Poinsettia Day

This particular day comes every year about this time..... the neighbor and their children who live down the road stops by at all the other neighbors to give everyone a pretty poinsettia plant. The children hide behind their mother or their father (whichever one makes the delivery) and they're always very quiet, whispering "Merrrry Crissssmus" before they run back down the porch steps.

The first year we lived here, I was unprepared for their early Christmas delivery, so I gave them some boxed cookies that I had in the house. The kids were thrilled... chocolate chip cookies were their favorite, their father told me.

The second year, I gave them Christmas story books, and the kids were happy.... books were their favorites, their mother said.

Since that year with the story books, I've kept two baskets filled with little toys and gifts and books for young children. The little gifts are wrapped in polka-dotted cellophane bags with bright ribbons (pink for the girls, blue for the boys), and the books are a mixture of Christmas stories and popular children's authors.

The kids absolutely love the baskets, and make their choices very carefully.... gently picking up the cellophane bags and peeking in-between the polka-dots at the prize inside... and sometimes finding it hard to decide. Today, I told the kids they could each have two choices. I thought that would make it easier for them.... but it seemed to make it more difficult.

The two younger kids chose packages of candy and little toys, and the eight-yr-old girl chose a book and a little Christmas angel with sequined wings. Very quietly, as she walked down the porch steps, I heard her whispering "Angels are my favorite."

I will have to remember to put more angels into the Christmas basket for next year.

Holiday bugs.

My husband says that I'm the one who always finds bugs in and around the house because I'm the only one looking for them.

Well, that could be true... but if there was a scorpion or a beetle on either my husband's computer or the TV remote, then he'd be finding them also.

Thanksgiving morning.... and everything in the dining room was looking just beautiful... I was admiring the decorations and place settings on the table and my eye happened to catch a teeny bit of movement in the curtains hanging in the archway between the dining room and the living room. I have two long panels of sheer silk and brocade curtains in that archway, one on either side of the wide arch. They serve no other purpose other than to dress up a square open space between the two rooms and the design of the soft fabric looks very Victorian.

What did not look very Victorian was the big scorpion that had found its way in-between the sheer silk and the brocade silk.  I usually capture scorpions with the vacuum cleaner, but with those delicate curtains, that wasn't going to work.  I got the dust-buster thing and slowly got the nozzle of it between the two layers of fabric......... and into the dust-buster went the scorpion.  That stupid thing must have been half asleep because it didn't start running until it was whirling around in the canister of the dust-buster. If Black and Decker were to use this scorpion-capture method in their advertising, they'd be selling dust-busters all over the state of Texas. One thing you have to remember after the scorpion is sucked up into that canister--- you have to spray a bit of Raid into the nozzle to get the scorpion gasping for its last buggy breath.

The other bug is a polka-dotted beetle of some sort that is right now somewhere in the live Christmas tree that's sitting in the corner of our dining room. We bought the tree this morning at Home Depot... lovely Frazier Fir, perfectly shaped from the bottom branches to the very top that's nearly touching the ceiling. My husband was securing the tree into the stand while I was holding onto the trunk of the tree to keep it steady... and that's when I saw the beetle, crawling on my wrist.

Of course I screamed a little first, just out of surprise, then I flicked my hand to get it off of my wrist, and into the tree it went..... this slow-moving polka-dotted square-shaped, flat little bug. I don't know if it's in the beetle family or not, but whatever it is, it's still in the tree. I thought of spraying the Christmas tree with Raid, but who knows if that would hurt the tree that we just paid $70 for. Better to let the bug find a comfy branch of the tree and settle in.... and I'm hoping that it doesn't find its way onto the dining room table during the next Waldorf Wednesday tea party.

Bugs. Insects. Crawling, creepy little things. The entire state of Texas was built on an enormous ant hill and is and forever will be protected by mega-armies of six- and eight-legged soldiers.

Day before Thanksgiving....

The orange/white cat is getting friendlier all the time... letting us pet him, and usually not bothering to swipe his paw against our wrists now. I've made a little pillow-bed for him on one of the chairs on the back porch... he will use that unless Gatsby is out there giving him the cat-evil-eye to vacate the porch. That's when Pumpkin will slowly get off of the chair, walk slowly towards the steps leading to the backyard, and then he'll walk towards the barn. At least once or twice, he'll turn around and look towards the porch to see if Gatsby is following him.

Yesterday, I was out near our mailbox talking to two friends, and all three cats were sitting in the driveway, just watching us. Gatsby was by the front of the garage, Pumpkin was next to my husband's car, and Mickey was the bravest... he came all the way up to us for petting. Mickey is usually the one who comes purring up to everyone, ready to spread his kitty-love around to the neighbors.

