Deck the Blogs!!

I was scrolling through some old posts trying to find a specific one. I did not find that yet, but I did find this in a post of favorite Christmas ornaments posted in December of 2005:



Home-made- glass ball, thistledown and faded flower petals from our acreage in a previous home (some ten fourteen years and two children ago). We made several of these one year.

Our thistles were a serious problem, and we worked hard to eradicate them. Once the Headmaster thought he'd kill two birds with one stone and combine some work on the thistles with some mentoring of two young boys from church who lived with their single mom. Unfortunately, instead of killing two birds with one stone, we almost killed the older boy. Not really, but it turned out he was terribly allergic to something on our property and had to go get shots to reduce the swelling of his facial features- which were pretty much one lumpy, puffy, mess. We gave him a special Christmas ball filled with thistledown and with our names written on the back and some note about how we'd nearly killed him.

He grew up, joined the army, went to Iraq, and then got out and came back to the states. He came to visit us to help us recover from the move from Hades, and he did some more work for the Headmaster- this time, repairs to our bridge. He didn't get sick this time. He told us he still has the thistledown ornament we made him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So yes, I posted the above in 2005. And in 2008 that lad married the Equuschick, and in 2009 he became the father of our first grandson. Isn't life funny?

Christmas Is Coming, The Goose is Getting Fat

Not the tune we use when we sing it, and kind of strange illustrations.

Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage

Henry Watson Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage is a delightful book. Originally published in 1926, it was happily edited in 1965, and less satisfactorily so in 1996.

The 1996 edition was done by Robert W. Burchfield, and about this one Liam Julian writes:

The trouble, simply put, was that Burchfield had expunged Fowler from Fowler’s. Gone were some of the original author’s beloved subheadings (“Pairs and Snares” was pared, “Unequal Yokefellows” unyoked) and gone, too, was his jaunty, slightly mischievous, scything-while-grinning tone. Most objectionable was that Burchfield had changed Fowler’s from a prescriptive book to a descriptive one. Usage was no longer to be judged but understood. Entries that had earlier attacked ambiguity, castigated the careless, and lowered the boom on barbarism were suddenly more interested in explaining the origins and development of the English language’s scofflaws than in pointing them out and locking up. The warden had become the prison psychologist.

Fortunately, Oxford has reprinted the original, and Julian has a review with biographical information on Fowler here, a very pleasant read.

When can you laugh really hard at a very messy child's bedroom?

When neither child nor bedroom are your responsibility, that's when.=)

Castle in the Sea: Frugal Room Redo.

Climategate and the Precautionary Principle

Oooh, another MUST read.

The East Anglians' mistreatment of scientists who challenged global warming's claims—plotting to shut them up and shut down their ability to publish—evokes the attempt to silence Galileo. The exchanges between Penn State's Michael Mann and East Anglia CRU director Phil Jones sound like Father Firenzuola, the Commissary-General of the Inquisition.

For three centuries Galileo has symbolized dissent in science. In our time, most scientists outside this circle have kept silent as their climatologist fellows, helped by the cardinals of the press, mocked and ostracized scientists who questioned this grand theory of global doom. Even a doubter as eminent as Princeton's Freeman Dyson was dismissed as an aging crank.

Beneath this dispute is a relatively new, very postmodern environmental idea known as "the precautionary principle." As defined by one official version: "When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically." The global-warming establishment says we know "enough" to impose new rules on the world's use of carbon fuels. The dissenters say this demotes science's traditional standards of evidence.

It's dangerous:

The Obama administration's new head of policy at EPA, Lisa Heinzerling, is an advocate of turning precaution into standard policy. In a law-review article titled "Law and Economics for a Warming World," Ms. Heinzerling wrote, "Policy formation based on prediction and calculation of expected harm is no longer relevant; the only coherent response to a situation of chaotically worsening outcomes is a precautionary policy. . . ."

If the new ethos is that "close-enough" science is now sufficient to achieve political goals, serious scientists should be under no illusion that politicians will press-gang them into service for future agendas.

The precautionary principle, you'll remember, is what brought us the CPSIA, so now it is illegal to sell pens designed for children under 12.

