Bye, Bye, Bye,  Two Oh One Five.

I’ve got a huge celebration planned for tonight.  Dinner, movie and bed.  I know that you are brimming with jealousy but hold onto it.  It may even involve two huge golden retrievers vying for room on the couch.  Rich and I have date night every Friday night and have been doing so for over ten years.  It’s the same but different every week.  We usually have pizza, but sometimes opt for wings and always popcorn with a ton of butter and lots of Mountain Dew, our crack of choice.  I’m not sure why, but the caffeine in Mountain Dew doesn’t make me nuts, but coffee keeps me up for days.  Rich has always been proud that he converted me to his drink of choice and so we consume a ton of it every Friday.  Since Friday is so special, why not make it New Years Eve?  I never make it to midnight anyway, so there’s no difference there.  We love movies and certain television shows that we “power watch” on Fridays by watching them on demand or Net Flix.  The dogs think they own the night and if one has couch time, the other thinks that she should as well.  Once they see the afghan placed on the couch it’s every dog for themselves.  Some evenings Rich has to sit somewhere else as they are serious couch hogs.  Aggie turns fifteen in February and struggles going up and down the stairs so Rich has to guide her to make sure she doesn’t fall.  She’s rolled down the stairs from top to bottom at least twice and scared the crap out of us, but jumped up like nothing happened.  Bella, who is four, decided this week that she’s not getting enough attention, so ate a make up brush, a Christmas ornament and a very large pinecone she found.  She’s never quite figured out what growling is for, so she growls at everyone while wagging her tail and trying to show them a stuffed animal she always carries.  She has stuffed animals in every room because she has to have one at the ready in case someone comes to the door, she hears a loud noise, or she thinks Rich is home.  I’m seriously not sure who runs this house, because it’s definitely not us.  I know they have us trained.  Good thing we didn’t have kids.

I’ve been thinking about 2016 and what it might bring.  The first thing that comes to mind is snow.  It seems like a certainty that we will get snow, but the forecasters are saying our February could be in the 50’s and 60’s.  Last year it didn’t really snow until the first week of January but then never stopped until May.  I wonder if we get a reprieve in February, could that mean snow until June?  It isn’t unheard of, but rare here.  I never plant Memorial Day flowers on my parents grave until that weekend, not because I’m lazy (well I am lazy), but we almost always have a frost the week before Memorial Day thus killing everything I painstakingly planted (or Rich planted and I watched, you be the judge.)

We have fed deer during the winter for probably the last ten years.  When I was a kid, my dad explained that we need hunters otherwise the deer population gets too large and they starve for lack of food.  As an adult, I’ve always felt there should be an alternative to killing the herd, so we feed as many deer as we can.  We rarely see deer until the first real snow and then at dusk they show up looking for dinner.  It’s unbelievable how they know exactly where and when to find a hearty meal.  We buy roughly 1,000 pounds of corn from a local farmer and dole it out as the pile diminishes.  Our herd has been as high as around twenty-five (they’re hard to count when they move around so much.)  When it gets that high, it’s survival of the fittest and we have deer arguments where they try to beat each other with their front hooves.  It isn’t pretty and I always wonder if we’re going to have a death match in our backyard.

We haven’t opened a bag of corn yet this year so I’m assuming we have some pretty chubby mice in our storage garage.  I picture a Disney animated film with a mouse so fat it can’t get up to help Cinderella make her dress.  We’d have to retitle it something like “No Song, No Dress, No Prince, Just One Fat Mouse.”

I think I have too much time on my hands, or corn, depending on how you look at it.

I finished a really big project today and I’m pretty proud of it.  It will be up on video in the next couple of days.  I made an album for my friend Cora for Christmas.  She and I always celebrate a few days late.  It’s the first album I’ve ever made and it was really fun, but I think it was over my comfort threshold.  I used the crop-a-dile to punch eyelets so many times that my arms were shaking.  Ok, it was only six times, but seemed like a lot more.  A couple of the eyelets didn’t take because of the thickness of the materials so I may have to glue them in.  I really wanted the album to be You Tube worthy because I’ve seen so many really lovely albums and I didn’t want to look like a hack.  Of course those crafters have been doing this forever and I’ve been doing it for around a year.  If it hadn’t been for You Tube, I would have never learned how to do anything.  I really wish there had been a physically challenged crafter to show me how to do things but it’s been great using crafting skills I haven’t used since college and finding a new way to feel useful.  That was the one thing I really missed when I left work.  I loved feeling needed and problem solving and for the first year or so I didn’t have anything to fill the gap.  Luckily I had dinner with one of my favorite college professors and we discussed my lack of purpose.  He asked if I’d like to do something at the school and I told him that I had interviewed students there and they were not very prepared.  I wanted to start a program where we practiced interviewing with the students so they were ready for their “real” interviews.  Since then, I interview all of the business and accounting seniors and most juniors to prepare them for internship interviews as well.  I’m really proud of the work the students have put into it and the results are showing that our students are getting more second interviews and more job offers than the other schools that we compete against for jobs.  Since I only do the interviews for three weeks in the fall and the same in the spring, I still have a lot of down time.  The You Tube channel has given me a new purpose and a great creative outlet.  Thanks for taking the time to watch my videos and reading my blogs, I’m really blessed.

