2015-2016 Rambles

It is said that there are only two things in life that are certain.  Those would be death and taxes.  When it comes to this blog, however, there are at least three certainties.

1. At least half the photos will be crap.
2. The blogger will never be very good at his job.
3.  Whenever you read that posting will resume "tomorrow," then you can expect at least another two weeks (or more) before a post finally appears.

Is anyone even still out there?

If you look back over the last few years of this blog, you'll find that I inevitably seem to flake out right around the holidays and totally disappear.  Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, life just overwhelms me and the blog suffers.  Interestingly, I don't really do that much holiday celebrating any more.  The only gifts to get are for Keith, my brother and Keith's mom.  We haven't decorated or done any baking since my mother first got sick.  If anyone ever gets a Christmas card for me, guard it like a double-bag collector's item, because that sucker is a rarity for sure!  Yet, despite all of this, the end of the year seems to swallow me up like a black hole.

I know my prolonged absence made some of you worry, and I am sorry for that, but deeply touched at the same time.  You all are just so sweet and I am lucky to have each of you in my life.  I owe several of you emails, blog comments, and post catch ups.  I'll get to it, hopefully soon.  If I don't, know that I do think about you all a lot.  I had no idea that this little blog would bring so many great people into my life.

Speaking of being in touch, any of you that have my mailing address, please contact me by email.  After years of declining service, we finally did away with the PO Box.  If you want it, I'll be glad to give you the home address.

Okay, so where to begin?

Let's start with this. He always makes people smile.

Keith's mother gave him that quilt for Christmas.  One of his aunts made it for a fund-raiser at one of the churches that his mom attends and she ended up winning it.  It's really pretty, and Chiquito just loves it!  He's claimed it as his own.

In other Chiquito news, Keith relented and made me a 2016 Chiquito calendar.  I'll get the Jan and Feb pics up soon.  Well, before March, at least.  He told me to warn you all that this one might be the last one.  He thinks that you're going to find pic after pic of Chiquito to be "repetitive."  I told him he didn't know you all.

Speaking of Christmas, I also got this,which of course I love!  Two more pairs of socks came with it!

I get tons of compliments when I wear it!  He also made me a Kosh calendar, but it makes me kinda sad, so I keep it stashed on my desk.  I had asked him to make me a memory book of Kosh pics, like he did for our other kitties who have passed on, but he hasn't had a chance to track down all the pics yet.  The calendar was to hold me over until he could.

Something we did not realize about having a Christmas Eve anniversary is that it is awfully hard to find a place to go for dinner.  We finally got a corrected copy of our marriage license, so Keith is not the officiating judge any more.  He had a couple of our wedding pics blown up and printed out on canvas for me.  We're doing some rearranging at the house, so they'll probably go in the bedroom, when it's done.

The other day, while I was searching for a clean pair of jeans, I came across this:

That's the 70's Batman comic logo, by the way.  I had forgotten I had that one.  Finding made me remember that I also have a shirt with the TV show logo on it, which I now have to find.  I have a nerdrobe and didn't even know it!

Ignore my hair in that pic, please. I'm growing it out in hopes of finally having the ponytail I've always dreamed of.  I've tried it before, but always got frustrated when I got to this shaggy, unmanageable state.  The top and sides aren't long enough to pull back yet, and it's driving me nuts.  I'm determined to see it through this time.  I think it's a midlife crisis thing.  I'm also pondering bleaching it totally white and piercing my nose.

This happened a couple of weeks ago.

It was really the first bad weather of the winter for us and wasn't nearly as bad as it got in other places, but it was enough.  The streets in front of and behind our house are kind of major ones, and traffic was crawling along them for a couple of days afterwards.  The Peddlers Mall was closed for a day and a half.  Sales sucked all freaking week long.  Chiquito told me that the best thing to do was stay in, drink hot chocolate, eat popcorn and take naps, so I did.  He was right.

Speaking of the booth, some of you all want new pics, but it's going to be a while.  Things are a bit rough in all my spaces right now.  December was an excellent month for me, but January sucked.  My total sales were the lowest they've been in a long while.  Bad weather was part of it, but the rest of it was mainly my fault.  For some reason (winter blahs?), I just could not seem to pull it together, get the Christmas out, restock everything, and tidy it all up. 

Usually, I leave the Christmas in through the first week in January, then spend the next week clearing it all out and redoing everything.  Those first two weeks are usually a little slow anyway, and that gives me time to get the booth ready for the end of the month, when the early early birds have gotten their tax refunds.

I could not seem to get moving this year.  Part of it was that I decided to leave some bits of Christmas scattered around my spaces.  I marked everything that had been through more than two seasons down and shoved them on a couple of bottom shelves.  It's out of the way.  It fills shelves people don't access a lot, so the booth looks fuller.  It also gives the adventurous folks (and holiday lovers) some bargains to hunt for,

I also left all my holiday glasses and dishes on another bottom shelf.  I'm down to very few of them, and they've sold year round for me before.  The books and music I worked into the book booth.  None of that took very long.  The hold up came when I decided that I should make a year round vintage Christmas section. 

I had already pulled everything, and it was piled in carts.  All I needed to do was clear a shelf for it and sort through it.  That became the hold up.  Three different attempts to designate an existing shelf totally failed.  I ended up heading to Sorrow Mountain in hunt for a new shelf, rearranging things a bit, then making my vintage Christmas section.  It took forever, as the snow happened in the middle of all this.  The result was I had carts of stuff and empty boxes cluttering my booth and scaring off customers.

Sometimes, it's really obvious that I do not have a clue what I am doing.

Three days in, however, and February seems to be doing much better for me.  I'm thinking that tax money is trickling in, finally.  Thanks to taxes, February and March can be good months.

To switch to a better note, my scans are coming back clear!  The treatments continue, of course, but the docs (and me) are really pleased with the results.  I'm on the same drug that Jimmy Carter is getting, by the way.  I've been referring to it as "the presidential treatment."  I'll have what the President is having, please.  I'll be due for another scan in a month or so.

It's a bit of a busy week here.  I'm benignly neglecting the booth, because it's junk set out weekend in our neighborhood.  The winter set out is always a little iffy, but the weather is supposed to be mild all week, so the pickings might be pretty good.  I've got a bit of cabin fever, so I am raring to go hunting.
I've also got stuff that needs to go out to the curb.  I have two bookshelves that are seriously falling apart and need to go.  I have replacements on Sorrow Mountain, of course.  I've been putting off dealing with these for a while, partly because I'm convinced that it's only the weight of the stuff on them that is holding them together and upright.  Seriously, they're that far gone.  I'm afraid it's going to be like playing Jenga on a large scale. One wrong move and I'm buried in books.

At least this time, if you don't hear from me for a while, you'll know what happened.

Let's close out with a backlog of fortune cookie wisdom.

I certainly try to do this one.

Well, thank you!

I was sure this meant I had the winning Power Ball ticket.  Alas!

I got all excited at the last one from Po!  I never got a fortune from a Teletubby before!  Po! Po! Po!  Then I realized that it was the Kung Fu Panda dude, which makes more sense from a fortune cookie perspective.  Personally, I think what the world needs right now is Teletubby fortune cookies.