Ah, well. Read somewhere that one should say "rabbit-rabbit" first thing in the morning on the first day of the month to bring good luck. Missed it today. It was very hard awakening, then it was time for the usual Sunday things, collecting the towels for the laundry, apportioning this week's pills, basically getting ready for another week.

Then it was time for grocery shopping. One thing we needed to do was get me a new Kroger Plus card; mine has been coming separated from itself for months and now won't scan at all. Well, the Smyrna Kroger had no cards at all. Seriously? Someone comes in your store and says "I want to be a Kroger Plus customer" and you tell 'em you can't do it? Not very good business sense.

So when we went out we went up Dallas Highway and hit their Kroger. I got a new card and it was "connected" to James' account so we could continue to build up points. We also stopped at Lowes, since my beloved ginger jar lamp with the autumn leaves scattered on it gave up the ghost several months ago. It's too dark in the living room without it, so we bought a lamp rewiring kit. We also strolled out to look at the Christmas lights, as we blew a string of lights on the tree last year and are now going to have to endure the ordeal of putting more lights on the tree. (I love most Christmas decorating, but putting lights on the tree ranks right up with toothaches.) We then had to decide what to do about outside, as about half of our strings of blue lights (including two new ones) died last year. We decided to invest a little money and bought two nets of solar powered lights, but they don't come in blue. Since we added multicolor net lights last year anyway, I thought we might go multicolor on the outside lights, too. Unfortunately we bought one set of whites. It will have to go back, and we need at least three more. But we left them in the foyer to charge and they do look quite nice when they are on. Maybe the expense will be worth it.

Before we can put net lights over the bushes, they need to have a crew cut, so after we got home from Lowes I dashed outside and used the hedge clipper to flatten them out and trim some stragglers. Came out of it covered in twigs and leaves, and itching like the dickens. Ugh.

James had a trick up his sleeve for supper. Some weeks ago he had cooked some delicious sausage he got at the Buford Highway Farmer's Market. Well, it was delicious, and full of so much salt we couldn't eat it. It tasted like the Atlantic! So he immediately froze it. Now we know if you have something that is too salty, you can put a potato into it and it will soak up the salt. So he hunted up a potato soup recipe and made it with no salt at all, and then cut the sausage into small bits and cooked it thoroughly in the soup. It came out quite well.

This afternoon I did start the Christmas decorating by pulling out the indoor door wreaths and the window candles. I had to order new five-candle candoliers from the Vermont Country Store earlier this year because they are the only place left that carries them. The two are in the front window with clear blue bulbs, and the two three-bulb candoliers are in the library windows with frosted blue bulbs. James' man cave has two timed flickering candles, and in the dining room windows we have single color-changing candles. Each of the indoor doors has a small wreath that is usually just a candle ring, but some are small wreaths, like the bottle-brush wreath on the library door. Have the Christmas stuffed animals unpacked to distribute around the house when the time comes, and the Christmas pillows and blanket in the rocker downstairs.

Been watching "kringly" things this evening: All Creatures Great and Small, "Merry Gentlemen"; To the Manor Born Christmas; and The Good Life, "Silly, But It's Fun."

Labels: Christmas, decorating, food, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:44:00 PM

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