Holidays and gardening and muscle aches, oh my!

THE HAM IS HERE! It's a lot earlier than the website indicated, but they probably do that so they look good! LOL...

I'm so glad that I found another source, since the one we'd been using raised their prices through the roof!

Confirmed that we will only be 5 for Christmas eve dinner.....so there will be LOT of left overs! My mother in law had forgotten about my ancient family tradition of the sacred ham, and suggested we all go out to eat.

NO!!

I am cooking the ham in my new kitchen, and that's that! Barring a blizzard, we will go down to Moore and get the parents and have them in for supper. They will just have to put up with watching us sip wine, too (mom is a teetotaler, and dad is not allowed to drink anymore).

The little pressies to my girlies back home are all packaged and addressed, and Dave will drop them at the post office for me tomorrow.

I bought myself a box of "Jingles" cookies yesterday, after speaking to my sister on the phone, and hearing that some stores run out of them, and that's all there is for the season.

I had spotted them on Friday at Walgreens, and thought "wow, I haven't had any of those in years....I'll get some later....." I was going to just wait and get them closer to Christmas, but instead, stopped back for them yesterday.

They go great with coffee!
(I prefer to dunk them in whole milk, but given that I don't/can't drink that stuff anymore, that treat is a thing of the past)

Dave had never heard of them before.

They were a fixture in the house when I was a kid, along with the cookies my mom would make with her cookie press. I hated the little silver sugar ball "ornaments" she put on the tree shaped ones, but I loved the cookies! Even the fruitcake ones!!

So, after a stretch of very wet, then very cold weather, we finally got the rest of the top soil purchased and unloaded yesterday for our flower bed out front.

We had previously brought home 400 pounds, and discovered that what sounded like potentially a lot of dirt only covered about a three foot square area! That's how far down Dave had to dig to get the bed cleared of crappy red dyed mulch, rocks, and plastic sheeting.

This flower bed spans the entire front of the house, you can see it in my profile picture. Getting it dug out was a HUGE amount of work, and filling it in was pretty hard, too!

Anyway, the weather kept us from being able to proceed with getting the rest of the dirt to fill the bed in, and then getting the bulbs into the ground!

SO, yesterday, we had sunshine and 40's, and we went to Lowe's to get the rest of the dirt. In two trips!

Dave loaded 800 pounds more of it into, and out of, the car, and I unloaded all of the dirt from all of the bags (20 bags at 40 pounds each), and spread it in the flower bed with a metal rake.

We are both going to be very sore later. That was a LOT of hard and heavy work....work we would have been better off doing if we were 25 years YOUNGER! But, it's good for us....

...and we will have to do it all again if we want garden beds in the back yard!

Anyway, the tulips and daffodils are planted. Let's hope they get left alone by critters (there really are very few squirrels here, and they are much more interested in the pecan tree in the back yard. Plus, I have never seen ONE bunny).

If the flower faced Goddess of spring is on our side, we will have colorful blooms in front of the house in March!

I have the tulips (yellow touched with red, and purple) on one side, and the daffs all together on the other side, with space in the middle. I plan to seed the middle with native wild flowers in the spring. Indian blanket flower, in particular, but mixed with others as well. Those will fill in the front with color all summer, hopefully. They're native to this land, so they should be able to take the horrible summer weather. If they don't get pulverized by hail or wind, that is.

Anyway, yesterday, we also got a pretty wreath to hang on the part of our front porch railing that faces the street. That's really all of the outdoor decorating we can do, since we don't have any outdoor outlets on this house that was wired in 1927.

I also want to find those removable hooks so we can hang lights in a window or two. I want my house to be more festive, darnit! If we can find those hooks, I can also try to rig up something with lights and garland on the mantle, which has it's own built in (yet ancient) power outlets!

Made burritos last night, and started one of my gift projects for my family back home. They also received their ham, so that all worked out perfectly.

Today, another project for them, and another cooking project.... JAMBALAYA! I usually wait til January to start making that, for some unknown and incalculable reason....but I want it now!!
Plus, laundry, a little cleaning, and finishing the home made kahlua project!

It's been a very productive weekend already, and is sure to end even more so!

Hope you are all doing well and staying healthy. There's a really nasty upper respiratory virus burning it's way through my office. It's symptoms exactly match the flu, but no one has been tested to confirm that it's flu. Since there are viruses that match the symptom profile, it's impossible to know, I guess, unless you bother to be tested.

9 people have had it. All of them but the one who started it, who refused to stay home and brought the virus into the office, have missed a minimum of two days of work.

I am taking every precaution I know of....I have been trying to go to bed early, and get more rest. I have been exercising on our Christmas present to each other, I have been taking daily doses of cod liver oil, extra vitamin C, and immune boosting herbs, and I wash my hands and avoid touching door knobs, handles, and switches. If I DO have to touch something, like the copier, or the fax machine, I use hand sanitizer.

I am the only one in my office who does NOT get the flu shot....and with everyone around me getting sick, I need to be extra vigilant. Hopefully, I will escape their fate! It's been a few years since I was really sick that way....thank the Gods!! I'd like to keep it that way.

oh, and p.s.: good, old fashioned "comet" and elbow grease works on my bathtub! None of the spray cleaners could get it to be really clean...okay....carry on....