"Small Group of Scientists"= Big Amount of Influence

HOldren inadvertently confirms Climate Gate is a Big, Stinkin', Deal:

When Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) and other Republicans on the committee challenged Holdren’s analysis of Climategate, the president’s science adviser responded by repeating that it was just a small group of scientists engaged in some narrow research. Any mistakes or misdeeds on their part couldn’t possibly compromise the scientific consensus, which is as strong as it is vast.

But when asked about some of his own extreme statements and predictions, Holdren replied that scientific research had moved on from the latest UN assessment report in 2007. The most up-to-date scientific research was contained in a report written by some of the world’s leading climate scientists and released last summer. Holdren mentioned and referred to this report, Copenhagen Diagnosis, several times during the course of the hearing.

I remember when Copenhagen Diagnosis came out because nearly every major paper ran a story on it. Global warming is happening even faster than predicted, the impacts are even worse than feared, and that sort of thing. I also remembered that the authors of Copenhagen Diagnosis included many of the usual conmen who are at the center of the alarmist scare. So I asked my CEI colleague Julie Walsh to compare the list of authors of Copenhagen Diagnosis with the scientists involved in Climategate.

I’m sure it will come as a shock that the two groups largely overlap. The “small group of scientists” up to their necks in Climategate include 12 of the 26 esteemed scientists who wrote the Copenhagen Diagnosis. Who would have ever guessed that forty-six percent of the authors of Copenhagen Diagnosis belong to the Climategate gang? Small world, isn’t it?

On the flip side...

A bit ago I had a long, tiring day, the last bit of which was spent standing in line at the grocery store, shifting weight from one aching foot to the other, anxiously watching my 13 year old go through another line without me (yes, I know, she's 13, but it was her first time through using lots of coupons that had minimum purchase requirements and she was nervous, and I had expected to be through with my purchases in time that I would be reassuringly near her, blah, blah- and I was standing in line so long because the person in front of me was more interested in griping and complaining loud and long about being cheated and ripped off by WIC because she couldn't have the brand of bread she wanted or the amount of milk and formula she wanted. So I relieved my feelings by coming home and venting kind of loud and long myself- only on the blog.=)

The sense of entitlement really irked me, and undoubtedly this was much magnified by the insouciant disregard for the growing line behind her as she stood there and griped on and on about all the things she didn't like in the WIC allotment and about how nobody wants to be 'gypped' and the WIC program was 'gypping her.' In the comments to that post somebody said:

what many people don't understand is that chronic welfare recipients believe that the process of getting the food stamps/medicaid/etc. *is* the job. it's boring and stupid and a total hassle, and thus for them, it is 'work' and they totally earned the resultant welfare.

in fact, the process of distributing social welfare via government selects for people to behave this way and come to view labor as 'waiting in line for stuff'.

Sometimes when I am feeling really pessimistic I wonder if it's deliberate, a feature rather than a bug, that trying to get government assistance reall does take as much time as work, and actually interferes with, hinders, or flatly prevents people from engaging in productive pursuits, and in the process wears its victims down and out.

I was reading around at a couple blogs and came across one that made me go- YES! This is the reason, and it's a perfectly understandable reason, sometimes people on food stamps start to feel like applying for and tracking down assistance IS the job. They are forced to put in ridiculous amounts of time and energy fighting incredible levels of apathy and incompetence.* It's mindnumbing, and I think after years of this, it's demoralizing and creates a sense of helplessness and dependency in all but the strongest.

A friend of ours recently applied for unemployment benefits- he has a job, the employers had no work for him during a slack period, and said they'd hire him back on when the work picked up again (and they had a scheduled time the work would pick up).

He applied and received. Work called and told him extend the unemployment another week or two. He went to do that, was told the computers were down so he couldn't. He tried to get it through to the folks at the office that he didn't have much time (it was just before Thanksgiving), wasn't there *anything* he could do? Nope. Come back later. A few days later.

So he came back as instructed. Whoops. "Didn't you know that if you didn't apply for extended unemployment by 'this' date, then you your unemployment would end and you have to apply from scratch and you'll have a gap of two weeks in your benefits?"

