Lucked Out

I really lucked out yesterday.  (For those not familiar with the American idiom, that means I was very lucky.)  It stopped raining just as I headed out to the barn and the girls came and went in normal fashion and I didn't have to sit in soggy clothes while milking.  Knowing the break was temporary, I left the play yard open and shut the big door to the chicken coop, a good thing because it did rain off and on all day.

Badly in need of some holiday spirit, I put on traditional Christmas music and spent most of the day in the kitchen.  In between the timer going off on one or the other of two ovens (serious baking going on), I readied a few Christmas cards.  Back in the day before postage rates went sky high, I'd have a hundred or so cards to send every year and felt bad if they didn't get in the mail right after Thanksgiving.  It's been my habit to tape cards received to the kitchen cupboards to decorate an otherwise barren room.  In years past, every cupboard door was filled with holiday cheer.  I'm not the only one, it seems, to find the cost prohibitive because there is a total of 10 cards so far.  Perfectly understandable, but a little sad.

My self-prescribed therapy worked!  Having actually accomplished some holiday preparation lifted my spirits greatly.  I might even tackle putting the tree up today.  (Let's not get carried away.)

My luck held at sundown and I caught another break while putting the kids to bed.  All that moisture from yesterday is ice everywhere today.  Brrr.  Even with a little space heater blasting back here in the bedroom, it's been days since my morning cup of coffee hasn't gone cold before I can take the last sip.

It was a good day.