January 4, 2010

Christmas Day was spent with our friends Michele, Steve and Rick as well as Robert and Wendy. We didn't do the traditional turkey in favor of my first cooked prime rib and lobster. It turned out nicely! Thank goodness for Allrecipes.com who provided a great and easy recipe. As we get older and have to share our children with other families, it is nice to have our dear friends share the day. Michele and Steve's daughter was spending the day with her boyfriend and their other daughter lives a bit away. Her husband is in Iraq serving in the Air Force. Rick is alone as his brothers and sister live in Indiana, New York and Brazil respectively. All of our parents are gone so the "older crowd" got together. Thank goodness Wendy is around as Randy spent another year in Iraq.

And the new year begins...And they are coming and going so fast these days. Robert came to finish fixing my car which had a cracked radiator. Geesh, 8 years old you would think they'd last; only has 89,000 miles on it, too. On New Year's Eve we ate at our new favorite Vietnamese resaturant and then went to see "2012". It was cold and we didn't want to get on the road with the crazies. Coming home we saw 2 police cars with their prey pulled over: one doing the head-hanging-looking-sheepish "I didn't mean it" look on the side of the road.

A girl I met (literally, she is 34) online on one of the Yahoo groups a few years ago sent me a link to the local paper. She lives in Zimbabwe and has had all sorts of problems the past years with the current administration of Robert Mugabe. Her family is one of the last remaining white farmers and are being systematically routed off their homelands.
http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/jan2_2010.html
Fiona reported that some of the former farmers were given land in Nigeria and are helping to make the Nigerian nation more productive agriculturally. Nigeria doesn't have the same animosity to the white farmers as they were not "colonized" at any point. Many more have immigrated to South Africa which is not as friendly having "fostered" so many more people recently. My prayers are with her family in this MORE difficult time.

I started stitching the January jar from San-Man Originals' new jar series SAL. I finished it except for some outlining and the nose. Of course I had every color but one. If I get the rest of the room cleaned up, maybe I could find the colors. When we moved the tables out for our garage sale last month, everything got tossed to the side. I may restitch it onto a larger piece of fabric and do the entire year as a banner. It's hard to do these as I don't stitch on evenweave and the 1/4 stitches are nasty to do.

My hand is still so stiff and sore that the stitching is slow. I have an appointment with the "hand doctor" (he may only do right hands, I don't know for sure) Jan. 11. It feels like a toss up between arthritis and carpal tunnel in the middle fingers. Anyway it's sore and I can't bend nor straighten my middle finger. Hard to drive in Dallas without that digit! The fact that it started so quickly makes me think it's not arthritis. Worse in the morning.

When vacation started Dec. 18 I vowed I would grade all those Powerpoint folktales. Five a day would get me through the 86; I would add comments and suggestions. Well, the 86 are still not graded, not even viewed so I have some work to do the next 2-3 days. I'm not even sure if I go back in Wed. or Thurs. as I didn't look at the calendar on the wall. The other lady continues to make the calendars on her terms, which usually doesn't matter, except I never know my days.

I got the nicest hand stitched Christmas card from Helle in Denmark. Isn't it lovely? To date she hasn't received mine-my first attempt at a card. Now, after looking at Helle's, I know how to make one with a cut out. So pretty. She lives in Aalborg and the pictures she sends are of a gorgeous Northern Danish city. It's amazing how clean and "pastoral" it seems to be. Helle travels quite a bit both between Aalborg and Copenhagen as well as throughout Europe and Mexico. Exciting life!

Happy New Year to all of my friends-the ones that I see and to my online friends who are just as important as the local ones. Here's to a new year, and prosperity to all!