Well, no. He didn't know that, and none of the people who presumably did know that felt it important to mention it when he was in the office attempting to get his paperwork processed. Had the computers not been down, there'd be no gap in his unemployment. Had a human being been willing to think outside the box and take his information the old fashioned way, there's be no gap. But nobody bothered to mention, when they told him when to come back, that if he listened to them he'd be without income for a week or two.

Dealing with some of the people behind the desk at these offices is like vinegar to the teeth and smoke in the eyes.


*Just to be clear, MilehiMama has NEVER, to my knowledge, EVER hinted at the sort of teeth gnashing sense of entitlement referred to in that post, and I in no way mean to imply otherwise.

Business stuff

SALE!!! For the rest of this month all our products at CafePress have been marked down to a mere 10% profit margin for us. Take advantage.=) We've added some fun new items, too. TODAY ONLY you can use the coupon code MUGS20 and get 20 % off mugs at Cafepress!

I'm also doing a sale over at the Homestead House, but it's only for readers here. Email me (or leave a comment there) telling me what you want, mention the phrase "Fat Goose" and I'll give you 25% off, with free shipping on orders over 45.00! That's 25% off the lowest marked price- and some of those things are already marked down!

Frugal Noodles

This recipe for noodle fritatta looks good and frugal. The blog where I found it is written by a couple in New York trying to do 30.00 in groceries each week.

We used spaghetti noodles in Thai Style Pork Noodle Toss tonight, no sprouts, though. Lunch was a mystery meal- there were two jars of soup in the freezer, and the only label (in my handwriting, alack) said unhelpfully, "Soup." We mixed those up with a freezer container of some chile verde (basically white beans and chiles with chicken), and it was so delicious we sent some over to Granny Tea and G-pa. Alas, we shall never be able to make it again.=)

I got sticker shock on this post over there. They had the flu or a stomach bug about the same time we did- only saltines in their area cost 3.54. In mine, we can get them for .99 a box!!

Bakings Today

Today I:

~Did some Christmas decorating

~Cooked lunch, which consisted of white chicken chili and a mystery soup pulled from the freezer. The mystery soup had been poured into jars and labeled "SOUP" long enough ago that none of us remembered what was in it. It looked Italian to me, but it tasted pretty good with the chili.

~Listened to parts of Josh Groban: Noel and Charlotte Church: Dream a Dream

~Made Pumpkin Cookies from the Homemade Cookies cookbook. The day before Thanksgiving I cooked several pumpkins for pumpkin pie, and there was quite a bit of the cooked pumpkin left. This recipe doesn't use up a whole lot of it, but it was really well liked (except for the people who don't like raisins, which would be the DHM), so I'm going to make it again. I'm also going to try making some pumpkin bread.

1/2 c shortening
1 1/4 brown sugar, firmly packed
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 c mashed cooked or canned pumpkin
2 1/2 c sifted flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 c raisins

Cream together shortening and brown sugar. Add eggs; beat thoroughly. Mix in vanilla and pumpkin. Sift together dry ingredients. Blend into creamed mixture. Stir in raisins and nuts. Drop dough by heaping teaspoonfuls about 2" apart onto greased baking sheet. Bake in a moderate oven (375) about 15 minutes, until lightly browned. Remove cookies and cool on racks.

The recipe also calls for 1 cup of nuts, but I skipped them. It says it makes 5 dozen, but it only made 3 1/2 dozen for me. Of course, mine were a little bit larger than called for.... They have a really nice texture.

~Listened to a CD of 20 Christmas songs played on Panpipes

~Made Thai style Pork and Noodle toss for supper. Mother had put the meat in the marinade sauce a couple weeks ago and put it in the freezer, so I just took that out of the freezer in the morning and then followed the rest of the instructions. Yummy stuff!

