Holiday Hiatus

How was your Christmas? As expected, ours was very quiet. But not as stressful as I'd imagined. We visited Dad at the nursing home for a couple hours. Don't think he knew what day it was. He seems to be wasting away and some times feels present, at others absent. Still, it wasn't as heartwrenching as I thought it would be. I managed to stay positive the whole time we were with him but when we left after his lunch arrived, I was a little upset and tried to hide it from my husband who had been disturbed to see Dad as he is. I somehow missed the edge of a ramp we were parked next to and nearly fell, managing to twist my spine a little. Not too good since Christmas Eve I'd decided to pamper myself with a long soak in the bath with a rose scented bath bomb. It was nice until I tried to get out of the tub. I've got safety bars and had grabbed one to help me stand and get out but somehow my foot slipped in the tub. If not for the safety bar, I think I'd have gone sprawling over the tub edge onto the floor. As it was, I managed to splash back down in the tub with one foot sort of under me. Got a twisting of right side. So with my two little mishaps, I wasn't in great shape for catering to company anyway. Before our dinner, we fixed up a dinner plate, dessert plate, soda and utensils etc and went down the street to wait at a bus stop for the driver on our route. Turned out to be someone my husband knew and she was so delighted he'd come out in the cold to bring her a Christmas dinner. Talked to my son and learned he is sick with some kind of virus and his mother-in-law is in the hospital at UVA in Charlottesville. DIL left Friday after work to drive down and see her mother. Haven't heard anything more yet but know MIL is in very bad shape. Jeremey told me she was not accepted for lung transplant list after all. The doctors wanted her to lose 30 pounds and exercise more. Pretty hard to do when you can barely breath and are on oxygen. Doesn't look good.

On the second day of Christmas, a migraine came to me. Luckily, it wasn't too bad when grandson came by so I was able to be with him for several hours. But he'd no sooner left than I had to go to bed. And that is why no post yesterday. I know I'd said I would start posting Snow Queen yesterday but I've decided I need some down time. So I'm going to laze about for the rest of the 12 days of Christmas and rejoin you on Ephiphany/3 Kings Day/Little Christmas (whichever you may call 1/6). In my tradition that is the day we take down the Christmas Tree. When I was young, my parents always took down the tree on 1/1 which also happened to be my paternal grandmother's birthday (1/1/1900) but it seemed sad to me. So when I had my own family, I decided we would take the tree down on Ephiphany and I always left a small gift for each family member to be opened once the tree came down. Often it was something like movie tickets, but it could be another small gift. No tree to take down here this year and we did next to nothing for Christmas gifts. So I'm thinking what I might do is make a King Cake for 1/6 and plan a special meal.

Starting 1/6 then we will have a Snow Queen kit and it might run longer than 6 days. Not sure what will follow that.

Stay well and be happy.