I’ve been thinking about projects for the future and my mind has kind of blanked out on me. I think the ice storm outside has somehow frozen my brain as well.  Maybe a nap would help.  I was never a napper when I worked, but now, I guess I am.  As I type this, I look over to see Rich snuggling into his favorite La-Z-Boy for a little nap of his own.  Maybe it’s an age thing.  You get past fifty and all of a sudden you’re the woman who can’t make it through the afternoon without a little downtime.  I’m great after 11PM and I’m not sure why.  My internal clock is starting to readjust from days to nights and vice versa.  I’d like to wake up before 10AM, but my internal alarm clock doesn’t agree.  It thinks noon might be a more agreeable wake up time.  I have a project that really needs to be completed but I’m literally too tired to do it.  I going for a small (or not so small) nap and see how things look after that.  I’m hoping they look better than they do right now.  My frozen brain may not thaw until after a long winter’s nap. Maybe my brain is now part bear and is hibernating.  Yes, let’s go with that.  See you in the spring.

I am so excited! I just got an email from a stamp company that wants me to review their product.  I am thrilled that someone would think of me for this and can’t wait to do it.   They want to know how their stamps work for the disabled crafter.  I love the idea of helping to make products for the disabled community and just can’t wait to get started.  Today was a very very good day!

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas.  We spent ours with friends and family.  I have to say, I was so happy to get home and finally take a deep sigh and relax.  I think Christmas is stressful for most of us and it doesn’t seem like it should be, but it is.

It was so great spending time with our friends as it always is, and we should make the time to see each other more often.

I have big plans for You Tube for the future and think that 2016 will be a great year.  I’m starting out strong but on January 13th, I’m having my hip “revised.”  That’s when they take an artificial hip and take out what’s worn and replace it with something new.  The surgeon who is doing it is using a new technique that doesn’t cut muscle and only makes a 4 inch incision and you spend one day in the hospital.  I’m thrilled that technology has come this far since 1991.  I had a five day hospital stay and my incision is at least 10 inches long and may be longer.  (I’ve never gotten anything back there to measure it.)   I’m planning on having enough videos on reserve that you’ll never notice my absence.  My blog however, may be silent for a few days.  I’ll let you know how everything goes once I’m back up and running again.  So that’s the plan and in the meantime, I’m excited about some upcoming videos I have planned.

Weirdly enough, I thought it was still the 23rd when I began typing.  I spent the evening finishing the projects for the little girl’s room and one thing lead to another and it’s now 1:26AM.  I’m glad the projects are done and will be so glad when everything is wrapped and in the car and on its way.  I love doing this process but at some point, it takes over our whole house.  We put the wrapped presents under the tree but then there are the ones in laundry baskets I use as gift wrap and the ones in stockings and the ones that are too big to wrap…It gets crazy and once the gifts are delivered, we are back to being normal again.  I’m thrilled that we are delivering everything today and that tomorrow when they wake up, Santa will have delivered everything on this little girl’s list.

I probably will not blog on Christmas so I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah,  and a happy and healthy 2016.  May Santa bring you everything on your list as well.

The older I get the faster the year goes.  Yet the winters usually drag forever.  I guess that’s what it’s like when you live in the Northeast.  I  wish spring and fall had the longevity that winter has.  January consumes about four months to every one month of the other seasons.  I really don’t like snow.  It was worse when Rich and I worked, but I still don’t like it when we are predicted to have a lot of snow.  We live in the snow belt.  The snow belt as it pertains to us is directly related to Lake Erie.  If you live within about 45 minutes of a Great Lake, you are considered in the “snow belt.”  That means that the lake dumps a lot more snow in my area than it does directly on its shoreline.  I like to think of it as kind of a bummer.  If you live twenty minutes south of us, you don’t get the amount of snow we get.  My in laws lived about 75 miles from us and they never got the snow we got so they never understood why we were freaky about getting home if the weather was predicted to get bad.  We have driven home in some horrible blizzards and I definitely don’t miss doing that.  I always get a laugh out of the people who think snow is so pretty.  Trust me, if you lived anywhere near a snow belt, you wouldn’t think it was quite so lovely after all.  Last year we decided to spend December in North Carolina and visit with my sister and her family for the month.  We had to medicate our youngest golden retriever who hates the car and our older golden retriever got stress colitis and yes, it’s exactly like it sounds.  We were only a minute away from our beach house when she started whining and pacing and by the time we reached the house, she had diarrhea all over the other dog, herself and the backseat (that was luckily covered with a sheet.)  About a week and a half later, she got this weird thing that veterinarians in the North call, ” Old Dog Encephalitis”.  They have no balance and their eyes twitch back and forth and they tilt their head.  It’s supposed to last three to seven days and they are usually ok, but the summer before, we lost our labrador retriever (that’s in the photos with me) to the same disease.  So we were FREAKED out.  The veterinarian in North Carolina had never diagnosed a case of it and yet where we live, vets can diagnose it over the telephone, it’s so common.  We knew exactly what needed to be done so we asked the vet for prednisone, something for nausea and dizziness.  The dizziness makes it so they can’t walk, so Rich carried Aggie up and down the outside stairs for her to go to the restroom.  He forgot we were near the water so the stairs always had a slippery mist on them and he fell down the steps twice while holding our 90 pound dog. Being the greatest guy ever,  he never let Aggie out of his protective embrace, so the only one who got hurt was Rich.  Aggie got better quickly but when it was time to make the 12 hour trip home, we decided to give her the same anxiety medication as Bella.  Bella was still freaked, Aggie, who was 15 pounds heavier than Bella, couldn’t move.  Rich lifted her into the car and we were off.  We stayed in a hotel that was roughly halfway home, and the next morning they were predicting an ice storm.  We were minutes ahead of that storm the whole way home.  Once we got home, it never stopped snowing until May and I am not making this up.  The whole month of December there was no snow at home, but the minute we get back, it never stopped.  With that trip always in the back of our minds, we have not been able to consider taking another road trip with the dogs and I could never leave them for a month, especially when Aggie is almost 15.

So now you have my N/W PA snow 101 tutorial..it isn’t pretty.