THANKSGIVING!

 Well, what a week!  

This is Stacy.  She is Fred Olvr's dog and he went to Michigan on Tuesday to spend Thanksgiving with his sister.  So, we got to drive him to the airport AND we got to take care of Stacy.  She is a sweet dog, if not a bit energetic.  Every time either Steve or I got up from a sitting or laying position, she was right there wondering "what are we going to do?!?!?!"  And, yet, she would never stay in the backyard on her own to run around.  Someone had to be out there with her or  it was "I want to go in the house".  She and Linus were fine together.  Sometimes she wanted to play and poor old Linus just couldn't drum up the energy to do much more than stand and wag his tail.  Sally and Stacy have finally reached an unsettled truce but mostly Sally growls when Stacy gets too close.   Fred comes home around noon today and I can finally take the sheets off the couches.  (Stacy is pretty hairy) 

We had nice weather (finally) early in the week and Steve and spent time in the backyard continuing to mulch leaves and pull up dead stuff.  Stacy LOVED being out with us then.  She would gallop from one end of the yard to the other.  

I finished up my gift books projects and was able to order them at 50% off on Black Friday.  That means that 95% of my Christmas presents are now done!!!!YAY!

Wednesday was full of preparations for Thanksgiving.  I baked two gluten-free pies - a pecan and an apple crisp.  I have discovered that if I use a 1 to 1 GF flour mix and a crust recipe that calls for vinegar and egg, I can make an amazing crust.  Elise arrived that evening, much to Sally and Linus's delight.  Stacy barked at her at first but then decided she was all right.

Thursday - Thanksgiving - was very nice.  We had fourteen people in our tiny house!  All six Southerlands, Elise, Beckie, Steven and Tamara and they brought Melanie and we also had Sam Carpintero with us.  We shuffled living room furniture around and moved out musical instruments and then moved the dining table into the living room with all three leaves inserted.  Eleven people sat there and we set up a card table in the kitchen for Lucy, Quinn, and Larkin.  And there was SO MUCH FOOD!  It was pretty overwhelming.  And, the time went so quickly.  Before we knew it, everyone was saying goodbye and just Steve, Beckie, Elise and I were left to play a game of Clue and a very shortened game of Trivial Pursuit.  

I love this photo of Steven and Linus....things were just too crowded in the kitchen and Linus kept getting under foot....

Friday, my 67th birthday, was horrible!  I awoke to vertigo and nausea and spent most of my day in bed!  Thankfully, I have a prescription for dizziness and I took it right after I woke up but it didn't start to help until the afternoon.  I managed to eat two freeze pops, some crackers, and, by night time, I ate a piece of pecan pie.  I will be contacting my doctor this week to see what we can do about this problem.  Happily, I have only experienced it twice before (once in Phoenix and once here about 18 months ago) but it would be nice to know the reason why I have these episodes.

Saturday I felt wiped out so I did very little.  I managed to take down Thanksgiving decor and water my plants.  Part of my birthday present was that we bought tickets to the Saint Louis Symphony for that evening and, happily, I felt up to going.  And, it was just magnificent!  We heard a Rossini overture, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Rachmaninoff and Respighi's Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome.  SO amazing.  

I will miss my pretty gourds and Thanksgiving stuffies.  But, I have plenty of cute Christmas stuff, too.  Notice that teensy gourd in front of the teddy bear.  That is real and so is the mini pumpkin next to him.  

I close with a funny photo that Beckie told me about and shared with me.  Back in the summer, Steve and I were out of town and Beckie was dog sitting.  Kyle and Micah were in town and visiting Beckie at our house and here is a photo of all four dogs (you have to look closely for Sally) wishing to be outside with their people!

Arctic temperatures all week

We have had frigid temperatures ALL WEEK!  I am not ready for this kind of cold so soon.  Happily, it looks like it will warm up this coming week.  

It has been a week of art, family history, rehearsals, and a sick dog.  

I watercolored some silly little Thanksgiving cards to send to the children in my Primary class and to the grandchildren.  On Friday evening, we had another friends art night and we worked in acrylic (not my favorite medium).  CeeCee was in charge of finding a picture to paint and it turned out to be a stylized autumn leaf.  Not particularly my style and I don't need any more large paintings in my house so I found pictures of realistic maple leaves and I painted my own autumn leaves onto a couple of blank greeting cards.

All spare time throughout this past week has been spent in a big push to prepare two family history books to be Christmas gifts.  Blurb online publishing typically has super good Black Friday deals and getting them ready for the day after Thanksgiving has been the goal.  Steve and I finished transcribing early in the week and the rest of the week has been thumbing through the many photo albums we have to find correlating pictures.  Then scanning and cropping the photos.  We finished preparing the photos last night so I think we are in good shape to have everything finished and uploaded onto Blurb by this Friday.  

