by Judy Handley | Dec 24, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 358: Christmas Eve Gift of Snow
Date: Friday, December 24, 2021
Weather: Snowy; High Temp 29, Low Temp 27 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
When I got up this morning and looked out the window, I was shocked to see the ground covered in a thin blanket of white snow.
And it was still snowing. What a wonderful gift on Christmas Eve! A little snow had been predicted, but it was supposed to be too warm for it to stick. I’m so glad the weather forecast was wrong this time. Shadow and I spent most of our morning outside romping in the snow and then walking our morning mile. Shadow rolled his tennis ball in the snow and enjoyed eating snow.
Shortly after I got him in November of 2019, we had an early December snow, a little more than today, and I learned then how much he loves running in the snow. This morning as he ran to catch his tennis ball, I felt such a sense of peace. Somehow a world covered in snow seems so peaceful. In these turbulent times, those moments of peace are needed. Unfortunately rain is in the forecast for Christmas Day. But we will be inside opening presents and eating wonderful food, so I doubt that we will notice.
I went to Heather and Jed’s in the afternoon to deliver my bags of Christmas presents and to help finish baking our Christmas cookies. Ollie volunteered to play Santa Claus and get presents out of a couple of the bags and place them around the tree.
The other bags are assigned to one of the Goldstones and will be opened tomorrow. Then it was on to the cookies. We made the sugar cookie and molasses gingerbread cookie dough last Saturday. Two dozen of the cookies will be delivered to families in need tomorrow afternoon. In fact, Heather will be spending an hour or two tomorrow afternoon volunteering to get Christmas dinners delivered to needy families. I can’t think of a better way to spend part of Christmas Day. Heather, Ollie, and I did most of the cookie making today. More accurately, Heather and Ollie did most of the cut outs while I assisted by shuffling cookies from the oven to the cooling racks and then making icing for decorating.
But again, I mostly watched Heather and Ollie do the decorating. Plus, Jed helped out. Ollie decorated special cookies for Santa and put a carrot on the China plate for Rudolph . . . because Santa deserves to eat off real China.
We took a break between baking cookies and decorating them to have dinner. We started with oysters and an array of cheeses and olives.
The main course tonight was a meat pie with salad. I had actually never heard of a meat pie (ground beef, pork, and lamb with mashed potatoes mixed in and enclosed in a pie crust), but it was delicious.
Heather also made a poppy seed cake for dessert in the Bundt pan I gave Heather and Jed for their anniversary this year. It makes an impressive presentation.
Heather also had each of us look for a special paper ornament on the tree. Each ornament represented a donation made by the Goldstones. Heather had made donations to Belonging To Each Other, an organization that supports the homeless in Falmouth, the Boothbay Land Trust, the Wampanoag Tribe, and public radio. And there was one gift to the Goldpebbles. Heather uses an organization called Paper Culture to print her Christmas cards. They use only recycled paper and plant a tree for every order made. And by the way, they are cheaper than using Shutterfly. The card on the Christmas tree saying a tree had been planted in honor of the Goldpebbles was the gift.
I will return to Heather and Jed’s early in the morning for opening presents. So once again, I must stop writing and get to bed. It is time for Santa to work his magic. But one more thing. This morning I got a text from Heather saying Happy Christmas Eve with a photo of Jonah in his gnome Hannah Anderson PJ’s and his gnome sport coat. Jonah is stylin’! 
by Judy Handley | Dec 23, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 357: On the Eve of the Eve
Date: Thursday, December 23, 2021
Weather: Cold and Windy; High Temp 33, Low Temp 21 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
On this eve of Christmas Eve, I did what a great many people do. I spent time getting ready for Christmas. I am still not finished wrapping presents, but otherwise I am ready to have some Christmas Eve fun and enjoy Christmas Day. But in order to do so, I am going to sign off here and get a few more presents wrapped before I go to bed.
by Judy Handley | Dec 22, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 356: Another Shopping Day
Date: Wednesday, December 22, 2021
Weather: Rainy AM, Clearing PM; High Temp 42, Low Temp 24 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Shadow had an appointment with the groomer today. That means I get up early and take him for his mile walk and then drive him the 20 minutes up to the bridge to Pampered Paws by 9:30 am. Then I go back to pick him up in the afternoon. Since I am already part way to shopping areas off Cape, I often go shopping while I am waiting to pick him up. Today I had some things I needed to return to Costco and one thing I needed to buy, so off I went. The weather was miserable, but my shopping was successful. It should be my last shopping before Christmas.
