What's Up Tuesday!

Good Morning...am I  too early?

Ive been on "snow watch" while my son sleeps a few hours before having to go out and work thru the night...his snow plow business has been crazy busy and in demand with this awful storm. 

Well here I sit with three feet of snow in my yards and my full size Buick LeSabre competely hidden under a five foot drift.   It's bitter cold and the winds have been so powerful that I feared the loss of some of our taller trees.  Fortunately, the winds have finally slowed down so the wild impassible drifting on the roads is less daunting.  Most of my gifts are still in the trunk of my car....lol..but until my car gets shoveled out again, I may not get them wrapped.

I've also prepared alot of homemade gifts from my garden and my kitchen this year for friends - homemade jams and jellies, chilli sauce and baked goods.

Derek has been stressed to the max these past four days with "SNOW-magdden" ...wow..four days of steady snow-plowing with only two hours sleep/day  because whenever he was done plowing out the plaza parking lots, he had to start all over again at the top of his list because the high winds continued to build those humungous drifts all over again. 

 Added to that, he had just put in a new transmission into his pickup truck/plow and one of his crew trashed the week-old tranny...can we say STRESSED??

So right now he is down to one dump truck and V- plow while they are rebuilding another tranny for the pickup.  I'm doing my best to keep him calm and I have to say that JB has been amazing in keeping Derek grounded.  Ive never seen my son so stressed out like this before.  Well, there's always lessons to be learned from these trials and I think he is learning a few things.

I attended a Solstice Dinner Party in Niagara Falls last night.. all ten of us brought something for dinner.  I made seafood salad, we also had homemade Curry-Carrot-Pear soup, Flemish chicken, wheatberry salad, mashed carrots and parsnips, homemade bread and herbed oil for dipping, sour cream-apple pie & some other fancy desserts that I refused to even look at. 

Our hostess even made a "Wassail Bowl" made with apple cider, white wine, rum, slices of oranges and apples, cinnamon sticks and cloves all heated  to drink hot...yumm! but POTENT! 

It was a very enjoyable evening, however, when it got late, the weather had deteriorated so badly that it wasn't safe to drive all the way home and down the escarpment so I was encouraged to stay overnight.

I accepted the invitation and spent the night there.  Our hostess has an old "Arts & Crafts" house built in 1900..what an amazing place..almost every wall has the original stained glass window panels..even inside walls!  And the fireplace tiles are incredible....very artsy!  All of her furnishings are also original antiques and I slept in an old brass bed and dreamt all night about elaborate dinner parties downstairs. 

One strange thing happened. I always carry a pair of ugly but very handy green rubber gloves(with textured palms) in my purse.  I wear special support stockings because of my lymphodema in both legs and the gloves are used to ease the compression evenly along my legs to prevent the circulation from being cut off. I'd taken the stockings off before climbing into bed and draped the gloves on top of the stockings laying over my purse beside the bed so that they were fully accessible first thing in the morning.

The next morning, when I was ready to get out of bed as soon as I'd put on my stockings, the gloves were missing.  I looked EVERYwhere.  Gloves are gone..nada..disappeared..vanished.

I was told the next day that there's a ghost in that house from the War of 1812.  But I want my gloves back!  *LOL*

Well, Derek is back home, finished working tonight, to finally sleep that means Im now "off duty" so I can finally go to bed, back in my own bed.

Please open this Christmas card..it's really cute and the song is great.

Have a safe and wonderful Christmas!

http://aroundmd.com/whitechristmas/

love from

Nancy B

Good morning Nancy and other OFFers.

No Nancy, you are not too early.  Too early for the Wednesday one, but Tuesday is fine.

My son got his kids a 6 week old beagle pup last Wednesday for Christmas.  The pup has now been in the hospital for a day and a half.  Hypoglycemic.  Hopefully he can be nursed back to good health.

Got my Christmas shopping almost done.  May buy Mary one more gift, not sure. 

Hope everyone has a great day.  If you can't handle pressure, please stay out of the crowds today.  The people out there sometimes have no sense.

Hi Nancy and all.  Thanks for sharing your awake time with us.  Yes, this snow is really something else.  Storm upon storm.  Today is my last day at work.  I will officially be a retiree.  Good time to stay home and bundled up warm!!!  Nothing else going on much.  Shopping done.  Play is up and running until January 11th.  Going out with friends tonight to celebrate Hannukah.  Enjoy your day.  Prayers for all that asked and even those that didn't ask.  Love, Diane

Diane,

Congrats on the retiring but methinks you aren't going to be lazing around doing nothing and you're going to be busier than if you were still at 'that' job.

However, now you can just do things of 'choice'.  How great is THAT???

Enjoy TOMORROW!!