Because of the pouring rain we had last week, our pond looks like Spring... filled nearly to the top and the birds and the neighbors' dogs are enjoying the water. That particular neighbor keeps his dogs outside, which is a good thing because they don't look too pretty after they've run through the pond.

Our live-in handyman will be officially moving into the barn apartment this weekend. He will have Thanksgiving dinner with us tomorrow, along with a few of our friends, and one of their friends who would otherwise have been alone for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving isn't the time for a one-person dinner... everyone should invite whomever they know who would be spending tomorrow by themselves.  Share your feast.... it's what Thanksgiving is all about.

Sunday stuff....

We've been getting last-minute things ready for M, our live-in helper who will be taking up residence next week in the apartment over the barn.  By next Saturday, he will be officially moved in.

My husband replaced some of the ceiling tiles in the rooms up there... a few of them had a few old water-stains, a couple were cracked.... so now they're all white and new again. I never was a fan of those drop-ceilings with the square tiles, but that's what was put into the rooms of that apartment by the previous owner, and that's what will stay. Now that all the tiles are white and clean, the ceiling looks pretty good.

In the kitchen up there, my husband put new fluorescent bulbs into the ceiling fixture, so that's working perfectly and the kitchen is nice and bright. For as long as we've been here, the burners on the stove in that apartment have never worked...... and now, magically, they're working just fine. We tested the stove on three separate days, and they're still working, so we won't have to replace that appliance after all,

There were days when I honestly thought the rooms over the barn were haunted.... and I'm not the only one who felt something was just 'weird' up there. My friend C felt it also, but couldn't put her finger on just what was wrong there.  Our young friend Miss C, who stayed up in the barn rooms every time she came to visit, never said anything was weird or different or scary about that apartment, and I never mentioned my suspicions about the guest rooms to her.  Miss C just loved that little apartment, but now when she comes to visit, she'll be staying in the guest cottage.

Since M started moving his belongings into the barn every weekend these past couple of weeks, and ever since friend C did her cleaning/dusting/mopping magic up there, the barn apartment seems to have taken on a new personality. I no longer feel ill at ease when I go up there, and it just seems fresher and new up there.

So maybe this is what the barn apartment needed..... new life up there. Goodbye to the ghosts, hello to M.

Jack Frost has left the Hill Country.

Our temperatures are finally back to more normal numbers... it was beautiful today, nice and warm and sunny, but now it's raining... it's still warm outside, so we'll forgive the weather gods for the wet stuff. And how could I complain anyway.... the residents of Buffalo, NY are drowning in snow up there.... five or six feet of snow, which I can't even imagine.

Pumpkin Kitty continues to visit our porch, but not on a regular basis. I have no idea where that cat goes when he's not here. He's still playing hard-to-get, just letting us pet his orange and white head once or twice a week, then he's off to parts unknown.  With the cold weather we've had, I fixed up two warm beds for that cat, only one of which was chosen by his Royal Orangeness.  That cat definitely doesn't like any sort of warm bed that resembles a box, leading me once again to believe that he has been trapped in a box before and then re-located, probably right close to our road or not far from it... and that's how he got here in the first place. So, no matter how warm and cozy that box on the back porch is, Pumpkin Kitty is just not going near it. He simply prefers the warm blankets I have put out on the chaise lounge. He curls up in those, paws himself into a soft spot, and goes to sleep. And Sweet Pea watches him from the windows of the TV room.

Our live-in handyman will be moving into the barn apartment soon.... before the end of this month.  We've already asked him if he'd like to have Thanksgiving dinner with us, and if he doesn't go into Houston to visit his daughter, he'll be having dinner with us here, along with a few other friends on our road.  It was too cold this past weekend for M to come here to do any outside work, and we've already told him to use this weekend coming up to move more of his belongings into the barn rooms. After he's unpacked and settled, then we'll come up with some sort of work schedule for him.

Thanksgiving is literally around the corner now.... I spent most of this afternoon getting groceries, and my husband is picking up specialty items in Houston. There are just some things we can't get at the stores here, like just-caught seafood, which we always bought at the fish markets on the bay coast in Clear Lake.

Gobble, gobble... seven more days till turkey day. And the one thing about Thanksgiving that I don't like is cooking that silly bird.  If it were up to me, I'd be serving salmon or lobster or crabcakes for Thanksgiving dinner. But I guess the Pilgrims wouldn't approve of that menu....

The mouse stops here...