Shadow was ready for pick-up at 2:30 pm. Just after I crossed the bridge, I got a text saying Shadow was ready. Perfect timing. He looked so handsome with the little red and green bow tie they put on him.
I took Shadow home and then went into town to see Ollie’s mini outdoor band concert. On my way, I stopped by Heather’s to pick up some packages that were delivered there and offered a ride to Heather, Jed, and Sam who were also going to the concert.
The band director, Kari Fietek, is the wife of Sam and Jonah’s private music teacher, so she knows Sam and Jonah well.
When she saw Sam, she asked him to keep beat on the drum for one song and with the jingle bells for another. I love the way she uses older students when they are available to help the fourth graders.
It is almost impossible to get a photo of Ollie playing the saxophone as the sax players are always positioned behind other horn players. But once in a while, I could get a glimpse of Ollie and take a quick photo.
Tomorrow I will get the presents ready to take to the Goldstones on Christmas Eve. I’ll also do a little food prep and cooking for Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas Day. And I will check my Amazon deliveries to Justin and family and hope everything is either there or being delivered tomorrow. Justin, Jo, Ziggy, and Coco enjoyed a beautiful sunset oceanside yesterday as part of their solstice celebration.
It looked so warm and beautiful. And then I saw a quote Jo posted on Facebook that surely made me smile. “Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies!” –Francis P. Church
by Judy Handley | Dec 21, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 355: Welcome, Yule!
Date: Tuesday, December 21, 2021
Weather: Partly Cloudy; High Temp 43, Low Temp 36 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
In Pagan times, the winter solstice was known as Yule. British author Susan Cooper captures the magic of this day in her poem, The Shortest Day. I read the poem every year on this day and celebrated solstice this year by inviting the Goldstones to dinner. We had seared ahi tuna with a fennel salad and the ultimate winter comfort food, mac and cheese and made a toast to the shortest day and longest night. I delight in the fact that tomorrow and each winter day following will have a wee bit more daylight than the day before.
The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us—listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome, Yule!
by Judy Handley | Dec 20, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 354: Getting Ready for Christmas
Date: Monday, December 20, 2021
Weather: Mostly Sunny and Cold; High Temp 33, Low Temp 29 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
It barely got above freezing today, but at least the sun was shining. I wrapped presents and made a list of things that need to be done before Christmas Eve. Only three more ‘working’ days until Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Tomorrow, Tuesday, December 21, at 10:59 EST (15:59 UTC) the Northern Hemisphere will be the farthest from the sun which marks the beginning of the winter season. Tomorrow will be the shortest day and the longest night of the year. I am always happy to see that day end. What I love about winter solstice is that it marks the beginning of longer days. Yay! Heather, Jed, and boys are coming over for a solstice celebratory dinner tomorrow night, so my day tomorrow will be spent getting ready to officially, “Welcome, Yule.”
by Judy Handley | Dec 19, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 353: Revels and Boston Commons Ice Skating
Date: Sunday, December 19, 2021
Weather: Overcast Turning Sunny Late PM; High Temp 43 (Boston), Low Temp 24 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Shadow and I were up early to do our mile walk in the misty rain this morning. Then I left Shadow for the day to go to Christmas Revels in Cambridge with Heather and family.
We knew we would not be home until evening, so I asked my trusty friends Karen and Peter Baranowski to come over in the afternoon to play outside with Shadow. Shadow and I send a big thank you to them.
Fifty one years ago author and performer, John Langstaff, launched the very first Christmas Revels. Here is what he wrote in the program notes in 1971: “Long before there was a Christmas, man celebrated at this time of the year upon noticing the return of the sun to higher elevations in the sky. Pagan rituals sprang up around this event, later to become tangled with Christian lore, which called for a celebration at a nearly identical date. Folk dances, songs, and plays often blended and blurred the pagan and Christian traditions. The result was a unique type of expression that was both wild and holy.”
Each year since, with the exception of the year of Covid 2020, Christmas Revels has been performed in the beautiful Sanders Theatre on the Harvard campus in Cambridge.
Heather, Jed, Sam, Jonah, Ollie, and I thoroughly enjoyed this year’s production which takes place in the present day.
