2022 Life Logs, Day 357: Merry Christmas Eve Eve
Date: Friday, December 23, 2022
Weather: Rain, WIND, Temperature Drop: High 55, Low 16 degrees F
Sunrise and Sunset: 7:08 am & 4:17 pm
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
A few hours ago, it was in the 50’s. Now it is in the 20’s. With the wind still roaring, it feels really cold. It is 11:15 pm and I just took Shadow outside. The first problem was that my front storm door was frozen shut. It was not solidly frozen, but I had to push hard to get it open. We walked down to the dock to check on the water level. It was not nearly as high as it was this morning, but it was too cold to stay and really check things out. That will have to wait until morning. It was so cold that even Shadow wanted to get back inside the cottage. This morning the high tide was a super high tide that had the main dock underwater and the floating outer dock up in the air.
And the water came up into the yards next door further than I have ever seen it.
Heather said that at Falmouth Heights Beach there was no beach this morning. The water came all the way up to the seawall. It rained all night, but there were periods today without rain. The same was true of the wind. It was really blowing this morning. Then it settled down a little before coming back with a vengeance. It will continue to be very cold and windy tomorrow, but then things settle down just a bit. Compared to much of the country, we got by pretty easy with this storm, so I’m not going to complain.
Late in the day, I decided to make bread wreaths. This is a tradition that I have not done this for a few of years, and I quickly learned that I had been overly ambitious. I used to be able to knead an eight-loaf recipe of whole wheat bread with no problem. Today I found a four-loaf recipe challenging. It takes an entire five-pound bag of whole wheat flour for the recipe, and it is heavy to knead. And I used to be able to braid the wreaths with no problem, but tonight the dough just didn’t cooperate. Half of the wreaths barely look good enough to give as gifts, so I think the birds are going to be getting a few of them!
Heather sent a photo of her mixed tradition braided challah wreath she made for dinner tonight. It looks the way my wreaths used to look.
Maybe it is time for me to pass this tradition on to the younger generation. But even with my problems, I was still glad I made them.
The reason that I had the time to make the bread wreaths is because we did not go to Revels this afternoon. Jonah was feeling worse, so Heather decided to call to try to change the reservation once again, this time to Monday. Then she found out that today’s shows were cancelled due to cast illness. We will have to wait to see if there is even going to be a show on Monday. But despite illness on the home front, we are going forward with Christmas. We are going to have sushi with some extras for our Christmas Eve celebration tomorrow and call it our Feast of the Seven Fishes. Doing take-out sushi seems to be cheating, but it is what everyone will actually eat and enjoy. We will have Christmas Eve here at the cottage and Christmas Day at the Goldstones.
I got photos from Jo this afternoon with the tag, “Merry Christmas Eve Eve.” They were enjoying sunset at the beach, and what a beautiful sunset.
