Winter 2021

Winter drags on with more storms called for this week, but it finds me having received both doses of the vaccine and having visited family twice, so my gratitude outweighs my eagerness for spring.  We are all getting each other through it--did you see the sweet love note Monique's grandchildren left her and her husband in the snow?!  ♥--and while a number of people in the family have been sick from Covid (my nephew, three aunts, one uncle, and three cousins, at last count) this past year, we are still here as we look forward to the next season together, so how can we complain, really.  May spring come soon, though, if I may say so, and may it bring healing for us all. 

Mom and Dad's Christmas Lantern

Last month, brilliant Monique shared another of her beautiful creations, a decorated Ikea lantern scene, and I was so charmed by it, I was soon emailing her to tell her I was copying the idea for my parents for Christmas.  ♥  I found the same lantern online, began ordering tree, lights, and blue gingham dollhouse furniture for it, and then was flummoxed when the lantern arrived in pieces-needing-to-be-assembled and emailed Monique again to ask how she'd put hers together, sigh.  :)  Eventually, I got it together--the story of my life, ha ha--and I finished it the day before taking it home for an early Christmas with my family.  :)  It's such a sweet idea, and it's not one I'd have ever thought of, filling the inside of a lantern like this.  More thanks to Monique for sharing, as she always does.  ♥ 

I began mine with what became the living room carpet, :) an old hand-towel in Mom  and Dad's shade of gray-blue.  A small snowflake doily-ornament came off my tree to become a miniature tree skirt.  After I'd gotten the decorating done, Mike figured out the lights. 

A heart appeared while we worked on it.  ♥ 

I had bought a miniature Beagle for Dad, as he's aching to have another one but Mom's not keen on the idea.  I crafted a mini newspaper out of folded-up/glued-together newspaper snippets and made a mini country decorating magazine for Mom.  I'm not happy with the collar-and-red-heart-tag that ended up looking like a bandana--Dad would never have a bandana-wearing dog--but I'd already hot-glued it into place before I realized how oversized it was. 

Part of a stained blue holiday towel that we no longer used but that I hadn't wanted to throw out found a new life as an afghan for the back of the couch.  I unraveled more of its yarn loops to make tiny  ornaments,  and I made a few little wrapped gift-bundles for under the tree.

A snowflake-patterned scrap of the same towel became a pillow, although the snowflake design isn't obvious.  The basket and shiny bow-wrapped gift beside it were little bits I'd saved from other projects over the years--and I'm glad I did.  :) 

I ordered a miniature Swedish tea ring from an online artisan, since that's what Mom always bakes for Christmas morning's breakfast.  ♥  I cut out paper napkins to go with that and the tea cups. 

The tree has its own built-in string of lights, and I draped the other strand around the couch for a little more glow on that side of the "room."   

When it was all put together and lit up, it looked full enough--and very much like Mom and Dad's actual living room at Christmas, which is what I was going for, of course.  ♥  (Again, how fun is this idea!  I want to make them for baby showers and birthdays and garden parties and weddings and kids' rooms and other holidays and! and! and. . . !)  :) 

I took a final picture in full sunshine right before wrapping it--

--and Mike and I gave it to Mom and Dad on the 21st.  Mom was as delighted as expected, and Dad was just happy to see a Beagle in his living room finally.  ;)  Here's to the fun and love of Christmas, and here's to the sharing of sweet ideas.  ♥ 

The Sallie Mae Pay-Off Cake (This Year's Best Accomplishment)

After sixteen and a half years making payments toward one of my student loans, I finally paid it off last Friday morning.  

And made myself a celebration cake to beat all prior celebration cakes.  :)  A glittering rainbow,  some shiny coins, a goodbye scroll, a few smiley faces, a bluebird of happiness?  OHHH YEAAAH, it's got it all.  :)

I first took out this student loan in the summer of 2000, a month or so before starting grad school at New York University.  That is so many lifetimes ago now, it seems, so all the better to have all the payments for it finally completed.  

Even with jobs, grants, and scholarships, the student loans were also always necessary for me throughout college and grad school, but the debt is quite a burden to carry, and as with everyone after a certain age, if I knew then what I know now and could redo it all, who's to say. . . .And I still have an insane amount of student loan debt, but let us celebrate today what we can, right.  Never again having to pen into my journal my new-and-improved Sallie Mae balance is an accomplishment. 

I have been keeping diaries and journals since I was nine, and while looking through some of my old ones late this summer, I soon grew tired of seeing how many times I'd written "My Sallie Mae balance is now down to $[whatever-amount]" or "Another payment today.  New balance:  $[whatever-new-amount]."  Blah blah blah, entry after entry, year after year. . . .When I was twenty-three. . .Thirty-three. . .Thirty-nine. . .Until I got sick of it late this summer and sat down with pen and paper to figure out how much I'd have to work to pay it off by the end of this year.  THIS year, finally.

I calculated my wages, my usual number of hours/week and hours/month, what overtime would maybe be available throughout the fall, and how much extra I'd need to do in order to make the final payment on this loan by New Year's Eve.  I came up with the number of extra hours I guessed I'd need to work--and I worked them.  And worked them, and worked them. . .days and nights, going back to work after just a few hours of sleep from the shift before, giving up days off to get a few more hours. . .the past three months. . . .And I ended up working only one hour more than I'd estimated that I'd need to and actually paying it off two weeks early, so all my estimates were spot-on.

