Drizzle On An Overcast Sunday Morning

Our Christmas Cardinal Neighbor

7:33

It's after 8:00, a few ducks are floating by, quacking for some reason and a boat hangs off of Tom's Point fishing.  Most of the lake is open yet the edges around Victoria are still frozen.  It looks like rain or freezing rain on and off during the day, a dismal Sunday forecast.  Five days until WINTER.

Breakfast At Dunkin

Yesterday was much like today's forecast without the rain, cloudy with temperatures in the high 30's.  We were busy early, me downloading photographs, then putting them on an external hard drive so we have more than one copy of our photo history.  Evie packed up the cookies for mailing, and I took them to the Post Office after my weekly trip to the Transfer Station.

Lakewood, our local small town venue, was having Christmas In The Village so it seemed like the like perfect way for Evie to get in a walk.  Around 11:30, we drove to Lakewood and stopped at Ryder's Cup for a coffee to begin our excursion.  We rarely visit any of the little shops along their Main Street so we took our time, visiting them, most selling Christmas stuff, stuff we don't need.  We did like the art gallery, talked with the artist who was painting a photograph of two dogs on consignment.  We ended up at Lakewood Apothecary, talking with the owner, Jim, a friend who gave us a long speel on a medicinal cannabis by-product, not marijuana, which comes in a spray form or small bottle for 80 bucks.  We didn't bite even though it was supposed to cure everything, sleeplessness, pain, anxiety, depression, etc.

On our way home, we stopped at a corner lot where they were selling Christmas trees, yep, real trees not those faux ones.  We talked with the guys and Evie got him to sell us the one we liked for forty bucks.  They bundled it up with twine and it fit in the back of our Outback.  We were home by 1:30 in time for lunch, two meatloaf sandwiches.  I watched some volleyball, the Regional Final from Thursday night, worked some more on saving my photographs while Evie did a few things in the kitchen and wrote a couple more Christmas cards.

Around 5:30, we turned on Christmas music, classics by Nat King Cole or Perry Como, and set up our tree, always an onerous task but with Evie's know-how and an 'easy setup stand,' we got it up and standing straight.  I then made myself a bloody mary, Evie a wine spritzer and we pulled our box of Christmas tree lights from the attic, testing each strand to see which still worked.  We found one long strand and basically that's all we needed to put on our tree.  Evie would wind it three-fourths of the way around, then I would step in and wrap the strand over and around the top and she would start again.  By 7:00, we were sitting in our living room with our drinks, admiring our Christmas tree, listening to Christmas favorites.  Nothing like the Christmas Season.

While we were busy, we literally forgot about dinner, so we pulled out the leftover sausage and mushroom pasta, boiled up another half a box of noodles and we had dinner and Evie added a salad.  We watched both the Browns game for a while, then for the first two games of the Women's Volleyball final before deciding to save both for viewing later today so we could fast forward through the commercials.  I just hope I don't see who won the volleyball although I do know the Browns won.  I then read until 11:15 when it was time to close up my Kindle.