, the tree, the food.  Our turkey (local from Vermont) has been in the freezer since Thanksgiving - if you want a local turkey, you take them when it's butchering time - and there's one last pie pumpkin on a shelf in my kitchen awaiting it's fate as several pies and pumpkin bread.

I've been preparing a lot for 2012 this year - unemployment will run out soon for my husband, and so next year we'll do more cutting back.  Which is actually OK.   But I have done some preparing - clothes and birthday things for the adorable one for next year, buying our garden seeds early, stocking up before we let our big-box store membership expire, filling the freezer with local meats.

But some things you can't prepare for except to save and hope they don't occur, like a cracked furnace and replacement heating system, to the tune of $7k or so.  Apparently furnaces are not self-healing.  Who knew?

Well, OK, we did, we just didn't expect it 2 weeks before Christmas.  As I said to my husband "It's a good thing I bought your present yesterday, before we knew".  The response "Same for yours".

But it's all good.  We probably won't get as much renovation work on the house done as we hoped in 2012, but we'll have a huge garden. 

On an unrelated note, Christopher Hitchens died.  I adored his work, and I think I would have liked him.  He was the Archie Bunker of intellectuals - nothing was to sacred to examine, not Mother Theresa, not God, and certainly not himself.  The world is a little smaller without his caustic wit.  RIP.