Slacker

Yep! That's my middle name of late, at least when it comes to blogging. I took a look back at the posts from last year and compared them to this year, and frankly, I'm surprised I've had so little to say since, oh, April. The year has frankly sucked that much and I must have thought that to write or speak of the awful things we've endured as a family would only given them more prominence. I've also found I've lost a lot of my blogger fodder. With MLTL gone, and me not willing to speak ill of the dead (yet), I simply must come up with something else. I think I've lost my muchness.

Oh...OK, I will dabble. For what it's worth, THERE WILL BE NO HAM AT THE HOLIDAY TABLE. And hey! There will be no fight about it either. It's a little muchness, but we're talking baby steps here. In his honor, I will say grace and thank the Father, Son and Holy Spurs.

To bring you all up to speed, the estate sale was last weekend. I'm so grateful we hired a professional company to do this, even if we did forfeit 35% of the proceeds. The work involved would have been overwhelming to go it alone at such a busy time of year, not to mention how much it hurt having strangers traipse through the house with their hands all over my mother in law's things. Those feelings were a surprise, so it was better to be able to stay away during all of that mayhem. When all was said and done, most things sold, a few of the bigger pieces did not, and all that's left of the smaller porcelain pieces are the ones that are chipped, cracked or broken.

While doing the big after sale clean up so we could put the house on the market, I came up with the idea to turn my mother in law's broken collectibles into functional art. Over the winter, and well after the holidays, I'm going to make tile mosaic table tops to display these pieces that were dear or somehow appealed to her. I'll make one for us, and one for Sara and Brian, too. There is that much left over. Even though I've never done anything like this, I'm looking forward to this project. Hmmm...Pieces of Mimi. She was adored so this is fitting and I believe she would have loved this idea.

This morning, after working until 1 AM, I had a mandatory staff meeting at the buttcrack of dawn. Oh, OK, so it was really 8 AM, but when you work evenings, what's the difference? I came home after a pit stop at the farmers market to find one last contractor in the house. I'd forgotten all about the back door dude. He's here to give us a new energy efficient entry to the yard. The only draw back to the door dude's appearance today is that it's 1) freezing cold out there and now in here, and 2) it's snowing. Leo and I are snuggled on the sofa under 3 blankets and have the big space heater blasting. Supposedly, he'll be gone by 2 PM. I'll believe it when I see it! I want him gone so I can get in the kitchen and make some potato leek soup.

Here is a version of Rudolph much beloved by my family. A big thanks to FTM for reminding me!