As Time Goes By

There are all kinds of things that happen as time goes by, but as the song says, some things never change.... one thing is for sure if I have a really rotten night where I sleep little even though my eyes feel like they have pound cakes resting on them and when I do finally fall asleep I dream horrible nightmares, you can bet your bottom dollar that the moon is full or pretty close to it. And so, here I sit while the whole house sleeps peacefully, awake with scratchy eyes after a miserable night of tossing and turning. I know when I'm licked..... I just get up and give up on my bed for a bad job.

All night I listened to the clock in my room ticking away and then I came downstairs and the clock down here ticks too. The funny thing is, that I got to thinking about all that ticking.... it's December 31st... the verge of 2010.... it seems like the last ten years have whipped by me in a flash. Do you remember sitting on December 31st ten years ago and wondering if all the computers in the world were going to freeze up and make the world come to a stand still? We didn't even own a computer back then.... Hubby and I couldn't afford one. All I knew was, that if all the computers of the world would screw up world banking, then I hoped it would wipe out Hubby's student loan and drop a few ten thousand into our account. Alas, nothing of the sort happened and life continued in its never ending tick toward the future.

We here at Nicholsville West farm are not planning any great events for this New Year's Eve. It will be a quiet one with no company this year, perhaps a little time watching the new DVD that we got for Christmas called "Planet Earth: The Complete Series". We really can't think of a better way to ring in the new year than by watching something about the destruction of our planet..... unless we could have a DVD telling us about the restruction of our planet. I wonder what the next decade will bring. Will I be sitting here in ten more years thinking about the same things? Will I be here at all.... or any of us for that matter.

Sometime during this day I will call a friend, (maybe you), I will light a fire, (hopefully in the fireplace on my deck), I will finish knitting a glove, (I'm almost there), I will kiss my Hubby, I will hug my Daughters, I will drink a little Apple Cider, and I will wish all my blog followers a good new years, that you all have plenty in the way of needs like I have, that you all have people that surround you loving you as much as I am loved.... that you all have joy in your hearts for a least part of each day, and that you remember to regularly thank God, whoever your god may be, for the power that created this divine place on which we live must indeed be an awesome force.

Happy New Year!

Party Time (cont)

Woo Hoo... What fun!!!!

Party Time

Today is the 30th of December 2009..... in case you didn't know. Today I am hosting a party for the Knock-out Knitters and the HH Spinners and Weavers. The party starts at two. I am off to the grocery store for pie pastries.... you know, the little ones that take forever to make... I'm making mini Quiches and my Almond Wedges. I also have piles of crackers and cheese to offer and a little liqueur not to mention punch and tea. I'm looking forward to the little party. I have some little door prizes and I have a nice gift to exchange. It should be fun.

If you are one of the ones coming.... I look forward to seeing you.... and if you live too far away to come.... well, I wish you could be here....

In the meantime... have a good day!

Sunrise.... Sunset

I have an annual thing that I do. After Christmas settles down to a dull roar I start watching the sunrise and sunset times on the weather station until the spring equinox. Somehow it makes the winter more tolerable to know that the days are getting longer. On December 19th there was a beautiful picture here and I thought, -this is really the turn of the year,- when I saw it even though the turn was still a few days away. It was so beautiful that I've been wanting to post it here on my blog. This picture epitomizes the winter solstice for me. Now I can watch the skies slowly growing brighter as the days grow longer. It really is a Northern thing I think. When you live this far North the sky can almost become something you worship. It really does help you get past -42 degree temps and make you aware of time progressing into the next season.

While I like to do this at this time of the year there is a feeling of urgency.... a sense of pushing at time to move it on forward faster.... then I hit the spring equinox and I want to put on the brakes and slow everything down. I start to watch the morning sky and I have this wonderful sense of well being.... but for now I just want to hibernate! It is odd how I think I might actually be able to slow or speed time progression... I mean little ol' me... really.... not likely! So you will notice to the right under the header for this blog a new gadget..... the Sunrise and Sunset times will be posted every day that I blog.

Quiet mornings of dark,
Birds hide,
Mice sleep,
All the creeping things are tucked away.

Slowly this land awakes and throws off its blanket of white,
Daylight penetrates my skin,
Suffusing me with well being.

Birds come home and plants bloom,
Alive, all is alive.
I watch and wait,
Patiently, growing warm.

Hope you are thinking of warmth too!

Now.... a little cotton today, I think.... and tea! Perfect for -24.

18 yrs Old

My marriage is 18 yrs old today. 18 yrs ago I was married on a stormy day in Newfoundland. I had to have the driveway shoveled out before we could go to the church and there is a picture of me with a pair of green rubber boots, and my white velvet dress and my red coat (which the mice have chewed holes in... it's out in the shed and yes I still have it) with a yellow snow plow in the background. Hubby and the best man shoveled the driveway while I hid in the house so that he wouldn't see me in my finery. The service was held at a chapel on campus where we had just finished our respective degrees. I did say obey.... though I don't always.

I can safely say that Hubby and I have had a good 18 yrs together. There have been ups and downs, but definitely more ups than downs. We're not as romantic as we used to be. He doesn't buy me flowers anymore (partially due to the fact that there is no florist in our town) and I don't always have supper waiting for him, but every now and again I will look across the room and catch him smiling as he watches me and I still think he has a cute toosh. : ) We still enjoy spending time with each other and sometimes find that the kids are a confining factor in our relationship. We've grown comfortable with each other and can predict (sometimes) what each other is going to say. Generally we are happy and that is a lot more than some can say after 18 months let alone 18 yrs.

