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Marilyn Armstrong — Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth

Tag Archives: Christmas


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Daily Prompt: Local Flavor: Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight

I live in a small town in the middle of a lovely valley. Someone asked me what there is to do around here, which got me to thinking about all the cool things there are do in our town.

Beyond - Benches

I realized this was going to be a very short post.

Here’s the list of cool things to do in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. Note: Everything except number 2 are warm weather activities.

  1. Walk the to the middle of town. Watch the water flow over the dam on the Mumford River.
  2. Attend a pancake breakfast at the fire house.
  3. If it’s not winter, go to yard sales. Find bargains. Buy some.
  4. In summer, go to a drive in. Bring lawn chairs. Sit outside and watch a double bill.

That’s it. But the scenery is  really lovely everywhere in all four seasons, so it’s a great place to take walks and photographs. We have a lot of churches. And you can go to orchards, pick your own apples and even cut down your own Christmas tree. Sometimes, you can watch the wild turkeys attack your car. You can’t do that in a big city!

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Forward to the Statehouse

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Boston at night, December 2012

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It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Reblogged from Head In A Vice:

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An angel helps a compassionate but despairingly frustrated businessman by showing what life would have been like if he never existed.

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This is MY favorite Christmas movie. Love that "movie within a movie" alternate history thing. Enough like time travel to tickle my brain in all the right places and enough sentimentality to need at least a couple of kleenex.  


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An All-Year Christmas Tree

It’s getting toward the end of January and our Christmas tree is glowing brightly in the dining room. There are people who are a bit slow to take down the tree, but I believe that we are by far, the absolutely slowest.

Tree 2012

No one ever wants to take the tree down. It’s not a real tree, so there’s no time limit. It’s not going to dry out nor is it going to drop millions of pine needles in the house. I guess that takes the edge off it, but to be fair, we’ve always had a problem with our tree. I think we should just throw something over it and leave it up until next year. Nonetheless, sometime around Easter, someone will point out, usually a guest, that we still have the tree up.

We pleasantly agree that yes, indeed, the tree is still standing. Yup, absolutely, no doubt about it, the tree is right there in the dining room where it was during Christmas, New Year‘s, Martin Luther King Day and Valentine’s Day. We just rename it in honor of whatever holiday is currently in progress.

We used to be embarrassed but after all these years of not taking down the tree until the flowers are blooming in the garden, we’ve become fairly thick-skinned about the whole thing.

More Tree

I can’t take it down myself, nor is this Garry’s bailiwick. When I was younger, I did all that stuff but I’m not so young now. My back is not accommodating about bending, twisting. It’s barely willing to coöperate and let me do things like sleep through the night (defined as more than 5 hours), walk around without yelping with pain every time I move or even sit on the sofa. It is, in fact, pretty bad and while sometimes it seems to be getting better, the moment I try to do anything more than nothing, it lets me know about it on no uncertain terms. So, if it’s up to me, that tree is a permanent part of our decor.

Gifts

Right now, it’s the Winter Tree. Next month, when I am sure it will still be standing there, I will call it our Valentine Tree and if it’s still hanging around in April, it will be the Passover and Easter tree. In between it will be my birthday tree, then Garry’s birthday tree.

By May it becomes a bit embarrassing and my son will probably take the tree down. If not, we’ll just call it his birthday tree and by Autumn, we might as well just leave it up because the holidays will be coming around again.

No one can say we don’t get enough use out of our tree. We have gotten our money’s worth. That tree doesn’t owe us a thing.

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Fire At the Heart

Sioux teepee

Sioux teepee

My teepee had a firepit. I lined it with fireplace tiles, then added a surround of old red brick. It was a big pit for a small teepee, but logs come in a lot of different shapes and it was easier to leave extra space to accommodate the bigger and odder-shaped pieces than try to figure out how to fit them into a smaller pit.

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It gets very cold in winter in New England. In the deepest part of the winter, with the temperature well below freezing and several feet of snow on the ground, I liked going out to my teepee to spend a few hours by a fire. It was the most peaceful, private place in the world, one of the few places I felt really relaxed and at peace.

