White Rabbits again, Olive, Mabel and Useful Tasks to Improve The Shining Hour

 So today's the third little door on the calendar, and it turns out to be -- a white rabbit!  A bit late for the tradition, but never mind

And yesterday my Christmas gift to me arrived.  It's the Book of Olive and Mabel. And very funny reading, too, just started it. When booksellers say the book was to be published December l, I didn't realize they were probably all packaged up and ready to ship, just waiting for the official date to do it. Anyway, it arrived on the second.  Not bad.

So it made some nice winter reading, with toasted sharp Vermont cheddar on wholewheat and the inevitable pot of tea

Over the 12 years of petcare visiting, to the pets' houses, and the earlier micro business of Handsome Son as a young teen before he had working papers, where dogs, one or two at a time, came to stay with us in the house (!) I've had dealings with literally hundreds of dogs, and reading this book reminded me of a few of the more comic characters.

Such as Diego, the terrier mix, who loved to stay with us when her owner travelled, and was best friends with our two terrier mixes.  She loved it so much that she figured out the route from his house to ours, which he'd only traveled by car, and would break out of her house where she slept in an enclosed porch, and come galloping over to ours, and started banging on the back door to come in and play with Buff and Toby.

This tended to happen about five a.m., and the first time I was scared to death, thinking someone was breaking in, and me alone with a young boy and two small dogs useless as houseguards.  Went down fearfully, looked out the back door, saw nothing but the door was being whapped, looked down, and there's Diego, laughing and barking and saying hey, this is fun, lemme in!

I'd call the owner at a more decent hour, and he'd first insist, no, she's here sleeping on the, oh, oh, the porch door is bust open and she's gone, so sorry.  I'll come and get her.  We thought it was a pretty good canine reference.  She loved her owner, who had rescued her from the San Diego pound, hence the name, but still wanted playtime at ours.

And dear George Meredith, the miniature poodle, who would give recitals every evening at about 9.30, in the middle of the living room, singing away and howling and generally kicking up a racket.  For about fifteen minutes we had to endure this.  The owners told us he must be very relaxed at our house, since he usually reserved the recitals for his immediate family.  They thought it was his hobby.

I'm still faithfully using my therapy lamp for half an hour each morning.  Hard to tell if it's helping my mood, because I don't know how I'd feel if I didn't use it.  But anyway, it's thirty minutes of needing to do something while stuck in one place.  Reading, okay, emailing on tablet, okay, drinking tea, eating breakfast, but then it occurred to me this morning this is a great time for those mending tasks that take no time once you get to them, but you never get to them.

So today I did that. I took a pair of knitted slippers which needed to be stitched up further at the front, because they stretch a little with wear, and start falling off. Same style as the one above, but not that one, which I've been wearing for years, a bit tattered now.  Anyway, I stitched up the two fronts, took about five minutes including the time to find the needle and yarn and to kick myself for not getting around to it before. This might be a good thing to continue.  I think I just needed a slot of time for doing things like that, and now I have one. Clever me.  I think.