I now have three adult bitches living with me ... and they get along wonderfully well. I took this photo in my den/bedroom this morning. Maggie loved all the people from the get go; it has taken her a couple of days to settle in with the dogs.
Right now Mica is half howling because she is the outsider, and her voice is querulous as she talks to them. I have let her outside so that she won't awaken Sam who has croup and been up during the night.
Life is slowly getting back to normal after the eye infections, the power outage, and the puppy food thief's stay.
Our latish New Year's Eve supper:
* giant shrimp with sauce
* beef tenderloin roast with slivered garlic inserted done rare au jus
mashed potatoes
roasted sweet potato, green beans, sugar snap peas, onions and garlic cloves
* red wine
sparkly pear juice
ginger tea with honey
The real difference was that I felt calm and happy as I prepared the meal.
After supper I thought Maggie was outside and I went off hunting, flashlight in hand, only to discover that she was curled up on her pillow in my den/bedroom!
Then Sam's first croup attack occurred and Mud Mama responded calmly and effectively by getting him into the cold night air, making him a chest rub of essential oils like eucalyptus carried by almond oil and giving him drinks of the honeyed ginger tea. She and Sam were absolutely calm; his dad less so.
I went to bed at 9, but I haven't managed to stay awake till midnight for years, so this was no surprise. I had created my "toe of the stocking" piece earlier in the day ... not a New Year's Resolution list of must nots or exhortations ... just something I have been doing since about 1985.
I take the time in late December to reflect on my life and consider what direction I would like it to take in the following year, and then I write down some of the steps I should take on that path and put it in my Christmas stocking to be read the following December. I don't ever follow the path exactly, but it is still a guiding light of sorts. And it makes me consider consciously at least once every year what is making me happy and what I need to change.
What do you do on New Year's Eve?
3 comments:
This particular New Year's Eve...
with the clink of our glasses filled with champagne,
we loaded a DVD I bought 5 months ago
on eBay and had saved for John's birthday (December 27th) -- The Saragossa Manuscript, a Polish film he has been talking about off and on for 32 years! Apparently it was also an influencial favourite of many directors -- Coppola, Scorsese etc.
BUT (you heard a "but" coming) it was remastered
(finally after 30+ years) in Europe in PAL format not N.American NTSP... and unplayable.
O WELL.
(A previous New Year's Day we saw this on a hotel brick wall in Las Vegas --graffiti painted carefully in 2 foot high white letters -- and it became a useful motto in moments like these...)
I think the calmness and acceptance of such disappointments that one achieves in "old" age is highly underrated.
So instead we watched a TV movie with The Office's Steve Carrell in it who was downright sweet. And didn't even switch channels to see fireworks at midnight. Just noted the time and hugged each other in happiness at reaching our 33rd year
intact, together.
Happy New Year, Barbara, to you and your loving menage of friends. It is a blaringly bright sunny New Year's Day in Ottawa and
I am inexplicably hopeful for 2009.
Happy New Year, Barbara ... and congratulations on achieving 33 years intact ... and Happy Birthday to John.
Thanks! and here is a good quote:
As 2009 begins, consider Mark Twain's wise words:
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
I read your blog to learn how it's done!
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