heading in for the holidays

School’s over for the season. The house is full of empty boxes and not enough, relatively speaking, wrapped gifts. I’ve made several batches of fudge but gone totally AWOL on actual holiday baking, and I’m astonishingly full of not caring. One of my jars of homemade applesauce (from the batch I think I forgot to put lemon juice into) has gone moldy and now I’m slightly frantic to get the rest of it to other people so they can eat it before it goes bad. We’re having chicken soup for…

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so dinner. much friends.

A couple of girlfriends are back in town for the holidays, so our little Lady Writers Group went out to dinner last night. I’d put on one of my 1950s style dresses (at home, obviously) and was looking at myself dubiously in the mirror when Young Indiana came in and says, “You look BEAUTIFUL, Mommy! Wear that! Wear that!” ♥ ♥ ♥ So I wore that. :) We went into town, and Indy entertained a 9 month old baby girl on the train for the entire trip in, and I…

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holiday prep

Yesterday we went to Dublin to do any shopping that could be done in the real world. I was moderately successful; Ted was not. He was, however, very, very tired after tromping all over hell and breakfast without finding anything. Poor guy. I had some kind of story I was going to tell about the shopping, but I seem to have forgotten it. Unless it was the fact that when I stood to get off the bus, coming home, the bottom fell out of one of the bags I had,…

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Celtic Cross, Athy, Ireland

Ten Years In Ireland

I was just thinking that I’ve been a freelancer ten years today, and then it slowly dawned on me that no, I’ve been a freelancer *eleven* years today; I apparently missed last year’s anniversary totally. *Today*, we’re ten years in Ireland. I am, in fact, ten years and 24 days in Ireland today, but Ted, who came a month after me, arrived on the 1st. Or possibly the 5th, but anyway, we count from his arrival at the start of December. Ten years. Wow. People still ask if we think…

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new tabtop

Ted, who has been feeling strongly that I need to replace the Computer That Goes Clunk before it Clunks The Final Time, stopped and bought me a new tabtop last night because it was on sale for something like 30% off thanks to Black Friday sales. I hate that they’re doing Black Friday sales over here because it’s stupid, there’s no Thanksgiving holiday weekend, which is the only reason Black Friday exists in the States…but I can’t say I’m sorry to have a new tabtop. I am, however, exasperated at…

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