Not Dead Yet

Whew! Where did November go? Oh yeah, let's see...let me summarize here. I almost went 0 for November on posts but I will sneak this one in and try to cover the highlights and lowlights.

First let me explain that I was out of the country until November 15, and now I'm home alone. Yes, I left my family on some island somewhere. So life is a wholly different set of concerns for me than what I'm used to. No more brushing Julia's teeth, washing Julia's hands, encouraging Julia's toilet training efforts, reading Julia's books to her, etc. No more clowning around with Chloe, holding her hands while Chloe practices walking, etc. No more kissing and other activities with Isabelle. For the time being, that is. I am reduced to picking up after myself, cooking for or otherwise feeding myself, clothing and doing laundry for myself, and finding ways to spend my time all by myself.

I was single for 35 years before getting married, but somehow I can't just slide back into my old habits. I am managing to watch football I care about on TV again, but otherwise, I can't imagine how I used to watch so much football I didn't care about or other crap on TV. Nor can I imagine spending entire evenings playing word games via the Internet (WordOx and Scrabble). I like having my family dominate my time and energy, it turns out.

So, this Thanksgiving weekend, I had a pretty good one. An extended African American family at our church invited me to join them for their feast on Thursday itself. They told me to come hungry and I'm glad I did because it was delicious.

Friday, I had to work, and I thought I would get out early enough to join a Hungarian gathering at the home of some others from church. But things didn't work out like I expected and I missed it, so I crunched leaves in the yard with my mower (leaf blowing and/or bagging is for saps, it turns out). Then I came back inside and decided to watch ABC News. Only it turned out that the Nebraska-Colorado game which I had forgotten about was just winding down. I hope you got to see the highlights. Nebraska's kicker, Henery, booted a 57 yard field goal to put Nebraska ahead 33-31 with about two minutes left, which is when I started watching. On the second or third play, Colorado's QB had his pass batted up in the air, and a great big defensive lineman grabbed it, and started rumbling for the end zone. For many of us, this caused flashbacks to a game against Texas Tech a couple of years ago that would have been won by Nebraska had a defensive lineman who got his hands on the ball in the last minute simply fallen to the ground to clinch the victory but who instead fumbled the ball and the game away. But this time, our big guy took off and had only the QB to beat. The QB caught him, but got stiff armed and bounced right off our guy's legs, and our guy took it on in to seal the victory. It was a great finish.

So then on Saturday, I got out early and crunched some more leaves. Oh yeah--this is all in response to a letter I got from the city of Crestwood while I was out of the country stating that I was in violation of a statute requiring that I keep my yard in a "clean, safe and sanitary condition" by having "limbs and debris" in my back yard. Sanitary? Really? Anyway I got the log pile in pretty good shape and mowed behind it for the first time in a while, and I went out and mowed behind the back fence which had been cleared of much of its brush when Isabelle's sister was here. Then I remembered that oh, yeah, isn't the cable that supplies my house out here exposed by the sidewalk somewhere back here? Yes it is, and sure enough, I severed it. Panic set in. No Internet!? No cable TV (no big deal). No Vonage!!! I called my electrician to see if he could stop by on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, but when he didn't answer, I decided to try to fix it myself. The first couple of attempts were unsuccessful but then the third time I was out of slack and I left a bit more wire exposed and it worked! Whew. I hope it holds up. I'm almost ready to give up on the cable company, but not any second like that.

Today, I managed to get some packages in the mail, and do a little Christmas shopping. How did I ever fall so far behind on blogging? I'm also behind on phone calls I need to make. I am on the phone with Isabelle daily. And Saturday morning we had a webcam session and got to see each other which was a treat.

Last weekend, I attended a guys weekend in Harrisburg, home of Lance. Scott and Mike also came. Scott and Ann's blog has a link right over there and they have a cute new little guy named Nathaniel to keep them hopping. Mike works at GM so there may be hard times ahead there. Scott, Lance and I went to church there where Lance is a member at Harrisburg Christian Church and it was cool to take it all in since the Christian Churches are first cousins to the Churches of Christ where I am a member.

Before that was the trip. As I mentioned in my last post, we (our family) had a few days in Northern France, and then we and Alec Hill had eight days in Mauritius, and then Alec and I had eight days in Marseille with a visit to the Ardeche reason in the middle of France.

I will do justice to the trip in upcoming posts with photos from Alec's camera, since I could not do justice to it otherwise. Isabelle has our camera.

I should be able to find time to do this again before Christmas....Dad visits then...there's a CFS (Christian Family Services) trivia contest on Dec. 7....I hope to visit Tom in Mt. Carmel the weekend of Dec. 14...Mom visits sometime...