Five Weeks

That's how many weeks till Christmas for all of us.  And it's how many weeks until my Pajama Sabbatical from work.  Guess which one I am counting down to?  It is being made especially tense because G will be retiring on the same day I stop working.  We have Medicare to get settled and try and figure out how we are going to pay for stuff.  Big stuff always happens around the holidays it seems.  Makes it all so tense.  Less joyful. 

The image on top of the screen is my "in progress" Doodle which I began at the last Art Club meeting. I had made a few in years past and included newspaper text (the legal classifieds) as another texture in the Doodles.  I liked it and think I may do the same in this one.  In the larger areas.  Most of the Doodles I watched on YouTube used floral images.  I think that is too feminine.  For me.

My plan for today is to finish the laundry, iron the shirts resulting from that laundry, go to the bank to deposit four paychecks and my 10x10 check and READ.  I have an idea for making Piccadillo with ground beef, tomatoes, green olives, almonds, raisins and spices if I can find the recipe I used and loved in the 1980's.  G doesn't like it so I will be the only one eating it.  Sounds like a good work lunch.  Now that it's cold, a good warming lunch is nice.  And I could also eat it after work for dinner.

The greenhouse is now filled with Christmas.  Poinsettias.  Cyclamen.  Norfolk pines.  Christmas cactus in very unChristmas colors like salmon, white and yellow.  We even have supplies for Fairy Houses.  Watering is time consuming.  Balsam greens are being used to make the Holiday boxes and wreaths over on the Christmas table in the back of the greenhouse.  So the smell of balsam is a lovely background for my work days.  Balsam needles in my clothes--not so special.

Our Open House was well received.  We were actually busy.  The Christmas Trees aren't here yet and that will make the days more interesting.  We'll have more "boys" working the tree yard.  And our annual Secret Santa is always fun.  I think a nice potluck lunch once a week would be nice.  Nothing big and not all of us cooking every week, but a day set aside to bring in something to share.  Or not.  I have to order my "tall, fat, wild" tree.  A large bottomed tree.  Like me.