Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from Château Sutton-Goar

Santa made a surprise appearance at the Château last year, bringing Andy an acoustic parlor (smaller body) guitar and  me a 12-string, so there has been a lot of music here this year—and more than a few discussions about how many guitars two people actually need, though these discussions are quickly scrapped when either the sewing room or the third bay of the garage known as the Wood Shop are mentioned.  No one, however, is allowed to take up the tuba.

Andy has always been interested in photography, and this year purchased a better digital camera to play with.  On one of the first outings with a camera, while Andy tried to get just the right shot of a goose with her gosling, I fended off another goose, presumably her agent, who wanted to A) bite, and B) talk royalties.  A day on the motorcycle with the camera has become a favorite weekend activity for him, and over Thanksgiving he took some wonderful pictures of my aunt and uncle and their family at the ranch, so it's really been a fun hobby for everyone—except perhaps that goose.

The garden and I had a decent relationship this year.  Lousy tomatoes, but truly exuberant cucumbers, which worked out rather well as I was running low on pickles, and we valiantly defended the pumpkin plant from the squash bugs after learning that planting zucchini as a decoy didn't work.  I actually planted two zucchini, for reasons I no longer remember or even understand, and believe me when I say that zucchini-carrot jam didn't sound remotely strange after everything else we made, though other people do seem to find bits of vegetable on their toast a bit weird.  Go figure......

The ongoing hip/back issues continue to dominate my life, but my biggest news is that my physical therapist said I don't need her anymore!  While she's still on speed-dial in case of “mishaps” or “over-optimism,” I continue to make progress.  Some activities are forever off-limits (certain types of lifting), but most things are probably possible.  The best approach is to try something in a small amount, see if my hip is stable, then gradually increase the time or try a new exercise for stability.  Of course, the approach I usually use is the “dive right in” version, which really backfired with my attempt at lawn mowing.  I think the straight passes were fine, but I hadn't thought through turning around.  We'll start smaller next year.  It will never be fixed exactly, and sitting will always be difficult and best avoided, but the daily exercises and stretches are helping me control it and I'm starting to get back to what my therapist describes as “half of a normal life.”   Though I'm not sure we've ever managed a “normal” life anyway, I am hoping to continue to make progress and regain whatever passes for a normal life for us.

In fact, I have made so much progress that we did a little traveling this year:  In February, we visited Andy's parents in California, then met up with most of his family in June in Colorado for a wedding reception and trip to the Colorado Renaissance Festival.  Then in October it was off to New York to attend our first Italian wedding—a wonderful event stretching 3 days and involving lots of celebrating, dancing,  and enough food to have amazed either of my grandmothers--which is saying something.  We also visited the Statue of Liberty and revisited Ellis Island, Central Park, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  We also discovered a brilliant Italian market where one can buy a glass of wine WHILE grocery shopping.  Idaho has much to learn.....

We close with a picture of a costume dinner we attended—Andy and I doing our best Cary Grant and Sophia Loren impressions.  Hey, we can always dream...............

Things we have learned this year:

* Unless you're a real free-thinker about oatmeal, it's best to not keep the cinnamon right next to the taco seasoning
*  “I'll just pop in to Costco on the way” might be the silliest thing I've ever said on a Friday afternoon.
* It's amazing what a sense of victory it is to only get slight burns when attempting to use a glue gun.
*  We've replaced a lot of appliances, but I'm still grudgingly impressed when a coffee maker can find an entirely new way to break—like having the automatic grinder start randomly going off whenever.  I have a soft spot for creativity.
* Dried dates burn much faster in the microwave than one might think.
*  It's a mark of human optimism that the word “zucchini” even has a singular.
*  Those who joke about their cats being “senior kitties” are going to spend 45 minutes catching the mouse let loose under the Christmas tree skirt.
*  Sorting boxes is fairly easy by now—if we haven't seen it in 9 years, it probably isn't necessary.
*  Cats with stress issues are a leading cause of humans with stress issues.
*  I had sort of assumed that by the time I reached my 40s I'd be able to stay clean for an entire day.
*  One might never have too many tomatoes, but one can definitely have too many green beans
* Stocking up on Christmas cards after Christmas was a great idea.  Remembering where I put them would have been brilliant.
*  Three years later and my cheekbone can STILL find more features on my smartphone than I can.
*  When it's over 100 degrees, I am not to be trusted with questions like, “how short would I like my bangs?”
*  Ants can move surprisingly fast when one has just dug into their home.
*  We didn't receive a single seed catalog this year.  It seems my fame has spread.........
*  Admitting that one is never actually going to reread Dostoevsky is very freeing—and clears up bookshelf space
*  Begging seems to help when trying to convince the computers and printers to all play nicely.
*  When the garden is in full swing, there's no such thing as a small salad.
*  I do not know a curse strong enough for the wretches who came up with the cherry-flavoring for Robitussin.
*  Reading glasses tend to work best when one can find them.
*  Fast for two weeks before attending a 3-day Italian wedding—and two months afterwards.
*  Getting an extra month of gardening does not necessarily translate into an extra month of interest IN gardening.
*  No matter how hard one might try to enhance the color of a photo, some of us really are just that pale
*  It turns out the SMART thing to do would be to see if one can actually open a finished project—for instance, a wooden pepper grinder—before mailing them all out as Christmas gifts.
*  If you have sent out Christmas gifts that no one will be able to open, you can tell when each one is opened by the phone calls looking for instructions, help, or possibly a can of spinach.
*  Nothing inspires the misbehavior of a furnace like a 10-degree morning
*  Taking turns making Christmas gifts generally works out well, or would if either of us were at all realistic about the time required to make things.
*  You can't out-stubborn a cat.
*  Buying “Happy Holidays” cards works out well for those of us who might not get them out before Christmas.

