the day after Christmas... 2021

Merry Christmas (the day after)

Even though we had a quiet Christmas, there was much to do with cooking, baking, putting gifts together, etc.  Spoke and texted back and forth with kids, family, friends, etc. during the day and had coffee and rum cake with youngest son and his family in the evening... and exchanged a few presents.  All in all, a good day!

We did get both our AGA fixed and the Breville toaster oven fryer delivered before Christmas... so we were in good shape. I have tried the new toaster oven for toast, begals, and pizza... works fine. Haven't tried to actually cook in it (made our roast in the AGA Christmas day). But curious to see how it air frys... not something I'm familiar with as we never fry foods here. If anyone has any comments concerning air frying, I'm happy to hear them.

toaster oven and rum cakes

And I'm going to add a few of our granddaughter's 9 year old pics.... (which were taken recently and just sent to us)

I find it so hard to believe she's growing up so fast...

Since I haven't posted this yet... and it's already Monday afternoon, I will report that I had the CT Scan of my heart done this morning. Haven't gotten the results yet... but it all went well. I did feel a bit shaky after the procedure, but think it was due to the nitroglycerin they give you during the test. 

I've had the iodine contrast before in other CT's and outside of the flush of heat after administering, that has never bothered me. The nitroglycerin that is put under your tongue gave me a slight headache... and possibly the shaky feeling after...  Hopefully I will get the results in the next few days.

Tuesday morning: Got the basic results this morning, both on my health portal and by phone from the Cardiologist's office. My CT apparently was all good... no blockages, etc. The doctor will go over it all and explain at my next appointment in 2 weeks. He is sending the results to my family physician. All sounds good to me... guessing the episodes of heart pounding and high bp  I have sometimes in the early morning are due to the valve leakage and the pvc's  -  and are all a part of 'old age'... 

Closing this now as it's turned into a 3 day post. Want to mention that with the numbers of cases due to omicron rising, our son made us promise that when we went to the hospital for testing, that we wear all our personal protection equipment (mask, gloves, face shield) which we did... and although it seemed a bit of an overkill, the hospital personnel told us it was a very good idea. 

Really closing now:  Happy New Year 2022 to all of you!  Hopefully it will be better than the last 2... but I'm honestly not too optimistic about that. Still... best wishes for a happy healthy 2022!

Hugs (virtual),

Rian

Our AGA is fixed... and other things

This morning a repairman came out and fixed our AGA.  As DH said, "OMG, it's alive again!" That's what it feels like when the pilot is lit and the whole thing becomes warm again. It is the 'heart' of the kitchen and we've had it since 2005. 

It's only had one repair in all those years and that was in 2011. But when the workman who were putting in the generator last week tried to put it back on, they broke the simple mechanism that lights the pilot. So the poor thing went cold after all those years. We were lucky to find someone who knew how to fix it, as you don't find too many AGAs in Texas. But we love it... and really missed it. So we are so happy to have it back working again! 

She's back!!

Of course we also have an old wall oven... but we've had it for 36 years and the thermostat on it doesn't work well.  We have been told that it is too old to repair the thermostat so we either have to put a bought thermostat into the oven and regulate that way or just order a  new wall oven... (and who knows when that will get here - and it's definitely not a priority).

We did go out and buy a Breville toaster oven that has air fry capacity. THAT is supposed to be delivered before Christmas (we shall see). This was a precautionary measure in case the AGA parts had to be ordered and we wouldn't have any kind of oven for Christmas dinner. 

And I have to say that these last few days without an oven has taught me how to microwave more. Up until now we only used the microwave for heating things up... not actually cooking. But I've learned to cook scrambled eggs in the microwave (and baked potatoes)  as well as some microwavable dinners (like Stouffer's lasagna). I always knew they were microwavable, but just preferred to put them in the oven.

Anyway, now you are up to date on our latest Christmas dilemma.

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Our oldest son and his wife drove in from Texarkana this past weekend and we had our little family get-together Sunday. They were going to come Christmas Eve, but for one reason or another ended up coming this weekend. It was so good to see them as they have moved from Oahu, Hawaii to Grandbury, TX to Texarkana during the pandemic and we haven't gotten to visit much. 

Their dog is a Golden Doodle... (funny name for a breed I know), but very family oriented. I think he really believes he is just another kid. 

Here is a picture of Winston in his Christmas sweater.

He usually runs around the house except when we're eating - and then they 'corral' him for a little while. But he is a sweetie, loves to play and loves to watch TV... especially dog shows... but he watched football with us Sunday. 