Holiday music is ramping up, too.  Rehearsals for a stake Christmas choir began last Sunday afternoon.  Performance is December 17th.  A ward string quartet is preparing "Prayer of Thanksgiving" for next Sunday and we rehearsed Wednesday evening.  And, I am playing the Piano Guys arrangement of "O Come O Come Emmanuel" for December 11th and I rehearsed with the pianist yesterday.  Plus, Lucy had her fall orchestra concert Wednesday evening and I got to attend.  We all went out for gelato afterwards (Yes, the night was bitterly cold but the restaurant was warm and inviting)

And, just to make the week more "exciting", Linus began having gastric problems late Tuesday.  He had to go out about every two hours throughout the night.  We immediately started him on cooked rice and chicken but he had the same problem Wednesday night.  I called the vet Thursday morning and was able to get him in that afternoon.  He got some sub cutaneous fluids in the office and was sent home with a 10-day regimen of antibiotics and happily, he is getting better.  He slept through the night both Friday and last night so we'll see if he can start tolerating his regular dog food tomorrow.  Poor guy!  

Steve and I bought our Thanksgiving turkeys Friday afternoon.  The best price was at a Kroger affiliate called Ruler Foods only the store closest to us ran out.   I called around and found a Ruler Foods by the airport that still had the sale turkeys so we drove 30 minutes to that store!  Given the gas and time, I still think we came out ahead since the next best price to .69 cents a pound was $1.05 per pound!  We had to buy two as they were smallish and we are expecting 14 mouths at our house on Thanksgiving.  

Steve made a batch of blackberry jam all on his own on Saturday!  He had never made jam before!  He is proof that you CAN teach an old dog new tricks.  Saturday evening, we took part in a "Pie and Sides" potluck at the church.  I brought a gluten-free stuffing casserole and caramel chocolate cheesecake and was delighted to find plenty of other gluten-free foods to eat.  We brought Sam Carpintero and all three of us had very happy tummys! 

Because of our family history book efforts, we didn't watch much but we did manage to see - over three days - the 1956 movie "Giant".  Steve had seen snatches of it on television and we decided to check it out from the library to see what it was like.  Well, it is very long (unusually long for a movie made in the 50's), and kind of rambling and, at the end, one is not sure what the overall message was supposed to be.  It was pretty condemning of the existing prejudice against Mexicans and it doesn't paint Texas in a very favorable light so I imagine it was kind of controversial when it came out.  It starred Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean.  I worked at my sewing machine for most of the movie so it wasn't time completely lost!  On Julina's recommendation, we started watching "Chuck" and, after two episodes, have found it to be quite entertaining.  Steve has sucked me into watching "Bull" and that show is also entertaining.  

So, here's to a coming week of warmer November temperatures, to eating delicious food on Thursday, to my turning 67 on Friday and to getting ready for Christmas!

 

Winter came early!

This is what we awoke to yesterday!  The bitter cold blew in on Friday and we are not supposed to climb out of the forties all week.  And more snow is predicted for Tuesday.  Hooray for our year-old heater!!!!

I had purchased spring bulbs almost six weeks ago but I just never made time to get them in the ground.  But, I knew the cold front was coming, and the temperatures ahead of it were unseasonably warm so I spent all Thursday morning pulling up my many dead zinnias and planting the 112 bulbs (45 daffodils, 45 tulips, 10 hyacinth, 12 crocus).  I put half of the daffodils in back to enhance the daffodil plantings I already have and I put everything else in front along with 18 viola plants.  I am trying to imitate the temple grounds plantings and that is what they do every spring and it looks amazing.  Below is the cleared out zinnia bed and the piles of dead stalks waiting for room in the yard waste dumpsters.  This time of year, those dumpsters get full pretty quickly as everyone is clearing out deat plants and leaves.

On Monday, when temperatures were more autumn-like, Steve, Beckie and I had a little adventure.  We visited the Missouri-Mississippi confluence north of the city and then we crossed into Illinois at Alton and took the river road about twelve miles up to Grafton.  Lighthouses along the way and in Grafton where we enjoyed a delicious picnic lunch packed by Beckie.  We road the skylift to at Grafton's Aerie resort and enjoyed the view.  It was a lovely time.  Emily and family were supposed to have joined us but they got hit by a bug over the weekend and most were down for the count.  

Below are Steve, Beckie and me where the two rivers actually meet.

Below is the Missouri on the left and the Mississippi on the right

Tuesday at orchestra, we had our new conductor who will be doing the December concert (remember we are having four conducting candidates this year as we search for a permanent one going forward).  This guy, TJ Abernathy, is young but I like him, so far.  