~Made the dough for Peppernuts. A friend of ours sent us some of these around the holiday season, and I really liked them so I asked her for the recipe. She sent me three different ones, but this is the one I decided to use:
1 c butter or margarine
4 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
6 1/2 c flour
1 tbsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar
1 tablespoon hot water
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp mace
2 c nuts, chopped fine (I didn't add these nuts, either)
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp almond flavouring

Dissolve soda and cream of tartar in the hot water, then mix all the ingredients together and cool in refrigerator for 2 or 3 hours. Roll dough into rolls the length of a cookie sheet and about 1/2-inch in diameter. Cover with foil or plastic wrap and place in freezer until read to bake. Cookies slice easier if slightly frozen. When ready to bake, slice thin and place on cookie sheet. Bake at 375 until golden brown . They store indefinitely in a tight container. Makes 1 gallon of small cookies.

~Listened to Celtic Woman: A Christmas Celebration

~Made myself a cup of Sweet Potato Pie tea. I accidentally brewed it too long and it tasted like *burnt* sweet potato pie, so I put in a decent amount of cream and sugar. I'm not entirely sure I like it, but it was an interesting experience.



~Made The Boy a cup of Foxtrot tea. We both like this, but he's not really supposed to have the caffeinated teas, so he has this one more.

~Put the dough for the Peppernuts in the fridge, and made candied almonds. The recipe I used I got offline a few weeks back, and I'm not sure where I got it from:

2 cups almonds
1/4 c honey
2 tbsp butter
1 c brown sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon

Spread the almonds out on a shallow pan and place in a cold oven. Turn the oven on to 350 and roast for 12-20 minutes, keeping an eye on them to make sure they do not burn. Stir occasionally until well roasted. Boil the honey and butter together on a saucepan over medium heat. Reduce the heat to medium low and let simmer for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the almonds to the pot. Simmer and stir for 2 minutes. Use a slotted spoon and transfer the almonds onto a cookie sheet sprayed with anon stick cooking spray. Spread the almonds in a single layer to cool slightly. Mix the sugar and cinnamon and toss the almonds in it. Place sugar coated almonds back onto baking sheet and put back in oven under the broiler for a few seconds, watch carefully, just until the sugar melts and caramelizes. With a slotted spoon, transfer the almonds into a container for consumption.

I'm not quite sure what all the slotted spoon business was about, as I never needed one. I was using almonds that had already been chopped, so I ended up with more like clusters of caramelized almond pieces. It still tastes really good, though!

~Listened to some Mannheim Steamroller

-----

Tomorrow I have plans to finish cooking the peppernuts and possibly bake something else, if I have the time. Right now, I think it's bed time.

Christmas is Coming, the Goose is Getting Fat

Christmas is coming
The goose is getting fat.
Please to put a penny in the old man's hat.

If you haven't got a penny,
A ha'penny will do
If you haven't got a ha'penny
Then God bless you!

This is Granny Tea's favorite Christmas carol, and we always followed it up with a rousing chorus of:

God bless you, gentlemen, God bless you!
If you haven't got ha'penny, then God bless you!

They Really Are Amazing

The Mail Online calls this artwork you can eat, and they aren't exaggerating.

And the website for Mike's Amazing Cakes- check out his gallery (usually I loathe websites that greet you like this, but this one really is worth it)- click on the wedding cake at the top left.

Air is a dangerous pollutant

Stop breathing. The EPA declares air a danger to human health.

George Will on Copenhagen

NPR- carefully staying on the reservation. No dissent allowed here.

Need help understanding or explaining the significance of hiding the decline? What are proxies in climate science, anyway? Read this.

How sincere are the warming alarmists?

From the Telegraph, the tale of elitist excess begins:

On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen’s biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the “summit to save the world”, which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200. “We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention,” she says. “But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report.”

Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. “We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand,” she says. “We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.”

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? “Five,” says Ms Jorgensen. “The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don’t have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it’s very Danish.”

But wait, there’s more!

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

As well 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles. A Republican US senator, Jim Inhofe, is jetting in at the head of an anti-climate-change “Truth Squad.” The top hotels – all fully booked at £650 a night – are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges.

These hypocrites do not deserve to tell the rest of us what to do and how to run our lives.

goose

Very striking arrangement





the Muppets, not the tuen we sing.

Sacraments of the Daily Life

God loves us... so much that the divine presence is revealed even in the meaningless workings of daily life. It is in the ordinary, here and now, that God asks us to recognize that the creation is indeed refreshed like dew-laden grass that is 'renewed in the morning" (Psalm 90:5), or to put it in more personal and also theological terms, "Our inner nature is being renewed every day (2 Cor. 4:16).

