Thanksgiving Contemplations and Discoveries

Holy crap.
Who knew I had this many Christmas lights and decorations? Hands?
OK, I was pretty worried about having enough lights to decorate this new house - it has sooooo many more places to put things and soooo many more eaves to hang lights. Today after work I went down into the basement and started opening all of those "Christmas decoration" boxes so we could hang things while it was "warm" - 50 deg. Down at the bottom of each box, there were strings and strings and STRINGS of lights. Icicle lights, garland lights, straight-string lights. I started to set aside groups so I would have enough for the tree, but then I had to separate that pile... Too many even for the seven foot tree!

The Big Tree will go in the bay window, and I'll do the red and gold this year. My kids always thought I was crazy, carefully saving the color-co-ordinated tinsel year to year, wrapped in sheets of flat newspaper to keep them uncrinkled. Well, I have the silver for my blue and silver decor, and the holographic for my multicolor decor, and the red and gold for - well. I found all of my trees, too - the tiny ceramic one, the rotating fiber-optic one, the tree-in-the-burlap base one, and of course the Big Tree. Each one will have its own special place...

Then there's ALL those tabletop and wall decorations... The huge glass elk, the sterling-silver deer, the birch tree candleholders, the candles candles candles!

I brought eight big boxes up from the basement, all outdoor decorations, and left the seven boxes of indoor decorations downstairs for later. We finished the lights on the front porch and out on the arbor; a large chandelier tree hangs from the porch ceiling. Then the twinkling-star LED lights and garland all around, with big red bows to finish off the porch. Next was the bay window - "glittering" icicles that twinkle on and off asytmetrically, and, yes, twinkling net lights laid across the roof of the bay window to add to the movement. Tomorrow we will hang the verandah lights; the icicles and front-entrance framing lights, and an even bigger chandelier tree will hang on the verandah! I'll stretch net lights across the roof of the verandah as well, underneath my bedroom windows. I've already put up huge wreaths on the front and verandah doors already - another thing no one understood, WHY I save my wreaths year to year, and make or buy more. Well, this year I have DOORS to decorate!

So tomorrow I'll cook Thanksgiving dinner for just the two of us. No one's coming to dinner, our company all came last week. So we could just bake pies and eat them - but we'll have the fixin's we like for dinner and several dinners to come; the Turkey, the potatoes and gravy, the stuffing and devilled eggs and cheese and sausage on crackers, along with the pies. Then if I have the energy, I'll probably do some inside decorations, since the wind is supposed to be pretty brisk tomorrow. Saturday we'll finish up the outside, and Sunday night at sundown - per my agreement with my neighbor Pat, not one minute before! - we'll turn everythng on. And Saturday night we're supposed to get some light snow...

Today was a half day at work, So after everyone went down to watch the play I put up my red metallic backing paper for our Christmas bulletin board. Once Cheryl comes back Monday, she and I will stay after school and finish it. The Drama club kids bought me flowers for working on their costumes and helping them with makeup. They are sooo sweet! I have to fix Dustin's Puck costume this weekend, and finish up some work for school.

All in all, a very peaceful and happy little vacation. I miss my friends, but I wish THEY were HERE; I don't want to go back THERE! But I'll take pictures and send gifts to let them know I'm thinking of them all the same...

WHOO HOOOO! A nice Surprise!

My brother will be here in two hours!

Tammy came in from Vegas Wednesday morning, and is upstairs asleep right now. I just got a call from my brother Jim. He is loading potatoes in O'Neill and has to go to Blackfoot with them. So he is coming by on State Hwy 20, and dropping in to see us! What a surprise for Tammy! What a joy for us! To see my brother again!

He hasn't seen the house yet, although I've been sending him pictures. He and Dorren were thinking about coming by sometime around Christmas - but distances and time may keep us apart still, as they always seem to do. Driving down to North Platte a few months ago to meet him was a treat. He is always on the road, though, it seems, and we haven't been able to hook up since.

I can't wait to show him the place; the house, the town, and for him to see Tammy again.

Of course we had plans for the weekend; we always have plans. But this is a GREAT interruption! I think I'll make a CD of pictures of the house for him to take back to Dorren. And smuggle a couple of jars of pickles into his truck. Oh, wait, he likes horseradish, too - I'll clean some up and put it in a jar for him, too. What fun!