Steve has started taking Ozempic since he started seeing an endocrinologist in late September.  At first, we really couldn't see any difference in taking that EXPENSIVE drug.  But, in the last couple of weeks, things have changed and Steve has had to increasingly lower his insulin doses to prevent having low blood sugars. He has been in fairly constant contact with the nurses both with the doctor and with United Healthcare as he continues to have low blood sugars.  So, I guess the Ozempic IS working.  And it is good to be able to reduce the high levels of insulin that Steve had been taking. 

I had a music studio recital on Saturday that included my Missouri students as well as my Phoenix students, all thanks to Zoom.  It was held in a church a couple blocks from our house and is the one that Fred Olver, our blind neighbor attends.  It used to be a grocery store so it isn't much for looks but the acoustics are fantastic, they have a Steinway grand piano, and their wifi is good.  Here are a couple of photos.  The second one is of Noah.  I have fourteen students (2 in Columbia, 3 in Saint Louis, 4 in Ballwin (grandkids), and 5 in Phoenix) and eleven of them performed yesterday.  

 

After the recital (and an earlier baptism that I played piano for), Steve and I just hunkered down in the warm house for the rest of the day.  We hardly watched anything all week.  I started watching Notting Hill Thursday night while Steve was at church meetings.  It was funnier than I remembered and also had more foul language than I remembered.  I decided to just read the synopsis rather than finish watching.  I am glad I did because I had forgotten that the middle part is so sad and hard to watch.  On Friday night, Steve and I watched the first episode of Andor and after just one show, I decided to read the synopsis of all the other episodes to determine whether we wanted to continue.  (remember, I LIKE spoilers.  I read the ends of books).  And, after reading, I think we will pass on that series.  I am not a fan of anti-heroes or of heist movies and Andor is both.  I guess I am getting old....

Halloween and the first of November

While we were in Indiana last weekend, Steve and I got to visit a bit with Shiloh before she had to go to work Sunday afternoon.  She works at Door Dash which seems like it is trying to become the Amazon of food and snacks and assorted household items.

I also convinced Stratton and Alex to pose for a photo.  Don't they look thrilled to do so?  Alex has lost weight and seems much more fragile.  Sigh.

We got back to Saint Louis around noon on Monday.  Plenty of time to prepare the char-bootery board for dinner with the Southerlands before we all headed out to trick-or-treat around the Holly Hills neighborhood.  There were LOTS of trick-or-treaters and sometimes getting the treats was slow going because of the unusual Saint Louis tradition of having to tell a joke before getting a treat.  Where did that come from???  Weather was absolutely perfect.  It was a very fun evening.

Larkin was a candy fairy, Lucy a glowing stick person, Quinn was a rocket boy (the legs in jeans are fake, his legs are the flames coming out of the bottom of the rocket pack), Noah was the scientist from Alien who had the creature emerge from his chest.

Speaking of scary, this is the root of the elephant ears plant I dug up last week (they cannot tolerate frost).  It looks like an alien.  For size comparison, it is sitting in a gray basin like the ones you get from a hospital stay. Pretty huge!  And below it are the enormous leaves I trimmed off.

Here is the back of our garage in the alley.  The mums are so pretty and those are herbs in front:  oregano, thyme, and sage.

Let's see, Tuesday, November 1st, I had to be at the temple by 6:45 am for a 4-hour shift at the recommend desk.  The temple is still closed for repairs and I was a volunteer to check the recommends of the construction workers as they entered to work for the day.  Members got a colored wrist band.  Non-members got a different colored band.  The time went quickly as I had brought plenty of things to do while I sat.  After I finished, I drove to Harris-Stowe State University to check out the auditorium where our civic orchestra concert was to be held.  It was at that time that I learned that we were NOT performing at the Emerson Performance Center on the campus but at another performance hall in the main administration building!!!  What???  How did that misinformation happen????Well, the tickets were already printed and mostly distributed but I was able to tell the program printers to "hold the presses" so changes could be made.  An email had to be sent to the whole orchestra.  One of many emails I sent all week leading up to the concert Saturday night.  Programs got picked up on Friday.  Happily, they turned out beautifully (even though I spelled principal wrong) The whole week leading up to the concert was a lot of work.  And that didn't include the cello practicing I also did.  Needless to say, I am happy this concert is in my rear view mirror.  It was fun music but pretty difficult to play at the tempos the conductor took.  And, working with Harris-Stowe was challenging.  Good thing we didn't have to pay for that venue !  But, I hope we never have to play there again.  Below is me with Genie, my cello student who attended....

Steve and I managed to actually watch a movie - but it had to be done in two shifts.  We saw "Belle" which was very well done, gorgeous soundtrack, compelling story.

I will close with a couple of photos of Sarah in her snail costume which she wore at the Ogden Nature Center's "Creatures of the Night" presentation.  (yeah, we all admit that snails are not nocturnal, but she looked cute anyway)