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I learned to build a fire very fast. In fact, I got so I could get that fire going in less than a minute. Of course, that’s not counting however much time it took to bring in the logs and stack the fire properly so it would catch and burn properly.

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A teepee fire needs to be bright and hot so the smoke will go straight up the smoke hole. In essence, a teepee is a chimney with room for other stuff. If you build the pit and the fire correctly, there is very little smoke and a lot of heat.

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Once the fire was going, the teepee, which had a lining to help insulate it, got very warm. I often had to open the door and sit half in and half out because it was so warm inside. And no, despite crackling and sparks, the teepee doesn’t catch on fire. It looks like it will, but it doesn’t, though I wouldn’t leave a fire unattended. Then again, I won’t leave any fire unattended.

A fire in a teepee on a snowy night is magic.


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Best Cat Video

Thank you Sharla (again!) at Catnip of Life because you are right, this is a great video. I stole it from you, but it can’t be real theft when I tell everyone I stole it, right?

If you like cats, have cats, used to have cats, or just like animal videos, this is a good one!


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My world in white — Happy New Year!

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It started snowing yesterday afternoon. I first knew because the dogs came in covered with snow. It had looked like snow would be coming … white snow sky … but it seemed too warm for it to really stick. But, as snow so often does here in the valley, it just kept coming and as evening approached, the temperature dropped.

Straight across into the woods.

The snow continued after dark and when I got up this morning, there was quite a bit on the ground, perhaps 6 or 7 inches. Real snow, the kind that hangs around until it melts or is dug away.

First Snow - Deck 1

My back is still treacherously bad, but I had to at least take a few pictures. It wasn’t so deep that I couldn’t get out onto the back deck, so I provided a round of biscuits to my frantic pups, then grabbed the camera and my new wide-angle lens and took pictures. This is the first real snow of this winter, though it is likely last snow of 2012.

Woods and chairs

Last year, the snowless year, was a glitch in the weather. I hoped we might get another snowless year, but obviously that isn’t happening. Welcome to my world in winter. Fresh snow, so white, so pretty, so … cold.

Facing east


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Out of action

Usually, I’m aiming for a catchy title, but I have to tell you this is not a catchy title. I really am out of action.

I have a bad back. It’s been a mess since I was a kid falling off one horse too many. It was rebuilt in 1967 — a fusion and laminectomy using saws and chisels — because  that was long before micro surgical techniques.

I'm a four and a half. Apparently that means I'm disable. I sure feel disabled right now.

I’m a four and a half. Apparently that means I’m disabled. I sure feel disabled right now.

I’ve had a lot of problems with my back over the years and the fusion, which was bone paste made from a piece of my hip, began to disintegrate about 25 years ago, to be replaced by a massive invasion and a virtual sheathing of arthritic calcification. That’s not altogether bad. Without the arthritis, I’d literally fall apart.

A couple of weeks ago, after months of bursitis in my hips making it more and more painful and difficult for me to do much of anything, I went to the neurologist in Boston. I had a couple of cortisone shots in my hips that overnight made my it possible for me to walk again. I was thrilled.

A few days later, what had been a nagging pain in my back morphed from something I could ignore, to something that demanded I deal with it. Immediately. For the last couple of days, I’ve spent all my time trying to find anything that would make it stop hurting.

Today, I gave up, took the heating pad and my agonized spine and went to bed where I’ve been all day and will probably return in an hour or two. The way it’s feeling right now, I might be back in bed sooner than that.

I’m quite literally out of action. In the 45 years since my spinal surgery, with all the problems I’ve had, I’ve never been laid out like this. I’ve been in a lot of pain, yes, but somehow, I’ve managed to gut it out. This time, I just can’t. If you don’t hear from me, that’s why.

I know I am far from the only one with back problems, but somehow I thought what with all the rest stuff I’ve gone through, all the medical crises, the uncountable numbers of surgeries, that somehow I was going to manage to miss this particular one. Apparently not. Please accept my apologies. I’ll write when I can sit up long enough without screaming in pain and I mean that literally.

Assuming doctors are back from vacation after New Year‘s, I will seek medical assistance. I’m assured that cortisone in my spine might actually help. I’m pretty desperate and right now, a needle or two in my spine sounds like a great idea.

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