We won't see our daughter and her family this Christmas, but we did see them Thanksgiving... and hope to be able to visit them in the hill country this spring or summer (if this virus would stop mutating and we could feel safe to travel).

Youngest son and his family will come over Christmas evening. Granddaughter is 9 now and her class recently had a Christmas event at school. We almost always go to these events, but decided that perhaps with Omicron rearing it's ugly head, that we would forego any crowded gatherings. They understood. No one wants any of us to get sick.

Tomorrow I will continue baking my Christmas rum cakes since the AGA is back in service.  I need to get these out to my neighbors sometime this week... and then I'm finished baking. We have gotten so much in the mail from friends and family... and even neighbors that we have enough goodies around this house to last for a year. 

These are the cannisters and rum cakes I send out... 

DH's brothers sent us a ton of dark chocolate 'everything' from the Chocolate House in Houston and bags of Italian seed cookies as well as quarts of Spumoni Ice-cream from Angelo Brocato's in New Orleans and a variety of different flavored pecans. I will have to put some of this away or we will all have diabetes by the end of the year. 

Well, Merry Christmas to all of you! Stay well and stay safe! And I'm glad that we at least have this safe way to stay in touch and communicate during these strange days. 

Hugs (virtual),

Rian

* For those who have shown an interest: Sorry I couldn't get the sequel to "Time after Time" out before Christmas. But hope to do it sometime early in 2022.  But good news is that I'm still getting hits on Amazon for both the paperback and the kindle edition. *

almost done... but always something

 The tree is done... for what it's worth... but it's beautiful to us!

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The outside cats have been around a lot lately, so I've been trying to get some good pics:

ferals looking in from back yard

First pic is mama cat, others are her kittens

...and of course this is One Eye

The pics are taken through the back French doors (which are always grubby due to little feral paws) so sorry the pics aren't terribly clear.

We've also got a family of raccoons coming by these days... but no pics. They usually come by after dark.

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Cardiologist report:

Results from heart monitor, Echocardiogram, and Nuclear stress test shows tachycardia, premature ventricular contractions, and some valve leakage. But none of this is too serious. He wants to do a CT of my heart to make sure he hasn't missed anything. But he thinks a Rx of Beta Blockers should help with the episodes I've been having. So that's pretty good news in my opinion. 

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Just about finished all my Christmas baking and sending. Most have received their packages by now. FedEx is pretty good at getting things out in a day or so. USPS - not so much. I sent 2 packages of goodies to N.O. on the same day. The one by FedEx took 2 days. The one by USPS still hasn't arrived and it's been a week (?).  And others sent all over by Fedex were delivered on time. Guess the Post Office is having a tough time...

It's also time to start doing some Christmas cleaning. We may not be getting together with family this Christmas, but there's still a lot to do. There's Christmas boxes, bags, wrap, ribbon, etc. all over the house. And there's Christmas dinner shopping to do (although we aren't doing a big Christmas dinner since there's only 3 of us). We will probably do a roast with gravy, potatoes, carrots, and onions... and maybe some bacon and green beans. Since we have turkey on Thanksgiving and a pork roast (with black eyed peas and cabbage) on New Years, Christmas is not always traditional - although we have had baked ham in the past.

Also today they are putting in our house generator (we are not waiting to see if the Texas grid will stand up to extreme winter weather). They have been digging trenches and using loud machines all around the outside of the house today... and will have to turn the electricity and gas off for a few hours. So we may be calling for pizza this evening. The outside feral cats are at a loss as to what all these workmen are doing. However, it hasn't deterred One Eye or Squeaky from coming to the back door... even though they have to jump over the dug trenches. But Olivia (the mama cat) has not brought her babies by... (she is a smart mama).

These were dug manually along backyard and side yard....  and I'm not sure what is going on everywhere else.  But you can see how long and deep the trenches are from these pics. I will take more pics as the process continues. 

On a 'not so great' note, they did turn the electricity and gas off for a while and when they turned it all back on... the Aga wouldn't come back on. Now we have to find an Aga repair person and that's not always easy as there aren't too many Agas around Texas. And I still have a few things to bake before Christmas (like rum cake for our neighbors) so hopefully we can get it repaired before too long.  

That's enough ramblings for today. Hope you are all enjoying your week before Christmas. 

Oh, I've been reading some rants on our neighborhood network (called Next Door) that includes several neighborhoods in the area. Someone started complaining about stray cats or ferals coming into their yard. I was surprised at the number of people that defended the ferals (although there were quite a few that want them gone). I don't get into those group neighborhood discussions. To me Next door should be used for safety and alerts, not petty annoyances. There are enough real problems in this world that need attention to worry about a few homeless animals that wonder into your yard. 

