Written January 2, 2016
It's 4:30 AM. I woke up early, even though I was up late-ish last night because it took so long to go through all the bills I had left for so long.
I took the ornaments and lights off of the tree yesterday morning and took it out to the patio. I was pleased with myself for not procrastinating on taking it down, but I miss looking at it while having my morning coffee.
It's still chilly enough for a fire, and I love looking at that. Maricopa County has been having continuous no-burn days, and we are only a few blocks away from the Maricopa County border, but the Ben Franklin is the only heat we have.
Dale Sr. says that Maricopa County "bought Pinal County's air" so that their pollution levels would look lower. The cold winter air traps the pollution at lower elevations, and the Valley is covered with a smoky haze. Most people who have fireplaces also have central heating, though.
I have no photo's on today's blog, because something went wrong with my photo card. Nancy predicted that this could happen because I've been removing it without waiting for the little message that says it's safe to remove it. The last time I transferred photos to my hard-drive, (right after I said yes to to having the card "scanned") only some of the new photos displayed, and those that did were mixed up with photos from the 25th.
I need to buy both a new photo card and a jump drive to have a back-up for he photos on my hard-drive. It's important to have all photos in two places in case the laptop is stolen, lost, or damaged. Now that it is not displaying in an orderly manner, the old photo card is no longer a dependable "second location" for those photos. Of course, my favorite photos have been put on the blog, so that's a "second location" in itself.
On the 31st I had the opportunity to see the house which Dale Jr. and his family will move into soon. In answer to a request he'd passed to me through his dad, I had e-mailed him that yes, I would like to arrange a time to see the new place, and also to get his kids' presents to them. He called me back just as I pulled out of Starbucks, and said he was over there all day overseeing repairs to the water damage (the water heater on the new house burst right after Christmas).
It's a nice house. The back yard is quite large and has a small salt-water pool. It was professionally landscaped, because this house was the "model" which realtors showed to prospective buyers when they were selling houses in the development. There is a tall metal fence around the pool and a shorter one fencing a large gravel area off from the large shaded patio.
The living room and dining areas are all together and, like Nancy's house, lots of natural light comes in from the back yard and patio. There are is a master bedroom and three smaller bedrooms, so that each child will have their own room. Shelby's room has its own bathroom, which hey thought would be good for a teenager (she's in sixth grade now). They let Ethan pick which one of the other two bedrooms he wanted, and the third is for the baby girl.
The carpet had already been replaced, due the water damage. Now Dale Jr. had had to call the repair guys back because he'd noticed that the wall was damp around where one of the hot-water pipes had been.
He really likes the guys who have been doing the work; they are energetic hard-working, and friendly. I don't think they were Mormon, because one of them wore a bandana and the other had those big disc earrings in his ears. They work for a firm which specializes in repairs from insurance claims. Luckily, most of the water damage was covered by Dale Jr.'s homeowner's insurance.
That evening Dale Jr. and Shelby stopped by our house; they had been out riding their bikes. It was dark outside already, but they had lights on their bikes. The fireworks had not started yet. (Ever since Arizona legalized fireworks, they go off all over the place, on New Year's Eve and on the Fourth of July, including colorful ones that shoot way up in the air.)
Shelby liked the books I gave her. One of them, "Smile", she had read, but when she saw it she said, "I can read that one over and over!" I said a silent mental "Thank you" to the lady who had helped me at Barnes and Noble.
Over her dad's protests, she put a great deal of effort into stuffing all of the books into the bag which hung from her bike's handlebars. I also gave her some very tiny notebooks which Lil had given Dale Sr. but which neither of us thought we would use. (They are about half the size of the ones Kathy put in our stockings) She stuffed those in too.
Dale Jr. was interested to see the photos of Lyssa's baby Waylon, one of which I had put in a frame already. "There's your cousin, Shelby!" he said to her.
They didn't have any way to take Ethan's or the baby's books home, so I'll have to get those to them later.
At midnight I went out and enjoyed the pops and booms and the showers of colored light shooting up here and there in the neighborhood. The half-moon was hanging a bit above the non-visible Superstition Mountain to the east, almost horizontal with the round part hanging down, and a beautiful orange. Dale Sr., as usual, had fallen asleep a few hours before midnight.
Yesterday I did not go out, but got things done around the house. I screwed in the picture hanging hardware and hung all the new grandchildren photos. I took Ziggy for a half-hour walk, which is a New Year's resolution. Going through my huge backlog of bills took the longest, but I also started cutting the strips for the fabric-loop hanger for the little Navajo rug which Dale Sr. gave Dale Jr.,worked some on the article on Argentina I'm writing for my travel website, and caught up some but not all of the dishes.
When I took the tree down first thing in the morning, I said to Dale Sr., "I've never actually taken the tree down already, first thing on New Year's Day."
"Yeah!", he said with emphasis, as if he couldn't believe I finally avoided procrastinating this time.
"Well, you didn't have to agree with me so fast!" I said.
Love, Lennie
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