Second Friday since the last misfits box...means another one is here

 But first, it seems to be time to be in touch with Santa, as this little elf  is demonstrating today in the Advent Calendar

And since there's no knowing exactly when my Misfits box will arrive, tracking telling me it was loaded hours ago at their depot about ten minutes from here, I thought I'd better observe Action Stations.  

 

I find I was lucky in my choice of time to start with Misfits, since I get a delivery every two weeks, and it conveniently was not Thanksgiving week, and will not be Christmas week, either.  So I don't get any interruption in service, as they say.  I hadn't thought about this at the time.

Meanwhile, since I was in the kitchen anyway, I made a big pot of pumpkin, carrot and cashew soup, with plenty of nutmeg, a bit of curry powder, and a dash of lemon.

Which eventually became this, and very nice it was, too.

And when I'm not reading Olive and Mabel,  I'm into another Lisa See, very readable, even if hard to cope with at times, but she's a terrific storyteller. Two sisters who grow up fairly affluent and unthinking in Shanghai, where they earn money modeling for an advertising artist, until their lives come to a crashing halt when their father loses his entire property, and they are more or less traded to his creditor as wives to his sons.  Much complication follows, including the Japanese invasion and some scenes I felt I had to read, because historically this sort of thing did happen, but I was glad to move on from.  They eventually get to San Francisco, and that's where I'm up to.  It's unputdownable.

Then over lunch, there was a presentation from Amherst, which Emily Dickinson fans know as the home territory of the poet and a lot of history.  This was a series of slide presentations from four well prepared people, who know their stuff.  The Emily Dickinson Museum click here to see more, does a lot of these Zoom deals;  the material is usually very good indeed, and the technical knowhow of the academic presenters friendly, but not always on top of it.

Today there were a few, um, you're muted, Dr. Blank, no,  you're still muted.  Can you take over the screen now, thank you?  and a few muttered oops, mixed the buttons up, in the background.  But it is usually really good, and with none of the fake slickness you get in documentary type work.

I think of this as Zoom Without Tears, since all I have to do it click on the link and watch and listen.  No need to sit right in the right place, adjust my lighting so I look a little less like I've been dead a couple of days, and find and fix my sound levels. It's very restful.

This one examined the Dickinson family's relations to the College, which one of them founded, at terrible cost to himself, and their relation  to the town, the Civil War, race relations, immigration, flower pressing always gets in, she did a lot of it, and her college coursework. It was a lovely program, and I think may be found on their website, you could check at that link.

Then finally, the Misfits box arrived and did not disappoint.  This week it's top-heavy with fruit, enough for my daily intake for two weeks, urgent need.  The lettuce and Roma tomatoes and celery are all involved in tonight's supper.  The chocolaten, some ferociously dark stuff, with seasalt, is a little treat for Handsome Son, the dark chocolate lover.

And here's my supper, coming to the table shortly. I have a whole range of apple varieties, and I forget which this is, I took off the label, but it's crisp and juicy, even if anonymous.

So that's a quiet Friday around here.  Also I did some spinning in case I ran out of things to attend to..

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. 

A tiny flare of encouragement from nature, and the one and only Olive and Mabel

This morning, when I think both Mrs. Moon and I were asleep at the switch, since the sun completely failed to rise, instead, pitch dark and slashing rain everywhere, all the houselights on, I trudged gloomily to the kitchen to put on the kettle and found the primula had done this