Really going to close this now. Thanks for taking the time to visit. And I really appreciate your comments - if you wish to leave any. If not, that's OK too.

Hugs (virtual), 

Rian

a little more Christmas...

 A few other Christmas decorations... 

We added the ornaments we had made of our cats over the years to our critter tree. If you enlarge it, you can see some of them better...

and these are two of our ceramic cats sporting Santa hats! (I forgot about them on my last post)

And then there's our Christmas Elf that sits on our grandfather clock year round... (you may have seen him before)

The tree is still a work in progress... but should be done sometime this week. 

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And I started baking Christmas goodies today.  So far I have the rum cakes, Christmas almond tea cakes, and home-made nutty granola done. Tomorrow will be chocolate nut brittle and bourbon whiskey balls.  If time permits I will add espresso delights and chocolate pecan tassies.

These I send out to the kids and a few friends and neighbors. My mother-in-law always sent us a box of her home-made Christmas goodies every year (we loved it!) - and after she passed,  I decided to keep up the tradition. 

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And also DH is in the process of making 

my well loved 

red beans and rice!

He is making it today (Sunday) although we will have it today and tomorrow. Monday is the traditional day in New Orleans to cook and eat red beans. If you google why Monday is red beans day here:  Monday's Red Beans, it will explain. You can almost always find it on the restaurant menus on Monday and probably on the table in many households - even today. 

(DH is still in the process of cooking... 

so I used a pic taken earlier this year.)

Guess I will close for today. 

I however, have to show you something

I bought for me for Christmas.

It reminded me so much of our beloved black and white cats

 that we lost at the beginning of this pandemic

that I had to have it to put under the tree.

(and he purrs...)

Hugs (virtual),

Rian

Dec. 1st... white rabbit! and other things...

I saw this prayer on Facebook the other day and it hit home with me. I'm not an especially religious person, but this prayer says a lot that is in my heart.  So I'm sharing it with you.  

Yesterday I had my nuclear stress test. Just thinking about it was 'stressing'... but I got through it just fine. (long day, but fine... we left the house at 10:30 am and got home close to 4:00 pm. DH was with me thank goodness) However, something mentioned in one of the books I've been reading about mindfulness helped. It may mean nothing to you, but it was exactly the words I needed to hear. It was in the 3rd book in the Dalai Lama's Cat series. The words were (and I'm paraphrasing) "Your mind is full of thoughts... some good, some bad... but what you have to remember is that they are just 'thoughts'... not truths." 

Anyway, I should get the results in the next few days. And I have an appointment in about 2 weeks with the Cardiologist to go over it all (the heart monitor I'm wearing for 30 days, the echocardiogram, and the nuclear stress test). Then... we should have some answers. 

Next I want to share this pic taken at the Mall the other day. It's the 12 days of Christmas structure that has been there for years. It's nostalgic as well as fun for the kids (and grown ups) as each section opens as the mechanism sings the 12 days of Christmas. DH and I were there to do a little Christmas shopping and it looked so pretty that I had to take a pic.

I wrote this post very very early this morning... as I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep (which happens on occasion). Also I was hungry as the only thing I had had to eat all day yesterday was a half of a peanut butter sandwich and a half cup of coffee when we came home from testing. So I got up, made myself a cup of tea, read blogs, and returned to bed around 4am. Now I'm reading to continue with this post. 

It's time to start Christmas baking this weekend. Christmas cards go out today and  if all goes well, some of the Christmas cookies for mailing will go out on Monday. 

We put out a few more of our inside Christmas decorations: 

And that's about it...

I hope the rest of your week is good. Enjoy the holidays and the holiday preps. Do something to make someone smile today... (even if it's you).

Oh... one more pic. It's of Big Boy, one of the ferals that spends a lot of time around here. Don't know if you can tell from this pic, but he has a huge head and is a rather handsome fella.

Hugs (still virtual),

Rian

the day after Thanksgiving 2021...

Christmas decorations replacing Halloween! Here we go putting up the Christmas tree, pulling down pumpkins, bats, etc., and replacing with Santas, reindeer, etc. Life goes on, the seasons and holidays change... and we adapt. 

Thanksgiving turned out better than expected as our daughter and her family (who live in the hill country) surprised us with a visit on Wednesday on their way to a friend's house in Lucus, Tx. We haven't seen them since the pandemic started, so it was great to see and visit with them for a bit. 

