Sunday bits

So, it looks as if this blog has been migrated to its new home and all seems to be working quite nicely. I slept through the move and woke up to find all the pictures on the walls just where I’d left them. Thanks, pmachine hosting.

_____________

It’s Sunday, traditionally the slowest day of the week for me. I don’t think there is anything on the docket for me today, yet I can’t shake the feeling that there is something that I’m supposed to do or that I should have done. I just can’t, for the life of me, recall anything that was on the To Do list for today. But I can’t shake that nagging little feeling. I don’t like it when that happens.

_____________

For about the first time in forever, I have autumn leaves in my front yard. Not enough to rake up, but there are fallen leaves out there. About 16 of them. They are yellow and quite large. For also about the first time in forever, the trees in my front yard have behaved like healthy trees and have changed colors with the season and let their spent leaves gracefully float to the ground. That’s a good sign. My two new redbud twiglets are healthy. They grew lots of branches this season and they have done what healthy trees are supposed to do. Now we’ll see what happens over the winter and hope like crazy that they sprout new leaves in the spring, just like healthy trees are supposed to do. Maybe there is something to that old saying about the third time being the charm.

_____________

Last evening I started a crackling fire in the wood stove. It burned beautifully and when I went to bed, I shut the damper down and let it do its slow burn thing. This morning when I woke up, it was still producing a lot of heat, but I expected it would grow cold by late morning. Well, no. It’s still producing enough heat to keep the small convection fan on top of the stove twirling. I think that’s the stove’s best record so far...about 13 hours of heat from a firebox half full of wood. Last night was cold...about 25° outside. My inside thermometer still reads 74°.

_____________

The lad called this weekend and asked if it would be okay for him to bring a couple of friends home for Christmas. “Sure,” I said. “How many is a couple?”

“Three of four,” he said. And I think he heard me gulp a little bit.

“Where are we gonna stack them?” I asked.

“In my room, don’t worry.”

Well, I guess I won’t worry, then. I’m not sure how many will really end up coming—it’s just in the ‘talking about it’ stage. Apparently a couple of his friends have parents who follow the out of sight out of mind rule. They have planned holiday travel that does not include their college age kids. Different strokes and all, but that doesn’t really compute with me. I’d be happy to host Christmas for the abandoned. We’ll see how it all shakes out as the next month unfolds.

Cooking for a houseful of boys hungry for home cooking does make me smile a lot, though. The lad told me that a couple of his friends aren’t much acquainted with home cooking, but like how he’s described it and they’d like to find themselves sitting around the dining room table where elbows on the table aren’t a problem. And Christmas cookies made and decorated at home? No way, man. That’s so cool!

It’s a really strange world out there.