Wishing you a wonderful holiday and a healthy 2016,
Toni & Andy

When Your Spouse Gets A New Hobby.......

Andy got a new camera this year, and once in a while there are odd "go stand over there" moments, but most of the time it's just very cool.  He took this picture of the living room looking festive,

and, of course, Theo:

who is nothing if not a ham.  I take pictures of things, but while I can manage not-blurry and actual-representations-of-things, that's as far as I go.

I Think I'm a Holiday Behind...

Though I don't think it's all my fault.  Thanks to Global Warming, our garden was alive until November, so we got things harvested a bit late and with everything else I needed to get done,

the pumpkins got pushed aside.  They do store fairly well, but Monday I noticed one of them was going bad, so yesterday I started on roasting pumpkins. 

Once, in my younger and more foolish days, I used to try to cut through their tough little skins with a knife.  Now I use the easier and FAR more fun bouncing-them-off-the-patio method.  When they're fresh, they don't bounce.  When they've aged a bit, they do, so it can take a couple tries, and is a lovely way to work out frustration....say, that of never getting rid of bronchitis, for instance.

I have also discovered that a grapefruit spoon works REALLY well for scraping the insides clean:

and I can now tell you that our oven has enough room to roast exactly 4 sugar pumpkins at a time.  This was a good thing to figure out before breaking open a fifth pumpkin, so I'm feeling proud of myself. 

It's been longer than I thought since I roasted pumpkins, so while I remembered that boiling the seeds in salt water before roasting them both flavors them and gets the remaining pumpkin gunk off of them,

I didn't use enough salt.  Oh well.  There are more pumpkins......

And what better way to celebrate fresh pumpkin puree than..

 

pumpkin muffins?  Okay, in a household which has never, ever made a pumpkin pie, that is..............

Almost There!

I have read 99 books for the year so far.  A lot of them have been audio books, because honestly that is the only way I would ever be able to do this.  And I usually have more than one book going at any time--there's an audio book in the sewing room, one on my phone, and there was one in our bedroom, but I just made the executive decision that if I still don't care for the book on the third disc out of 6, it's time to call it quits.  Besides, there are others.

I've been rereading a lot, which I've always done.  Not everything is worth reading twice, but some things I can read over and over again.  Like this:

This is a 1945 book of Grimm's fairy tales, mercifully before the era when parents decided children were too "fragile" for these tales which have been around for hundreds of years.  I must have read this at least a hundred times growing up, and still know much of it by heart.  To fair, they don't always have morals--I probably wouldn't have liked them as much if they had, although my favorite, "The Fisherman and His Wife," certainly has one--the fisherman's wife demands more and more from the magical flounder, and finally goes too far and is left exactly where she started.  Reading the story as an adult, I do feel sorry for the fisherman because he's a kind soul and is obviously married to a nasty old bat and remains so at the end, but fairy tales don't believe in divorce, though one can murder a troublesome spouse.  I guess I can see why people freaked out about the original stories, but I still like them better than the Disney ones. Maybe we're more entertained by darkness than we like to think..........

It's the Holiday Season

So here in America, within a span of 6 weeks, we have 3 federal holidays and manage to make the entire period a season of parties, shopping, and eating.  Maybe I should mention eating twice, as there's just THAT much food.  I don't care how healthy one tries to be, there just isn't that festive atmosphere about lettuce.  Sad, but true. 

Both trees are up,

I have finished the last gift (I hope, because otherwise this means I have forgotten someone), many things are shipped, and now I need to get cracking on the Christmas letter.  Or holiday letter, in case it's a New Year's thing.  I'm flexible that way.  

Wow, Was That A Full Month?

Here it is already December, and I didn't even get our Thanksgiving picture posted.  This:

is what we did for Black Friday.  We spent the holiday on the ranch with my parents, and visiting my aunt and uncle and cousins.  A really fun time.

Now we're in to the full craziness of December.  And I have shipped gifts!   Not all of them, but most.  In early December.  I am very excited about this.  And surprised, of course, but I prefer not to talk about that............

Decluttering

I imagine we all have things that are difficult to part with.  For me, it's books. 

I know many people have switched to e-readers, but I just don't care for it.  I love the real thing.  And I reread books a lot, which makes it even HARDER to get rid of any, because what it I want to reread them????

However, I need the shelf space, and there are books I'm never going to reread. Anything by Dostoevsky, for a start.  I'll admit--I actually LIKE his books,but not enough to reread them.  And somewhere in that pile is Centennial by James Michener, which I loved, but every book of his is around 1000 pages long.  I'd like to read all of them, which makes it REALLY unlikely that I will ever get around to REREADING any of them. 

Also in this pile are my copies of To the Lighthouse and some collection of James Joyce's writings.  I get the point of stream of consciousness writing, but that doesn't mean I enjoy it.  I've hung on to anything considered a "classic" because I sort of felt like I should, but for many of them, all I've done with them since college is 1.) move them, usually involving hauling them up and down stairs, and 2.) dust them.  In spite of my fondest hopes, not once in all my years of dating did a man look at my bookshelves and swear his undying love for me because I had slogged my way through Chaucer or Tolstoy.  Go figure...........