Saturday, December 19, 2009

Burrr! the wind is cold

I must be crazy. Got up at 5:30 and let dogs out, got dressed in running clothes and drove to Jax. beach to run/walk 6 miles in the cold. The wind cut through me like a knife. Thankfully I wore a windbreaker with a hood, could have used gloves and another layer.
We did 1 and 1/2 on the beach. There were over 150 people all together, in time groups. I'm in the SLOW group. About 8 to 12 in each group.
Well, we did it, and I went to McDonald's on the way back for coffee.
JANE-Our morning paper had a picture of a car in a ditch in Ashville. 12 inches of snow?
I'm going to take a hot shower and make more cookies.
A friend from church is in hospital and she nees a visit. She said she could have Christmas cookies, so will take her some.
The doggies don't even want to get out of the warm beds.
Sara in windy Fla.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Age & Barbie Dolls

I don't want to even admit that Barbie dolls came after my time. I had similar dolls and made clothes for them myself but my kids played with Barbie dolls, not me. That tells my age, for sure.

Cold as heck here tonight. At least we don't have the snow that happened an hour to the north of us. I think they may have 80 centimetres all in two days of snow falling. We have snow on the ground, enough to cover the fields and it's white. Better that than the brown stuff we have to look at when it melts.

Rosey

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

doll clothes

One year before Christmas, I happened to catch my mother sewing Barbie clothes. When I asked her what she was doing, she told me she was "helping Santa make clothes for other little girls." When Christmas came, I got Barbie clothes, but not the ones she had made. She and a neighbor swapped the items so that I would be surprised... I never noticed that the neighbor's little girl had the clothes my mother had made!

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Tuesday, December 15, 2009

CHRISTMAS PAST

Perhaps the clearest memory of Christmas of my past for some reason has recently emerged to my consciousness. When I was five or six years old my neighborhood pal, ten months older than I, convinced me that we were too old for dolls. My letter to Santa left on the coffee table by the fireplace with a dish of cookies stated that I am too old for dolls so please don’t leave any doll clothes. I’m sure my DM or DF helped with the spelling. DB and I were sent off to bed and tucked in by DF as he reserved that ritual for himself while Mom was no doubt downstairs breathing a sigh of relief. In my case there was always a bit of Shakespeare as I said “Good night sweet prince” and he responded with whatever Romeo’s response was. This was during WWII time when recycling was the rule of the day and store shelves were sparsely occupied by anything not absolutely necessary and on top of that, our parents were veterans of the great depression when there wasn’t a spare penny. Probably still wasn’t.

Guess what Mom had been doing until midnight for nights after kiddie bedtime? She was making a beautiful taffeta dress from my favorite dress which I’d outgrown. I remember that fabric; it was off white with tiny pink roses. Mom was also knitting a pink sweater adorned with faux pearl buttons to go with the dress. Of course when I opened my prezzies I loved it.

I am now 72 years ago and Mom died 45 years ago and Pop 33 years ago. I still smile at times and at others wish I’d had the sensitivity to apologize to her. I’ve felt some discomfort over that. However I found the yellowed note among some of her things as an adult and tell myself, since she was a very sensible person with a keen Irish wit, that she kept it because it amused her. As a mother and grandmother I do see the humor in it. I sure got a lot of mileage out of that doll, given to me previously by paternal grandmother of the wet kisses. I was very young when she died and that doll and those kisses to be endured politely are the only memories I have of her.

One of my DDs wrote virtually the same note to Santa but I hadn’t been losing sleep making clothes for her doll. She didn’t get spelling help and she spelled it cothles. That word morphed into cothles in our family ever since.

Jane, feeling the holiday spirit and all the memories that flood forth this time of year for good or ill.

SARA

Before you mess it up take a picture or two and impress us.

Gotta hurry and make those stockings I've been talking about for two weeks. I'm afraid I don't have enough stuff to fill them. Back to Wally World and grocer. With priority mailing maybe some fruit as in the old days when an orange was a big deal? Remember that?

Jane

Monday, December 14, 2009

That's Christmas Morning

Not moring, Morning.
Got cut off, so will stop.
Sara in Fla.

It's Monday and the floor is finished! Yea!

Hi, It's Monday afternoon and my bamboo floor is now in the new "quilt studio". What remains to be done is put the recliner, sewing table, sewing machine, all the fabric, etc. etc. in the room.
The floor looks great. Now that the glue has dried and the smell of the goo-gone has gone it is nice. I'm lovin it already.
This will give me the chance to purge all that old junk, patterns, and so on that I've been hanging on to. My DH hangs on to electronic stuff, so this is a challenge. What do you do with an old fried receiver, a 1995 laptop, and so on?
I did manage to walk/run 8 miles on Sat. morning. The legs hurt some on Sunday, but not as bad as I thought. I'm re-joining the group I was in last year. The Jeff Galloway training.
Us social people just need a group.
This will be a different Christmas for us. The first one with the DD and gang gone. She said on facebook that it was -18 there yesterday morning. I can't imagine being that cold.
After the rain on Sat. we are having a heat wave of 78 today. The sun is finally shining.
CHRISTMAS--what are some of you doing? We will have a quiet one this year. Maybe 10PM church and then sleep in on Christmas moring. I may stay in the PJ's all day.