It is funny how we mellow over the years. When I first met Hubby I felt like my whole world would fall apart if he wasn't with me. We pretty much would suck the life out of each other when we were together and then gasp for the air that we provided each other when we were apart. It is not a healthy way to live.... that kind of love has to mellow or you both just burn up in your own exhaust. I'm glad we've mellowed. I don't think I could still survive that kind of initial love, it would suffocate me I'm sure.

So here we sit... he reading, and me blogging in the quiet of the morning. Sharing a time to just be in the halo of each other's company. I just read this post to him and he snorted when I read him the bit about his toosh.... when I finished reading Hubby went back to reading his book and I went back to blogging. Later today we will go for a walk and probably hold hands if it is not too cold. I can't think of a better way to spend our anniversary. As long as we are together it doesn't matter what we are doing.

I'm glad I married him.

Sometimes!!! : )

A Quiet Christmas

Yesterday was a day of Harry Potter. Daughter#1 is a complete Harry Potter fan. She has read the books something like seven times, so Christmas morning when she opened the Harry Potter DVD set she was really excited. We promised her that Boxing Day would be a day to have a Harry Potter marathon. We waited for her to get up which didn't happen until 10:30 a.m. and we started in. Hubby can't do movies the way the rest of us can so we lost him from about 1:30 till 6 p.m. He went to haul hay for the sheep and the horse. But the Daughters and I sat and did Harry Potter movies all day. We never got to bed till 2 a.m. I'm Harry Pottered out. I even dreamed about Harry Potter.

I did, in between, make a pot of Cream of Turkey soup. It was delicious. Here's the recipe...

2-3 litres water in stock pot.
2 envelopes of chicken oxo
3 c. of finely chopped turkey from your leftover Christmas bird
2 stalks of celery chopped fairly finely
2 cups of peas (frozen are fine)
2 cups of red lentils
pepper to taste and onion powder to taste
one lg container of whipping cream

bring all ingredients except cream to a roiling boil and leave like this for 40 minutes or until lentils and celery are tender. Add cream and reduce heat simmer for 10 minutes.....
Pour into soup bowls and sprinkle with broken crackers.... it really is delicious....

I have company tonight, so we are cooking ham, and scalloped potatoes with pepper bake as a side dish and almond torte with summer fruit for desert.

But in the meantime I'm off to spin some more.... (yes on the jacket commission!)

Wham, Bam, Thank You M'am

Whoa.... what just happened... nothing extraordinary that's for sure. I'm still trying to think what all the hoopla is all about. Service went well.... check.... visiting friends went well... check... got to bed and a reasonable time... check..... had fun opening stockings.... check.... good Christmas morning breakfast..... check.... opened up lovely gifts.... check.... had a snooze after lunch... check..... had Christmas dinner at the folks place.... check.... Ok what was I making such a fuss about! Now I don't have to think about it for another ten whole months. And actually I'm starting to think about the first week of July.... woo hoo! Anyone who knows me knows that the first week of July is the best week of the year.... it takes waaaayyy more precedence than Christmas.

They'll soon be posting the courses!!! It'll soon be time to register!!! It'll soon be time to book a room in the apartments!!!! I can't wait. I wonder which courses they'll be offering??! I'm soooo excited! All that fleece.... all that spinning chat.... all that learning..... I'm totally addicted to Fibre Week!!!

In the meantime though it's boxing day and this is a day to relax. I don't know what I'm relaxing from since yesterday was pretty relaxing too. My parents cooked Christmas dinner and all I had to do was help clean up a little. Got to love that! We have a little turkey in our fridge too since they did up a doggie bag for us. I got lots of nice things, like an owl, who I've named Smore.... he sits with my other critters, on a shelf, in my spinning room. I also got sox..... loads of them.... some hand made and some store bought.... I don't have to worry about the Daughters stealing mine anymore. I got my cotton cards and some knitting needles, DPNs for fingers in gloves, and a beautiful poncho from Peru that's made from alpaca/llama/and wool. I also got some really lovely books... one called The Golden Mean which I really wanted ever since I heard the author interviewed on CBC. I also got a book called The Complete Idiot's Guide To T'ai Chi and QiGong. I'm determined to learn T'ai Chi this year. I also got the next book in the Diana Gabaldon series... I've been waiting for it to come out. It's a trashy read but then I love trashy reads too. I also got a lovely heirloom lace bookmark which I think was my most touching gift. A friend of mine called me a while back and told me she had inherited some really lovely heirloom lace from a family member and asked me if I wanted some. I had intended on taking another friend and going to see her collection of lace. We were talking about what she could use it for and, being a practical person, she wanted to use some of the pieces...(if it were me, I would just mount them and look at them).... but I suggested she make herself a bookmark... she thought the idea was great and so... I never heard anything else about it until Christmas morning when she gave me the bookmark... wow what a lovely gift. I got a knitting magazine in my stocking, and a new nightgown in the softest fluffiest flannelette. So all in all Christmas was quite nice. Still it does seem to be rather "Wham, Bam, Thank You M'am!"

I wonder if that is a sign of old age..... !

Well I'm off today to make amends with my jacket commission whick is languoring in my spinning room. I might even put the handles on my new cotton cards and have a go with them .... aaaahhhhh! I love Boxing Day!