I really should get dressed first! LOL But I won't wake Tammy just yet... she's driving back east today and needs her sleep. She liked Las Vegas and now, finally, is ready to unass the east coast and come out here with us. I am so glad, especially with how those poor, pathetic, miserable folks back home are spending thousands of taxpayers' dollars to try to 'prove' that what we did was criminal back there. Well, it wasn't - that's what we had an attorney for - but they in their vicious and spiteful ignorance demanded a forensic audit and have now called in the State to investigate. What they will find is exactly what we found - the person who was ripping off the town did it legally if not ethically, and we fired her for it even though we couldn't prosecute her for it. As much as we wanted to. And she immediately sued us for 'discrimination' to muddy the waters and screw things up as much as she could, desperately struggling even in her guilt to hurt others. Tammy does not need to be there to hear all of that cruelty and meanness - cruelty and meanness that is endemic to that place. I'm glad she will finally get out of there. While here and in Vegas, she met REAL people - decent, honest, and fun-loving, who know how to live their lives cleanly and honestly, without knifing others for pure pleasure and excitedly wallowing in their own filth, because they have nothing better to do. Whew. She had no idea that there were whole AREAS of decent, intelligent, and thinking people who have real lives! And now that she has seen what the different areas have to offer, she is looking forward, not backward, just as we are doing and tried to teach all of our children to do.

It's funny how people who have no dreams always try to destroy the dreams of others, isn't it? I thought for years that all that had to be done was for them to be shown, and they would move ahead, move forward, eagerly and happily, rising ever upward in thought and action. I was wrong. The only thing one can do then is to shake them off, let them wallow, whine, cut and knife and torment each other for eternity, and move on. Tammy sees that now, and I'm glad of it. So she'll go back there and make her plans and then move out here! If you can call 1700 miles away "out here".... LOL So I'll have my brother, my son, and my daughter all within a reasonable distance. Life is GOOD!

Gotta get to work! Hee hee... My brother's coming!!!!

Second Place!!!

The Drama Club went to Hyannis and came in second!!! Seven of the kids received honorable mention, and one was runner-up for Best Actress.

These kids are really committed, awesome, fun-loving. Jais painted the sets in two hours once the Club built them and set them up. We worked on makeup and costumes for two days - slavishly, because they had missed four days, Thursday thru Sunday, because of the blizzard. Now these kids go on to compete in the District finals, and then State.

They remind me of the kids that used to hang out at the house back east; fun-loving, determined, educating themselves instead of waiting to be handed things.

Tammy came in Sunday morning at 630 AM. She left Wednesday to spend the weekend with her brother in Las Vegas - they are actually going to California for the weekend for a Renaissance Faire to perform with Thomas' troupe. So in a week's time, Tammy will have traveled from one coast to the other, and seen the places she has always wanted to see. She'll be back here next week to hang out with us. I will be able to spend more time with her then - getting ready for the Drama Club's performance Wednesday was so rushed. We did manage to make Taco Tuesday at the Husker Hub. Pat told me she will be decorating for Christmas this year - heh heh heh.

Mrs Schneider - the wife of the fellow who owns the Propane and Oil company here - came to talk to me yesterday. Her hubby had told her about the basement room where all of my Christmas ornaments are in boxes, waiting to be put up. She hasn't decorated in a couple of years either. I told her that the FFA kids will put up her decorations. She may decorate again this year.

No one had signed up to do the front bulletin board at school for December, so I talked to Cheryl (who loves snow and mischief as much as I) and we signed up to decorate it. Heh heh heh. I went online and found exactly what we wanted and had talked about putting up. We signed up as "the Cody Elves".

Folks who thought I would be homesick, would pine for the past, the warm and humid southern way of life, were so wrong. The people who move to places and don't fit in, who get homesick and want to return to a previous life, are the ones who puzzle me. I chose Cody not just because they have snow and cold winters - I could have found that anywhere out here. But because the people are so busy and so easy to inspire, because they have good hearts and are industrious and honest and just plain fun.

Yes, I would still love to bundle up the people I love and left behind and load them into my pickup and move them here - but that is because the people whom I love would fit right in, too. They would find their souls again here. They would be able to share their joy and not have it stifled, warped, cut, and wounded, by all of those nasty, selfish, and cruel people who hurt others for their own bitter and self-promoting pleasure. Yes, I miss my friends and my daughter, so very much. But just as I have found my happiness here, I want them to be here and finally, blissfully, happy too.

Homesick? Who has time to be homesick, when life here is so intense and living it is - at last - so much fun?

Blizzard Aftermath

Well, it was HUGE - 50 mph winds for two days, heavy snow that blew away and into drifts higher than my head. 300 power lines down, and power out to the west of us. Think of it - without electricityin the country, there's no power to pump water from the wells, either. So many ranches had not fired up their propane heaters yet this year - and their heaters wouldn't start when the storms came in. Thursday school was cancelled because of the wind and blowing snow; whiteout conditions most everywhere. I could barely see the corral, and not the hill behind it at all. Friday school was cancelled because so many children did not have power, did not have water. And yet - this sort of thing is normal, accepted, something one deals with as best one can. No sense of entitlement here, and no whining - suck it up and figure something out. You'd better, because no one is coming to 'save' you.