Janet

 C O N G R A T U L A T I O N S        

How nice to be retiring....  and what are you going to do with your "new" lifestyle?

Millie

Almost all of my portfolio is NH, ME, NY, PA, NJ, CT... half have no power, the other half thinks it's Christmas and have stopped working.  I have power and am still working... what's with these people?? 

Went to bed at 8:30... woke up at 1:30... took a Lortab for my back... never could get REALLY back to sleep...now it's 4:30 a.m. and I'm up... silly me.  Grabbed me a glass of milk and sat down at the computer.  I need to be wrapping packages.  Santa came early... like August.  We had a contest at work called High Rollers.  We had to be in the Top Performer list and you got a chance to roll these really BIG dice.  I rolled enough to get a $700 Visa Card that has to be used by the 31st of this month.  I held onto it... and that's been my Christmas money.  The sales have been phenomenal this year. 

I'm really through with the shopping.... okay, a little more..but not much more.  The wrapping is the hard part and I don't like that part.  And this year we have two places....kids are coming over here and then the whole family thing on Saturday so I have to hold out some things.

Glad to hear that Eileen is okay....and waiting to hear on Carla.  Our folks are really needing support these days.  Still the best board going.

Well, enough.  It's almost 5 a.m. and I'm going to wrap another present or two for under the tree.

Everyone have a nice day.

Janet

morning!
nancy - wonderful surprise to see you and read you this morning! i always enjoy your tales of the north!!miss you tho!!!!!!!!!

it's 11* here this am- that's an improvement on yesterday- we still haven't gotten any more snow-no i am not complaining!

today is work and plasma; michael is freecycling again.i won't get online til goodness knows when tonite before bed so will be watching for a carla update! and good news from eileen's corner i hope!!!

yesterday we picked up that other mattress and we slept on our (new to us) king sized bed last nite- was very nice to have room! brody took up a very large portion of the lower middle- that was the intent on the new bed--i really do not like how it takes up so much of our bedroom ; however i enjoyed having room for my legs!!!!!

i had asked for two books for Christmas- got both from my son- Glenn Beck's The Christmas Sweater and Richard Paul Evans' (my fave!!) Grace--i read the Christmas Sweater last nite before going to bed- wonderful story- i needed it!!!!

i am glad to have these increased hours at work-but i gotta tell ya--these long days are boring as all get out!! and today i am working 7-315--tomorrow 7-3 and dec 26th 8-3-- i can handle 12 hour shifts at a store  or a factory but this sitting at the computer pushing papers in the scanner and indexing is boring boring boring.......sorry-had to get that out!!!!!!!!

well- haveto go get gorgeous-as brenda says it takes months!!!
keeping you all close to my heart this week................
hugs and prayers ............................

Carla and Eileen have been on my mind. I hope they are both resting comfortably.

So many beautiful cards from my OFF family. Thank you so much.

Today I am taking my younger client out for lunch as a special treat. Her idea of a fancy restaurant is Friendly's. Nothing wrong with that but I'm selecting some place more upscale. It is fun to expose her to new places. This means today I work for nothing. It will probably cost more for lunch than I make. But what fun to see her eyes light up and the smile on her face.

Kisses
Annette

Hi Nancy and Everyone,

Hugs and good thoughts for Eileen and Carla today.  Sure hope we hear good things from both!  Sure sounds cold and beautiful where you are Nancy.  Can't imagine dealing with the snowdrifts and all.  Not sure about the missing gloves and don't know if ghosts return things or not.  Good luck with that!

I have a friend who called and has a medical problem so I plan to visit her today.  She called in tears and I checked on her last night.  She was in better spirits last night.  Her excess weight is a contributing factor to delaying treatment and I'm sorry about that. 

Off to work today for another day of fun and frolic.  Margo..... my job is almost as boring as you make yours sound.  The holidays always leave me distracted, too!  Annette - your lunch today sounds like such a great time.  You are doing a very good thing!

Hope you all have a good Tuesday.

Kathi

Good morning Nancy and everyone.......

Nancy you are one busy lady! Sounds like you have a lot of shoveling to do...I don't envy you that task!

I am  praying all goes well for Carla today. I also continue prayers for Eileen.

I went out and bought a newer car last night. It is a 2006 Grand Prix. Very low mileage....24,0000. It is black and has everything I want in it including a sun roof...woooohooo!

I will make it to my other daughter's for Christmas after all!!

Keeping very busy down here in Iowa. Love my grands and all the fun we are having together!!

Time to go shower and start the day. The kids will be up soon. I promised my daughter that I would wrap Christmas presents for her today...I loved to wrap gifts!!

Have a great day everyone. Prayers to those in need.

Love and hugs to all......connie d