All winter, my mother has been giving everyone she knows a huge bucket of persimmons. I happily eat them, they are really good. My mom packaged a bunch of them and shipped them here and there – all the way to California. The tree is so large now that she can’t pick the ones from the top, but a bunch of tree contractors spied them and asked to pick the ones from the top and look how laden the tree is with fruit. There must have been over 1,000 persimmons! I have at least 20 of them in my tummy. I’m glad those got picked. My mother hosted a delicious dinner for us on Friday night and we had a good time and yummy food, but Jeremy said…I feel slightly not well which was a bellwether for things to come.
Jeremy spent a lot of the past week outfitting Elka. It has dropped below freezing for a few days and Jeremy bought Elka a jacket.
Then Elka got salt in her paws and it hurt her, so Jeremy got her shoes which she didn’t like very much but mostly tolerated.
Sunday night, we celebrated Katherine’s birthday Sunday night by hosting a party at the house. Jeremy made a delicious chicken dinner from all the recipes from a book that Katherine had made notes in. It was delicious and the party was generally a success – but Jeremy was feeling under the weather and, therefore, the mask. He asked his parents if we should reschedule, but they demurred – so we went ahead. He’s still not feeling well today, fingers crossed no one else got sick. Maybe I should get a quieter tablecloth? This is our regular tablecloth because it’s easy to wipe down and you can spill and entire spaghetti dinner on it and not really see it.
I think I’m enjoying Christmas more this year than in years past – perhaps because we decided to not get gifts for everyone living in the house together. Perhaps because I know we aren’t going to be traveling, nor are we having guests for the week. Everything can be quiet and low key. And I’m so excited to be singing in the Christmas Eve service where I can sing a really beautiful arrangement of Angels We Have Heard on High which is one of my favorite Christmas songs. We started practicing it last night – that really adds to my holiday spirit.
Jeremy and Elka stopped by our neighborhood coffee place, where everyone knows Jeremy and Elka and Elka always gets the same order – a pup cup of whipped cream. Here she is waiting patiently for her order. Note the name “Pup” on the cup.
Jeremy is speaking my love language these days, slowly getting rid of trash and extra things – cleaning his areas. Swoon. There is a piece of IKEA furniture that he’s had next to his bed for years that have cubbies and each of the cubbies has what I describe as…trash. But I didn’t think that I could ask him to clean it out or anything because…it’s really his space. But yesterday, he moved it into his office, cleared out all the trash and the corner in the bedroom is now blissfully empty. And I kissed him. And then he said…maybe we don’t need these extra bowls in the cabinet…haha.
Including this little Playmobil nativity scene I bought used on ebay after last Christmas.
Here is my youtube year end results. I do know a lot about luxury purses, but I do not own any. hahaha.
I did not listen to a lot of music this year, I focused mainly on learning music – but apparently Taylor Swift got knocked out of the #1 spot for the first time in like a decade by Rachmaninoff! I kind of can’t believe it.
To go to a choir concert last night. This was put on by the Montgomery College Choir and Chamber Singers – so so beautiful, 2 pieces in Spanish by contemporary composers. I love the opportunity to hear choirs – I sing in one more often than I get to hear one. The two pieces were one with piano and the other with classical guitar. Really, really enjoyed the classical guitarist – so different from the guitar I’m learning. I also loved it because it started at 7:30, ended at 8:30 I said hello to a bunch of people I knew and I was back home in my pajamas at 8:45. (sooo, remember I won the best parking space in the raffle? the lot was packed last night even though I was early and someone had parked in MY SPOT. lol. It was ok, though I must say, I pulled into the lot thinking…omg, so packed, I’m so lucky I have my very own spot – and…no.)
Grrrrr…vicious doggie. I love my stick. Grrrrr. Look at how white those teeth are…I brush them most nights. Elka might have the best teeth in the house.