Usually, the audience is transported to another part of the world in a much earlier time. But this year, the ‘past’ visited the present at a 17th-century English pub, the George and Dragon, owned by an American couple and famous for its annual Christmas caroling party. I think it was particularly interesting to the boys as there were many references to the happenings in our lives over the past two years, including a plea for world peace and for reaching out in some way to the homeless among us. We all especially enjoyed the music played by the pub jazz band which was superb. It was a different kind of performance but still held true to the tradition of audience participation in the singing. That is by far the best part!
We attended an early afternoon performance and exited the theatre just before 3 pm. It was overcast and dreary when we entered, but the sun was shining brightly for our next adventure. We drove through Cambridge and across the bridge to the Boston Commons to go ice skate on Frog Pond. I was only an observer of this activity, but again, every one of us enjoyed it. I was dressed for the cold weather and sat on a park bench to watch the action. I could easily spot Ollie as he spun round and round the outdoor rink as he had on a bright blue tie-dyed sweatshirt.
The others were a little harder to find amongst the many merry skaters, but I eventually got good at finding them all. As the sun sunk slowly in the background, I got to also enjoy watching the color changes in the sky.
And we walked back to the van, we enjoyed the view of the State House gleaming in the setting sun.
As we drove out of Boston, we got to see a very dramatic full moon rising through the dark clouds. We had hoped to go out to dinner in Boston, which is our tradition, but due to the threat of Omicron, we cancelled our reservation at Fire and Ice and had a wonderful sushi dinner at home. After dinner, I helped Sam roll the cookie dough he made last night to make Chocolate Krinkles. Messy to make as the dough was very sticky, but delicious cookies which brought back memories for Jed as his grandmother used to make these same cookies. He doesn’t remember her dough being as sticky. He checked her recipe and it was the same as the one Sam used except his called for oil and Jed’s grandmother’s called for butter. Maybe we’ll try another batch with butter.
And it was still snowing. What a wonderful gift on Christmas Eve! A little snow had been predicted, but it was supposed to be too warm for it to stick. I’m so glad the weather forecast was wrong this time. Shadow and I spent most of our morning outside romping in the snow and then walking our morning mile. Shadow rolled his tennis ball in the snow and enjoyed eating snow.
Shortly after I got him in November of 2019, we had an early December snow, a little more than today, and I learned then how much he loves running in the snow. This morning as he ran to catch his tennis ball, I felt such a sense of peace. Somehow a world covered in snow seems so peaceful. In these turbulent times, those moments of peace are needed. Unfortunately rain is in the forecast for Christmas Day. But we will be inside opening presents and eating wonderful food, so I doubt that we will notice.
The other bags are assigned to one of the Goldstones and will be opened tomorrow. Then it was on to the cookies. We made the sugar cookie and molasses gingerbread cookie dough last Saturday. Two dozen of the cookies will be delivered to families in need tomorrow afternoon. In fact, Heather will be spending an hour or two tomorrow afternoon volunteering to get Christmas dinners delivered to needy families. I can’t think of a better way to spend part of Christmas Day. Heather, Ollie, and I did most of the cookie making today. More accurately, Heather and Ollie did most of the cut outs while I assisted by shuffling cookies from the oven to the cooling racks and then making icing for decorating.
But again, I mostly watched Heather and Ollie do the decorating. Plus, Jed helped out. Ollie decorated special cookies for Santa and put a carrot on the China plate for Rudolph . . . because Santa deserves to eat off real China.
The main course tonight was a meat pie with salad. I had actually never heard of a meat pie (ground beef, pork, and lamb with mashed potatoes mixed in and enclosed in a pie crust), but it was delicious.
Heather also made a poppy seed cake for dessert in the Bundt pan I gave Heather and Jed for their anniversary this year. It makes an impressive presentation.
Heather also had each of us look for a special paper ornament on the tree. Each ornament represented a donation made by the Goldstones. Heather had made donations to Belonging To Each Other, an organization that supports the homeless in Falmouth, the Boothbay Land Trust, the Wampanoag Tribe, and public radio. And there was one gift to the Goldpebbles. Heather uses an organization called Paper Culture to print her Christmas cards. They use only recycled paper and plant a tree for every order made. And by the way, they are cheaper than using Shutterfly. The card on the Christmas tree saying a tree had been planted in honor of the Goldpebbles was the gift.