For the past few days as this part of Texas has been engulfed in the most ridiculously cold weather we've had since last winter, Mickey has been spending most of his time in the garage. He's not much liking it, but he's warm and he's safe---  I have cat beds and cat tents in the garage for Mickey, and my husband bought him a new heater (no sharp edges, no hot wires) to keep him toasty warm when the weather turns stupid.

If Mickey's inside-the-house behavior hadn't gone down-hill in his older years, he'd still be an inside cat, which is how he started out his little kitty life with us. We've had him since he was less than two months old and less than three pounds in weight. Teeniest, tiniest little black kitten we'd ever seen, found by my husband and our dog Gracie as they walked in the park one morning back in Clear Lake. My husband found that tiny kitten just weeks after we had both promised one another that we would not have any more cats.

"Well, this one is different," said my husband... "Gracie found him in the tall grass near the bayou... it's Gracie's kitten... we have to keep him."

Far be it from me to refuse a teeny-tiny kitten, especially an all-black, which I know are the last to be chosen at the animal shelters. Being that Gracie found the kitten just two weeks before we were leaving for California's DisneyLand, we named the kitten Mickey Kitty. (We nearly named him Mickey Mouse, but felt that just wouldn't do.)  So Mickey joined our family, and our pet-sitter at the time added that three-pound ball of fluff to his list of responsibilities at our house during our time away.  The pet-sitter loved Mickey, as he did all our other pets.... but Mickey was special because he was so darn tiny and so darn cute.

He's always been smaller than the average male cat, and he's still as cute as can be... but he's relegated to the outdoors on nice days, and to the garage at night and on not-so-nice days. Before you start thinking that the garage is too enclosed for a cat.... he can also go through a little trap door which gets him to the fenced-in chicken coop, so he has sun and fresh air and a fine view of the property whenever he wants. (We no longer have chickens, so the chicken coop is now a screened-in porch for the cats.)

This morning when I went into the garage to feed Mickey his breakfast of warmed-up Fancy Feast, I nearly stepped on the little gift that Mickey left for me just inside the garage door. Usually, the first thing I see when I go into the garage in the morning is a stuffed green felt mouse that has been Mickey's favorite toy since his first Christmas with us. But this morning, the green mouse wasn't in its usual spot by the door.... in its place was a real mouse--- a dead one. Not exactly a little tiny mouse, either....... if this mouse had been a member of a family of four, it would have been the papa mouse. I'm surprised that Mickey was able to even catch it, much less kill it. Usually, he plays with the mice he catches, letting them go when he gets tired of the game.  Judging by the size of that mouse, I think Mickey caught the mouse eating out of the cat food dish and Mickey showed him no mercy in dispatching him to that big Mouse Hole in The Sky.

So my first chore of the morning was to scoop up the dead mouse with the broom and the dustpan, and toss him into the trash. Oh, how far I've come since moving out here to the country. In my Clear Lake days, I would have run screaming into the house to get my husband to remove the mouse... and if he wasn't at home, I would have gone knocking on all the doors of my neighbors to see whose husband was home to take care of a dead mouse.

Oh well.... I guess even a city girl can learn to look a dead mouse in the eye.

Totally stupid weather....

Well, the TV weather wizards were correct this time..... we did indeed get a frigid arctic blast from up north..... it's been freezing for days now.

On Wednesday afternoon, the wind was so fierce that it was hard to open the back door because the wind was just pushing it closed before you could open it and get out to the porch.  Honestly, if I wanted weather like this, we could have just stayed up in NY.

The barn swallows that are still here are huddling up in their nests on the back porch... two birds to a nest, all close and cuddled up together as soon as the sun goes down. If I walk out on the porch, I can see their little heads peeking over the edge of the nest. Those birds know me by now, so they don't leave the nest.... they just stay put and watch me. So cute.

I've made warm tents and blanket-filled boxes for Mickey in the garage.... he has his own heater in there and as long as the doors are kept shut, he's toasty warm, and enjoying his solitude. I've brought him into the house for a couple of hours at a time on the coldest days, but that means keeping Gatsby and Sweet Pea in the TV room so Mickey will think he's the only cat in the house. I still do not like Mickey having to be an outside cat now. And if his behavior inside the house wasn't so bad, he wouldn't have to be sleeping in a heated tent in the garage, but there's nothing I can do about that.  I don't want another situation like we had with AngelBoy, who was the most out-of-control cat I've ever had. (And still, I miss that blue-eyed cat so terribly.)

Pumpkin is still hanging around the property.... sleeping in the corners of the barn at night, and coming to the back porch for his Meow Mix. I'm wondering if Pumpkin will make friends with M once he moves into the apartment over the barn at the end of this month. Now that would be a perfect arrangement, if M would feed that orange cat by the barn, eliminating the cat-fights between Gatsby and Pumpkin. But.... I'm not going to suggest that to M. If it comes to be, then fine, but I don't want to 'push' a cat on to M if he doesn't want to be responsible for one.