Then our oldest son and his wife (who live in Grandbury, Tx but are moving this weekend to Texarkana) came by on Thanksgiving day for Turkey sandwiches. We had a good visit, talking, eating,  and watching football.  So, although we didn't have the traditional family gathering, it ended up a good Thanksgiving. 

And even though we didn't see our youngest son and his family on Thanksgiving day, we had just seen them the Saturday before to celebrate their daughter's 9th birthday.  So all in all... things went well.

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Here are a few pics of the tree

and

a few Christmas decorations! 

naked tree

We get our Christmas tree every year the day after Thanksgiving.

This one we picked up yesterday morning! 

Next is a small tree with animals 

that I use as a 

Christmas centerpiece...

animal tree

close up

and a few little things 

I put out around the house...

Santa toys

Christmas mouse

Scotsman on shelf

and lastly...

the tree getting it's twinkle lights and star!

 

and although we haven't put ornaments on yet... we still found that under the tree looked a bit sad without our cats playing under there. So we added a few little under the tree critters to fill the empty space.

(I will post a pic of the tree once fully decorated, but we're slow and it may take a week or so...) 

And I have to report that all our feral cats (and a few raccoons) got some turkey on Thanksgiving (and I do believe that some of our ferals from the past return on the holidays to visit...) 

I also found out that One Eye loves turkey as much as salmon. He actually came to the back door several times looking for more and let me put the turkey... almost to his mouth. 

Well, that's my 'the day after Thanksgiving' report. Hope I didn't bore you too much. But I feel the Christmas magic has begun... (I love all the Christmas shows on TV and DH and I both love to sit in the den with all the lights out except for the tree... )

Thanks for coming by, I hope you are enjoying the magic of the holidays. Please share how you spend them. I find sharing even these little aspects of our lives (although not especially exciting) is therapeutic and uplifting. 

Hugs (still virtual),

Rian

the cast of cats... quilt binding, and Happy Thanksgiving

This is BK

This is Squeaky

These are two of the feral cats that come to eat daily... and spend a lot of time in our yard. The first one BK (Barbeque Kitten)is about a year old and is getting big. We called him BK as he has always liked to jump up on the Barbeque pit on the back patio and stare in the kitchen window. And although a lot of the ferals are black, they all have distinquishing features which tell them apart. BK has white hairs on his chest.  

The second picture is Squeaky... (younger and smaller than BK) and called such for his constant talking and squeaky little voice. Squeaky stays mostly in the front, and talks constantly to DH in the mornings when he's feeding. I've gotten into the habit of opening the front window in the morning to enjoy the cool air... and Squeaky sits under the window and talks to me. 

The funny thing that DH and I have both noticed is that when it's cold outside and Squeaky talks to us, it looks like a fog coming out of his mouth (breath vapor). It's funny since he talks so much - he looks like a little dragon.

There are several others, but I don't have good pics of them yet. Olivia is a small young female, black and white  -  (small but fierce and a really good mother). She brings her 3 babies which are about 8-10 weeks old now - on occasion. We named her Olivia (for Oliver Twist's "more please") as she constantly wants 'more'.

Then there's One Eye (whom I posted about previously) and Big Boy - a really big black cat with a very large head. While One Eye is old, Big Boy is not. We would guess that Big Boy is a few years old and has developed those large jowls sometimes seen on male cats.

We get a few others that show up once in a while, but these are our regulars. These get along fine - no fighting and some even lay around together. If strange cats appear, they generally keep their distance or fluff up and howl at each other. But strangers never stay long if they're trouble. They move on.

😊

Binding (the cord around the edge of quilt) finally finished on both the pandemic and Hawaii quilts (blue on pandemic, black on Hawaii). 

Pandemic scrap quilt

Hawaiian quilt

(For whatever reason, the print comes out huge once in a while and I have to go back and correct it. Does anyone know why this is?) 

Since Thanksgiving is this coming Thursday and I probably won't have time to post again, I will say Happy Thanksgiving to all here!

We will be having a quiet Thanksgiving this year - no big get-together - just turkey and stuffing sandwiches!

With any luck, our family holidays will resume again in the near future, but not in 2021. With the virus spiking again in some states, we're not ready to undo all that we've gone through these last 2 years... not yet. We will hold out and hope that with vaccinations and time, things will be much better by spring. 🙏

*And I got my Echocardiogram yesterday. Results were in my Texas Health portal, but haven't spoken to the doctor yet - so not sure how to interpret them.*

Take care! Have a wonderful weekend and a Happy Thanksgiving!

Hugs (virtual),

Rian