A walk

I have not been posting. December is a full month for me. Coincidentally, I’ve had an unusually high amount of traveling lately, and I’m far behind on all the tasks I want to do.

I’m the volunteer editor of two newsletters, one for the Mt. Hood Cherokees and one for the Great Spirit Church (I’m an atheist, so not a member of the church, just a supporter 🙂 ), which both were due for publishing the first week of December. I’m done with both – yay!!

I have pretty much completed the gift collecting for all my people, because we celebrate Christmas, and that is coming up. I have wrapped about half of the gifts. I have an evergreen tree standing in my living room, but not one other bit of Christmas decoration. Not even lights, inside or out. *sigh* Decorations are low priority when I am scrambling to catch up.

I am the new captain of my Belle Brigade team – yay! But now I’m responsible for the team – yeeks! We have a holiday party coming up this weekend and I’m SO stressed out about that. I really don’t like parties and good heavens I am not the right person to organize one, but here I am. Of course, my first terror is that no one will show up. Or worse, two people will show up when I’ve rented a place and asked for staffing for twenty. Also, we have all been recruiting, and some of the new members of the team will show up and I’m nervous about meeting them and have fingers crossed that we will all click and they will decide for real to join us and begin their speed walking training.

These days I am missing my Pedro. Coming up on our two-year anniversary of dating, we are past the emotion explosion of falling in love, and now the other priorities in our lives: family, work, errands, often win over just hanging out and staring into each other’s eyes. So we see each other on the weekends, and the whole time in my mind I am thinking “But while I’m with him, other things are not getting done!” He was a sweetheart last weekend and offered to help me with tasks. Thank goodness. On our way back home from one of the errands, we passed a park in the nearby town of Longview, Washington, and decided to take a quick walk before the rain started again.

Longview has a very pretty park called Lake Sacajawea Park. It’s a long, narrow park on either side of a lake made out of an old timber shipping canal. In Longview’s early days, timber was floated in the canal between the seaport and the mills. Today it’s easily the most beautiful part of the mostly ugly and industrial town of Longview. We made the three-mile loop and finished just as the winter rains kicked in again. All the photos in this post are from my old iphone as we made the walk.

Stumped for a gift idea for a family member for a long time, I was delighted when I came up with the greatest idea, but now I’m out of time and it’s a craft and required lots of scouring online for things to use in the craft and I need to make four of them for all four of the family members. Anyway…they are turning out so great and I am having so much fun, but so far it’s been about three full days just working on these crafts. And they still must be mailed in time for Christmas. haha. To make sure I don’t spoil the surprise, I won’t post pics here, but Omigosh, so much fun.

Oh! RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of all of this, my refrigerator DIED. Friday night I thought my ice maker in the refrigerator had stopped working, since water was dripping all over. No worries. I hate those dumb things anyway. Then Saturday I thought maybe all the freezing stuff had stopped working. Again, no worries. I barely use the freezer. I had one half-empty frothy melted tub of vanilla ice cream – at least six months old because I don’t really eat sweets. And one thawed package of sausage which I cooked up. But Sunday morning we realized the whole unit was getting progressively warmer. When I had so many other things to work on, instead I spent seven hours on Sunday searching for a refrigerator to buy. I live out in the country and had to find someone who could deliver, and deliver soon, and also haul away the old one, and also all that had to be done for a reasonable price, since I just spent all my extra cash on the holidays. Finally, at 7:00pm that night (Pedro had long ago gone back home), I was in a store an hour away from home and completed a purchase. I should have a new fridge sometime Thursday.

And finally, yes, my massive Christmas letter project is due (according to my self-assigned schedule). I have barely started it and I prefer to have it DONE by December 1st, because the part that really takes the most time is getting it printed out and adding personal notes, and addressing envelopes and getting the 80 letters into the mail. People often tell me to just send them out via email but so far I refuse. I have always loved writing and receiving actual mail in an actual mailbox, and this is for me, not for the people on the list. I am certain there are folks who don’t read the letters, but no matter.

To take care of two things at once, today, while I wait for a couple more craft thingies to arrive from Etsy in the mail (god bless Etsy) to finish my half-finished gifts, I am at Pedro’s house. He has to work, and is working from home. It’s perfect because I have to work too, on my Christmas letter, and with my laptop I can work anywhere. So we had coffee together this morning and eventually we will take a break and eat together. Pedro suggested a walk in the neighborhood trails around his house after work – maybe with headlamps because it’s dark early these days. And I have big plans to try to make chicken cordon bleu tonight for the first time in at least 15 years. We will do that together, and all this will soothe my missing him. Then I’ll be home again tomorrow in time to receive the mail I am waiting for.

My kiddo, Kellen, and their partner, Cameron, will only visit us for a couple hours on Christmas Eve, which is a loss compared to last year when I had them for days. Ahh, it was lovely. But either way it will be cherished time with them. And honestly, it gives me until the 22nd to put lights on the tree! ha ha ha!!