THANKGIVUKAH

Well! Its a rare time when Thanksgiving and Hanukkah converge, and here we are on the eve, having a late dinner of lox, bagels and nachos! The last time these holidays converged was 1888, and I read that it will only happen three more times in the next 77,000 years. Crazy!

Tomorrow will be the traditional dinner with four generations of my family together for the first time that I can think of.  About as rare as THANKGIVUKAH!

My husband and I will celebrate with my mother, my daughter, her husband, and my grandson. It will be the first time for Oma to meet her almost one year old grandson Jacob, and for that I give thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Hanukkah!

New England Fall

One thing about this area.

  Fall is spectacular.

I forgot how long it can last here.

I have a month of photos and its still not done.

It may be getting cold, but the colors are hot.

Click on the photo below for the full effect of the view from my balcony.

 

Quick and Dirty

After leaving the farm, one of the earlier messages I received on Face Book was, “What are you doing with all your spare time?”  That question should have been answered by regular postings, just to get some of the story out there. Here I’ll give you the quick and dirty.



We left the farm, and the last few miles to our new home stuck following a loaded hay wagon. How funny is that? Not much at the time!

The move in May was generally smooth. Sure a few things got dinged, but it was the insane amount of boxes that was the challenge. Now that I am in physical therapy for my back, I realize it may have started with the unpacking. Pushing all the packing paper back INTO the boxes may have been the culprit, but it’s one of those things that creep up on you and by the time you really hurt, so much time has passed, it’s hard to put a finger on it. And yes – we still have more boxes to go.

Mom at our favorite German restaurant in Glendale, AZ

While I was house hunting, my mother had a couple of falls. While she was being evaluated in the hospital she actually coded(AKA her heart stopped) as she was sitting in a chair. Her medications were adjusted and she went home, only to have more falls, and one that fractured her femur August 10th.  That left her wheelchair and walker bound at a skilled nursing facility. I helped her move to assisted living in September and while there took her to her follow up for her injury. There they determined that her hip replacement needs revision. Basically, her left hip replacement needs replacement if she is ever to be without pain and walk on her own again. That surgery should have happened October 30, but due to an "imperfect storm" of events, a test was not properly completed, and hopefully after today that has been done. That puts the surgery on November 11. What I'm leaving out is that this all takes place in Arizona and I get to rack up frequent flier miles going back and forth for a week or ten days at a time every month or two. This is SO the short and nice version of this story!

Our location puts us within two hours of my 11 month old grandson Jake and so with some warning (or not so much!) I have driven over for four different "Nanny Service" days. That usually calls for an overnight the day before or after. That's been fun. Being with Jake and helping out Kristin and Andrew has been a big bonus of this move.

I finally got back to Germany with Dave on a business trip of his and worked a visit to my cousin Nina's new place in the Alps. Timing couldn't have been more perfect as her town was having its annual "Fest" with the local beer, food and lederhosen clad band that one only sees here for October Fest. After business was taken care of in Mannheim, we took the train to Paris and manage to be there for the Final Stage of the Tour De France.  I also visited the Louvre while business was being taken care of and also went back to the Muse de Orsay. A great day was spent in Giverny seeing the estate of Claude Monet and taking umpteen photographs.

On the more domestic side, I've established a few gardens and beds to spruce up the yard, and I have lots of friends to thank for the donations of perennials to get me started. We've been removing rose brambles and a few decaying trees, while establishing a view in the back yard. We also had six trees taken down in preparation of building a two car garage and also to protect the house from future storms. Some of that wood will be burned next season in our newly purchased wood stove which we just lit up two days ago.

Only a week ago we hung up some paintings and photographs. Around the same time we brought in the plants before the freeze. We are shifting to winter and I just started cutting some squares for a quilt.

Of course Jock keeps us busy with his two or three walks a day. He is our physical trainer and without him, I wonder how much exercise we would get. We have three parks within minutes of us to choose from depending on our mood and time, and Jock has been a great source of compliments for his good behavior. We work on obedience as often as we can, but mostly we just let him have fun.

Well, that's a bit of it, and I'm going to try and get my photos in order and show you some of the pleasurable moments that I think you'll enjoy.

I have to say that one of my dilemmas is trying to find a new name for a new blog, but it hasn't come to me yet. So since the farm has a new name, and I still dream of my life at On the Pond Farm, I'll keep going here for now.