Seen in this light what strikes many modern readers as the ludicrous attention to detail in the book of Leviticus, involving God in the minutiae of daily life- all the cooking and cleaning of a people's domestic life- might be revisioned as the very love of God. A God who cares so much as to desire to be present to us in everything we do."

Kathleen Norris, The Quotidian Mysteries, Laundry, Liturgy and "Women's Work"

ClimateGate Debate- Hilarious, but Language Warning

Players: Professor Andrew Watson, a professor at the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, which was the source of the disclosed files. Watson’s emails appear in the hacked Climategate files.

Marc Morano, of Climate Depot, skeptic (mentioned in the emails where Mann 'cleverly' hints that he's a moron), American. Brash, more than a little gleeful. Watson accuses him of shouting- I don't agree that he's shouting, but he is a quintessentially loud American, very clearly having the time of his life right now.

Place: BBC's Newsnight program.

Honestly, I think mostly this is more heat than light, and Morano's fast talking would probably be annoying to anybody who already disagreed with him. He seems to be trying to get as much information in as possible, and Watson seems determined to take his time and permit as little as possible to be said in the way of real information. I suspect there's a cultural divide here, too- Morano's obvious delight (his constant chuckles) sure seem to get up Dr. Watson's snoot, and it has probably been a very long time since anybody laughed when Dr. Watson spoke.

But it was kind of fun to watch- especially the last two minutes (there is a rude word near the very end- you don't want your little ones overhearing). Do not take your eyes off of Dr. Watson's face, and notice what he says just a minute or two after decrying character assasination and ad hominem attacks.

Climategate, or at least Marc Morano, seems to be seriously eating at him.



Meanwhile:

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.

More at the link. AJ at the Strata-Sphere says:

You don’t invest 3 years rechecking into a supposed emergency unless the picture is really that bad. It is really that bad.

And so long as we're laughing, Michael Schlesinger of the University of Illinois AGW true believer and defender of CRU, sent an email to Andy Revkin of the New York Times, threatening him with 'the Big Cutoff' from Climate scientists, who no longer trust him. And, says Schlesinger ominously, this is the second time this week he's had to tell Andy off.
Side query- Just what had Andy done for these guys that they feel such a sense of betrayal now?
But it gets better. Schlessinger accidentally copied his hate mail to Andy and emailed it to...skeptics Chris Horner and Steven Hayward.

Snort.

Whew.

After a rough week where the EC and I were so weak from a nasty stomach bug that we wobbled when we walked (she picked up the phone to hear a message mentioning enchiladas and had to click delete without listening to the rest of the message it made her so nauseated), and I thought we might have to take the nursing mama to the hospital for an I.V., we think we are all better. Jenny scrubbed all four bathrooms (Pip was at work, nobody else was well enough to do it).

Sheets and blankets are all clean, except for one bedroom.

The Boy took disinfectant to all the phones and many lightswitches. The FYG wiped down all the other lightswitches and the doorknobs with the stuff. I soaked toothbrushes in a mixture of peroxide and Listerine, slurping chicken noodle soup and ginger ale mixed with lemon-ginger tea for two days after I stopped losing my cookies (and various other comestibles) because food just didn't look good at all.

Yesterday was a long, long day. Our Sundays always are. We leave a generally tornoado blown house behind us at 7:30 in the morning, after getting Blynken, Nod, and the Cherub dressed and pressed and fed. Sometimes we pack a lunch, sometimes we pack snacks and buy a lunch. Yesterday we packed a bread-knife, a loaf of home-made bread, our whole wheat sugar cookies, a cheese slicer and our refillable water bottles- topped off with water, natch.

We drive to Shasta and the Equuschick's house (one mile, on the way), pull into their driveway and pick that little family up, squeezing Progeny in amongst the now three car seats in the van. Then we drive on to church (about 45 miles).