We brought our pre-kids couch downstairs from Jeremy’s office. We spent so much money on this couch before we had kids declaring that we were done with IKEA furniture forever…and then we had kids and entered two decades of IKEA furniture. This couch is very dirty and in need of reupholstering which is on my list of things to do, but it’s a nice, solid couch that has moved from the bay area to austin to new york to dc with us. Jeremy spent some time digging around in the underbelly of the sofa and found the following: many scissors, letter openers and and entire iPhone! It’s the iPhone 2 from 2008? I don’t think I owned the iPhone 2, I think I started with the iPhone 4.
It still plays Totoro one of Edda’s all time favorites <3
Loves, we had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend. I gave up trying to work at my regular job mid-week and I took all of Wednesday off and planted trees outside and set up the Christmas tree inside. On Thursday morning, I continued to clean the house and move furniture and Jeremy really started in on the cooking. I really enjoy this prep time with Jeremy – we’ve thrown enough parties to know how long things take, so we are busy the entire time, but not rushing and we are keeping each other company. I feel like that is the key to enjoying things.
At four, the party began – we had about 30 people show up this year. Vince/Dani, Bob/Katherine and Emy/Seth stayed on the west coast and went to Portland – we kind of can’t believe that the family center of gravity is shifting to Oregon, but I think it’s happening! Dani got a very nice offer for a funded master’s program at the Oregon State University in Corvallis starting early next year, we are thrilled for them and HOORAY – the holidays are more fun when you have a good plan in place.
There was Jenga –
There was a lot of food. There was only dark meat served from two birds because…well we bought 2 turkeys and Jeremy sous vides them in separate containers. So the plan was all the dark meat and half of the white meat and freeze the other half of the white meat for later. But Jeremy inadvertantly turned off the sous vide-er of the white meat section while he was setting it up, so when he set it out to carve, it was still raw! Oh no! He quickly put it into the oven, where it roasted and was ready when like many hours later after the dessert course and folks had headed out to see Wicked already.
Don’t worry, there was enough food.
I asked for many servings of vegetables without cheese or fat on them and so Jeremy obliged with bright green beans and broccoli and cauliflower which I adored – I love my fiber homework.
We closed out the night we a long talk with the Horowitz family – fun talking about Carla and old memories. Food wise – this was a very balanced thanksgiving – not too many leftovers, not an enormous amount of dessert, just right.
The rest of the weekend was very social and active, but in a low-key kind of way. I planted four trees in our backyard- two serviceberries and two magnolias on a beautiful 65 degree day. This took me four hours which included erecting wire fencing around all the trees to prevent the deer from eating them. (If you take a look at my backyard, I’m growing wire fencing and not much else.) I had bought bare root serviceberries early this year, but they didn’t take, so I increased my expenditure and bought 3 gallon trees, fingers crossed they will grow in the spring. We also saw Megan (who stopped by for an afternoon hang – she hung out while I wrapped Christmas gifts), Pat and his wife Theresa – we all went to see Zootopia 2 (where a huge plot point rests on patent approval! go…patent office) and had tacos for dinner together. Noah came over for a bit to help us move a couch from upstairs to downstairs.
On that note, we spent a lot of time rearranging the house especially upstairs. I finished decluttering our papers (which still left 18 boxes – still a lot, but I’m working on it) and Jeremy and I moved beds, carpets, laundry, dressers all around. The reason this started was because I made my BLACK FRIDAY goal!!!
I made 175 hours of total playtime on my guitar app (not all 175 was this year…, just FYI – I did not practice like 3.3 hours a week lol). It was a good goal, ambitious enough that I needed to play most days, but if I missed a day here or there, I wasn’t terribly behind. I finished my goal on the Tuesday before BLACK FRIDAY and felt triumphant. Jeremy cheered me on – as he does – and on Tuesday he told me dinner was ready and I told him I needed to play 2 more minutes and he said – go for it and then it was done. As a reward, I’m buying myself a dresser – which I think I’ll get to in the new year as this is a high spend month – hence the decluttering and moving furniture around and making space for the new dresser. Now I’m making my guitar goal for next BLACK FRIDAY and what my reward will be. I have an idea, but not ready for telling you yet.