I gave up what was to be my second visit to Boston, in October, for this.  I had already booked the flight and gotten the days off work but decided to be a grown up and do this instead.  'The  right thing to do, but I so wanted to be there in the fall. . . .It was to have been the weekend of David Ortiz's final game with the Red Sox and of an Oktoberfest-themed 5K race I'd intended to run.  My designated "Boston days" found me back at work here instead.  Life goes on, and I'll get back to Boston sometime, and now the loan is paid off. . . but the trip would have made for some sweet autumn memories. 

I made the final payment last Friday morning, hours after returning from a week of "merry early Christmas" with my family and set out for the grocery store for cake-baking and cake-decorating supplies soon after.  ♥  The cake was the classic Hershey Celebration Cake but with hot coffee and buttermilk replacing the hot water and milk per an Ina Garten recipe.  Candy-tape made the rainbow, I dolled up a few yellow gumballs for the smiley faces, the coins were easy to find with Hanukkah candy this time of year, and I crafted the bluebird and scroll out of homemade marshmallow fondant.  It is not the most prettily-frosted cake, but I was too tickled by the cause for celebration to care.  :)

And I called my dad--who had warned me in summer 2000 not to take out this loan in the first place, but I had just turned twenty-three so knew everything and didn't listen to him, of course--to tell him the good news. ♥ 

Stuffed was unimpressed and remained on his warm radiator-perch all afternoon.

I should have followed his lead, as it turns out, for I came down with the flu Friday evening and was sicker all weekend than I'd been since early 2012.  But until then:  happiness and cake!  :)

Even if fatigue ultimately caught up with me, I reached my goal and have kissed this debt goodbye.  And the fresh new journal I begin next month will be the first in almost seventeen years that won't mention it.  And the flu has now mellowed into a cold, and there are still two slices of cake in the fridge.  :)

♥

Family Weekend

'Still settling back into life here after a few days with family.  Dad's birthday and the annual family reunion fell on the same day this year, and his two sisters also spent the night at the house Sunday and were able to stay through lunch Monday, making this visit home especially memorable.  Dad cooked their grandmother's risotto--his best batch of it yet, we all agreed--and his just-picked tomatoes and cucumbers made a perfect side-salad.  'A special meal and sweet way for the siblings' visit to end.  Mom, Dad, and I opted for the Olympics over seemingly-ceaseless election-related-news-coverage in the evenings, I finished reading Judy Blume's latest book Monday night and began Bill Bryson's take on Australia in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, and too soon--

--I was back at the bus station, greeting its resident cat and waiting to board to come back here. 

Assuming Aunt Laurie's health remains good, I will be looking out the bus windows at Pennsylvania countryside again next week already for a visit with her and the rest of my family. 

This summer has been miserably hot and humid, but it's one that has found me both getting somewhere with my running finally and reuniting with family, so those are two Summer 2016 things that I will remember fondly. 

Snapshot

We have been passing Bill Bryson books back and forth the past six months, Dad and I.  It began with A Walk in the Woods:  Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, and then I gave him The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid for Christmas.  We continued with Neither Here Nor There:  Travels in Europe, and Dad just finished armchair-traveling via Bryson's memoir of a trek through Australia, In a Sunburned Country, one of his Father's Day presents from me this year.  A Short History of Nearly Everything is on a shelf here too, waiting for my next trip home.  We have both loved the Appalachian Trail book the best--neither of us wanted it to end--and agree that hiking it would be amazing if one could stay safe while doing so.  (I keep it as a "someday" goal, along with hiking the Camino de Santiago.)  Today Dad is alternately reading Bryson's The Road to Little Dribbling:  More Notes from a Small Island, baseball game-watching, and barbecuing with my mom, brothers, and my brothers' wives and kids.  I myself hope to manage to get home both next month and in August for the next two meetings of the Dad-and-Daughter Book Club. 

May at My Parents' House

This visit found my parents' gardens coming back to life, the start of a season my mom and dad yearn for all Cabin Fever-filled winter.  Both planting, repainting, and repairing things in their yard.  Dad out for his walks.  Dad fishing, almost chortling later as he recounted the morning's successes.  Mom getting ready for Sunday's visit with all her kids and grandbabies.  Plant-shopping with Mom.  A now-traditional slice of lemon meringue pie and an iced tea for me at a local restaurant, and a toasted gluten-free roll with jelly and a cup of hot tea for Mom.  Laughing when I found her an imitation-pewter George Washington plate in the local Goodwill and not in Boston three weeks prior as I had hoped.   Talking bee-keeping and the 1956 Chevy Bel Air (his pick) vs. the 1957 Ford Fairlane (my pick) with Dad.  Oohing over handsome Hal Linden while watching "Barney Miller" with Mom.  Laughing with my brothers and their kids this Sunday.  We are blessed.  'Such a sweet weekend home, and I am now homesick for everyone as I always am post-visit. 

♥