Yesterday after church services were over Jenny went ice-skating with friends and the rest of us... we went to Aldi's and bought lunch:
a package of lunch meat
a jar of peanut butter
a package of cheddar cheese
5 packages of swiss cheese (8 ounce package on sale for .99 cents!)
whole wheat crackers (could have done without these, but I forgot about the bread in the van)
granola bars for the Cherub (allergies mean she can't eat the bread or crackers)
bananas
some humus for a special treat (it was also on sale)
paper towels
tortilla chips (the HM loves them)

Usually I also get a bag of fresh green spinach, but I didn't do that this time (just didn't think of it).

Then we drive to our next destination. Sometimes it is a nursing home where we sing with others on Sunday afternoons- this is only about a mile away. Sometimes it is the library, about two miles away. Sometimes it is a store where we have errands (usually a home improvement store or a farm supply store). In these cases we eat in the parking lot. Occasionally it is a friend's house nearby, and usually when this is the case we have planned ahead and brought a lunch from home that we can heat up on their stove.

Yesterday we went to the Goodwill- we heard they had a sale. We ate in the van while different people browsed. Nobody found anything to buy, except the Boy, who bought a box of lemon drops to share.

Then we went to the library, and some of us napped in the van. This library has a great play area that Blynken and Nod love, so they played with the toys while I watched them and the Cherub for a couple hours. Pip and the FYG got online and browsed books. The Boy found some army books and brought them over to sit by me and read. I read a book to Nod. Blynken found a computer with a Dora the Explorer game to play. I plugged in my laptop and got online.

After the library we went to a home improvement store. The HM returned an item several months ago and we have instore credit. He wanted to look for a present for the sons-in-law. The rest of us either napped in the van or read library books (the FYG read books aloud to the boys).

After that we went back to the church building. It was an hour before evening services, but it's warm inside so we went in and let the little boys race up and down the aisles to burn off energy. Several elderly people always arrive nearly 1/2 an hour early, so when they started coming in, the boys stopped running and the FYG helped them walk up and down the pews tidying up, picking up bulletins, bits of gum wrapper, straightening hymnals, and otherwise feeling very important and useful- because, hey! They are important and useful!

Last night was a singing service, Nod's favorite kind, so it was kind of sad that he conked out in the middle. Afterwards we stayed way too late visiting, leaving at about 6:45 and heading home. On the way we listened to Anonymous Four, Enya, and some harp music via the iPod. The girls read to the boys some more. We ate more cheese, crackers, bananas, and lunch meat. We dropped off Shasta, the Equuschick, and the adorable Pirate, and switched the iPod over to bluegrass and folk music.

We came back to our house, unloaded the van, and dropped off everybody but the little boys, the HM and Pip. They drove off another fifteen miles west of us to take the boys home. This always takes twice as long as we expect because we get to chatting with their mother.

Meanwhile at home, Jenny, The Boy, and I went to work in the kitchen- there were so many dirty dishes scattered all over the kitchen that when I unloaded the clean load, we nearly filled up the dishwasher again. We had counters to wipe, the remains of our lunch to put away, and too many other things that would be too embarrassing to mention.

The FYG worked on tidying up the living room and dining room. The Cherub worked on sneaking into the kitchen to grab a cookie. When we were nearly finished with the kitchen I cut up some bacon with kitchen shears, fried it, grated some cabbage (after slicing away the moldy outside edges and tossing those in the compost pile) and onion, adding them to the saucepan, cooking on high heat. I sprinkled this with caraway seed, salt, and pepper. It would have been good with some of the Swiss cheese, but we were all sick of cheese.

We cleaned up our mess again, and sat down to eat (we also pulled some pears of the fridge- we all felt deprived of fruits and vegetables), me at the laptop, the Progeny upstairs to watch a movie. We felt we had enough togetherness for a few hours.

The HM and Pip came home and he puttered about the corn boiler (it went out while we were gone, and the house was cold). Some of us will be in bed by ten, some by eleven.

Monday morning, when this post is set to publish, we have to pick up and put away our co-op order. Jenny is spending the day about an hour north of here with HM (they want to look at a small car she is thinking of buying, and then she'll stay at work with him for the day), Pip is going next door to Granny Tea's to bake up a storm of Christmas cookies, and then the FYG, the FYB, the Cherub and I are going to snuggle up under the blankets on my bed and read, and read, and read.