Folks will say I'm "lucky" because we bought in town, where the water tank flows no matter what, where the roads get plowed after the storm stops, where the power lines are buried and the power - for the most part - stays on. Lucky because if all else fails, the woodstove will heat and cook for us. Not lucky. Knowledgeable. Knowing what you want - and what you can handle, as well as what you can't - is paramount.

We spent the last two days setting up The Winter Village on the tabletop in front of the bay window. Snow, a town, a skating pond, even a small river over which the train trestle runs. I'm baking cookies for the Veteran's Day celebration; it is at the school but the whole town comes. Getting Tammy's bedroom ready - she is determined to get here as soon as possible. She was supposed to stop in Macon but kept right on after work; made it almost to Nashville last night. So she may be here tonight instead of tomorrow night! Oh to be young and vibrant and strong, and to not feel sore and achy the next day! I remember those days!

My friends are afraid that I won't like this weather, but I truly do. I don't like being afraid of slipping and falling, but I do love a real ripping winter, with snow and icicles and darkness and cold. It is my favorite time of year. I am a "winter person", I love the dark burgundies, greys, greens, blues, and blacks, and sparkling snowy whites and silvers. I love the deep introspection of the long nights, and the brilliant blue glow of the moon sparkling on snow and ice. I love the howling wind and biting ice pellets that sting my face. It makes me feel alive, happy, warm inside when it is cold outside. My only wish right now is that I had a horse that I could saddle and ride comfortably at a slow walk over my hills, punching through the ice-crusted snow, looking at the silent and glistening landscape, and watching the wildlife duck and hide. Ah, well, it will come. All things come.

Some Rot is Good

I worked and turned the compost pile yesterday, before I added the jack-o-lantern and straw from the scarecrow that I took down from Halloween. Black and crumbly dirt, rich and smelling of clean wet soil. A 'crust' had formed on part of it, of ash from the woodstove and sand, but when I shoved the shovel through it, what came tumbling out was loose and damp and rich. I could probably use it to fill my flats this winter to start my vegies! It looks and smells like the bags of potting soil you buy at the store. All of the kitchen compost; the eggshells, the rotted vegie peelings, have mixed with the sawdust and ash and coffee grounds, and the green cuttings from my discarded plants, and the horse poop, so that there is nothing recognizeable any more.
The raked up leaves are even starting to rot from less than a week ago!

I was puzzled when Nancy said that they raked their leaves - to take them to the dump. Take them anywhere? Why? Leaves are blankets of warmth and rot for plants; I mulched the red-twig dogwoods, the strip garden along the fence, the garden around the pond, and the two by the front porch, with them, stomped and wetted them down. That will hold water far better than the processed bag mulch, and will keep their little feet warm for next year. Maybe some folks don't think that they are as pretty as a clean-swept yard with summer-green twigs popping up everywhere? I don't understand the concept or the motivation. I like BIG luscious gardens, falling over themselves with green, and flowers, in the spring and summer; not little sticks struggling to survive in sand that drains water as swiftly as you pour it on. And a simple thing like dead leaves piled around them in fall will give me that. A few weeks ago, Enid saw me pouring coffee grounds on my roses and asked me why. Well, roses like acidity - they got enough of it when I was in the south surrounded by pine trees that covered them in the mulch of pine needles, but here in sandy soil, not so much.

I know most of the folks here probably have a sneaking suspicion that I am crazy, wanting to move here to grow things when it is so much easier to grow things in a Zone of "9" instead of a "6". It IS easier to grow things there - if the ordinances and neighbors aren't complaining, or if you can keep the invasive weeds down (a constant struggle - what is good for plants is GREAT for weeds!) or if you can keep away the mold and rot that hangs in the humid air like summer fog. My roses here have all lost their black spot and fuzzy white fungal growths, thanks to the drop in humidity. So SOME rot is good - but plants that rot while they are still trying to grow is NOT good. Once I get my garden system set up, I'll work far less here than I ever did there - because I won't be constantly spraying fungicides, trying to balance watering with discouraging mold.

Got a call from Boo today; she'll be starting her drive out here this Friday and should be here by Sunday night. We are soooo excited - she hasn't seen the house since before we moved in, in March. Oh, I send her pictures of what we've done, but still! Mike is busily making a bedframe off of the old iron headboard and footboard we found next to the garage; it should be ready by next weekend. Then we carry it upstairs, inflate the air mattress, and make the bed in the spare room upstairs.

Well, today I am going to the school to quietly organize my little office without interruption; it is so full and frustrating to deal with, everything shoved here and there, and so disorganized. I have a tackle box to organize the kids' meds - the plastic container there is so helter-skelter, it drives me NUTZ! - and I am going to dust and clean and redo a lot of stuff. I simply can't work in such a small and disorganized space! So I'll take my vitamins, drink my coffee, and get started.