It's supposed to rain this weekend, according to the weather wizards. We told M not to come out here to work this weekend, because of the cold weather, but he may choose to move more of his things into the apartment.  I've given the neighbors M's phone number, and my bet is that M will have plenty of opportunities to do work on other properties once he's fully settled here.

But... as long as this stupid weather continues to act like northern Canada instead of southwest Texas, no one will be doing much of anything outside. I hate the winter months.... with a passion. Except for Christmas... that's just a passion all on its own.

Sunday stuff...

M started moving some of his belongings into the barn apartment today.  He got here this morning with two friends of his who helped him move... and they stayed all day to help M with some of the chores. M was grateful for the help, being that we had some power tools that he hadn't used before on trees and bushes. Having been mostly a city guy, M will now have to get used to life in the country. He says that he is loving all of this, and I hope this "honeymoon" stage with the countryside won't be wearing off anytime soon.

It was good that M had that help today because my husband has been sick with a cold for the past four days. His coughing and sneezing is now on the way out, and my own cold symptoms have begun. Is there ever a time when cold germs just get to one person in the house?

I've had to take a break from shelling the pecans from our trees... most of my time this week has been devoted to Christmas decorations. I just finished putting up the last tree this afternoon.... everything is done now, except for the real Christmas tree that will go into the dining room right after Thanksgiving. As always, there is an explosion of Christmas throughout this house... every room, including all the bathrooms and the 3rd floor library.... every place you look, there is Christmas.  And once again, we're approaching the season where certain groups of people are trying to get everyone to say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."   Give us all a blessed break.

With so many of my cousins and their children living in other states (Arizona, New York, Illinois, Florida), I've also been wrapping Christmas gifts and then boxing them up for mailing.  My cousins are used to my early mailing of gifts... and within a few weeks, my cousin T in Arizona is going to be calling me and saying "Are you kidding me? We're still eating turkey leftovers and you're playing Santa already!"  He does that every year..... it's become a tradition.

Our weather has been very nice these last couple of weeks...... a little cool in the morning, warm in the afternoons, then cool again at night. The weather wizards on TV are calling for an Arctic Blast to come rolling down from Canada, bringing us abnormally cold weather for this time of the year. Oh goodie. I can hardly wait.

Handyman special....

Happy days here...... my husband has spoken to a friend we met in town..... about living in the apartment over our barn.  M would live in the barn for free, his 'rent' being paid with work that he would do around the property for us.

We met M a couple of years ago... he worked at two of the cafes in town, as did his daughter... and now M is working at the local thrift store and living in a tiny efficiency apartment in the center of town. His daughter goes to college and lives in downtown Houston.

My husband and I have discussed this arrangement before, and even asked another handyman to live up in the barn a while back, but he found another place. That handyman didn't want to do 'free rent' for chores... he just wanted to pay rent.

M has been at our house these past two Sundays, working on the property for us, and he loved it out here. He's used to town and city living, but loved this area so much that he was willing to work for free.  We paid him for his time these past two weekends, but once he moves in, we'll have a list of chores for him to do, plus other neighbors are always looking for by-the-hour help, and M can still work in town as he chooses.

It's a win-win situation, as my husband calls it....... M gets a nicer and bigger apartment where he has room for his daughter to visit... and we get work done so the chores don't pile up in-between searching for a handyman to do the jobs.

My husband told M about this arrangement while the three of us were having lunch on Sunday...... M was so overwhelmed and taken aback that he couldn't even finish his lunch. He was nearly in tears, and saying that he couldn't believe we'd ask him to "actually live here in this beautiful community."  And when we all walked over to the barn so he could look at the apartment, he was overjoyed with disbelief and he said it finally feels like he could have a real home again.

M will be giving notice to the landlord at his current apartment, and giving notice to his boss at work.... he won't be working there six days a week once he moves into the barn apartment, but they will let him work as much as he can or as much as he wants to.

I spent most of today going through the closets of the barn apartment... I took out things we had stored there, and I also took out everything that belongs to our little friend Miss C...... when she comes up here for over-night visits now, she'll sleep in the guest cottage instead of her usual room in the barn apartment.

M will be moving in sometime around the end of this month, but might be bringing some of his belongings every Sunday when he comes here for work. Both my husband and I think it will be a good arrangement for all of us..... M is a quiet man who loves music and books, and he and his daughter have a very good relationship.  All of us, especially M, feel as if the sky opened up and sent down a little miracle right here in the hills.