New Neighbor J

We had a visit last night from a neighbor who lives a couple of streets away from ours. My husband met this nice lady while walking Gracie....... J was also walking her own dog, which is a tiny Yorkie named Babe. Cute little dog, and not one of those nervous, yappy little Yorkies that I've met in the past. J is a very calm and serene lady, so I'm sure what they say is true-- that pets take on some aspects of their owner's personality.

J came over after dinner-time, at the invitation of my husband, to see our tree and the vintage Christmas lights that he collects. She had seen the bubble-lights before, but wasn't familiar with the figural lights. She really enjoyed all the trees here, and was excited to find a few vintage ornaments on our tree that were similar to some she had inherited from her grandmother.

Last night was the first time I'd met J, other than seeing her outside one time as she walked Babe. She's older than we are, and I would guess that J is older than our friend Frankie was. While Frankie was a "party girl," even in her 70s, J is more quiet and proper. (Frankie once had a comment on being proper: she told me that someone had asked her if she were "a proper woman," and Frankie had replied "Darlin', I am a properly extraordinary woman.")

We had hot apple cider and plum pudding (from the Whole Foods Market) after J ooohed and aaahed over our Christmas decorations. She found a little blue and silver glass bell on our big tree that she just loved, because her own angel tree also has the same color blue ornaments on it. I have three other blue glass bells on our tree (I found all four of them at a yard sale), so I took off the blue and silver bell that she admired and wrapped it up for her to take home for her own tree.

While J was here, she also looked through the watercolor and oil paintings that my husband's mom had painted over the years. J is a painter also, and my husband thought she might like to see his mom's work. J was totally impressed with Audrey's paintings, and was surprised that she didn't paint professionally. We were so comfortable with J, and it felt like we had known her for ages and ages. (At the end of the night, I asked my husband if he thought she might like our Charades parties, and we intend to ask her to the next one.)

When we were finished here with decorations and artwork, J drove us to her house to see her little angel tree, and to look at her paintings. The style of her work is totally different than my husband's mom's..... but J's paintings were very pretty, very interesting, and her dog portraits were just outstanding. She manages to capture the personality of the dog in the paintings, and I would imagine that's not an easy thing to do. J's little Christmas tree is filled with very small angels..... some antique, some new, but all very pretty and precious. I will have to keep my eyes open in my shopping travels, and maybe I can find some small sweet-faced angels for her. With her tree, J says "the smaller and sweeter, the better."


This afternoon, I did some shopping here in town, after a couple of errands to the bank and the post office. (The holiday rush at the post office has begun, and I'm hoping I don't have to go back there till after the first of the year.)

I drove to the local dollar store, which is where I find all the pretty paper napkins that I use for the holidays. You can buy them in Hallmark and pay full price, or you can buy last year's Hallmark designs in the Dollar Store and pay a quarter of the price. I prefer to give my money to the Dollar Store.

After that, I popped into Palais Royal, which is a small department store in the same little shopping center. They usually have a lot of things on sale in there, and that's what I went looking for. In their costume jewelry section, they had the Halloween bracelets marked half-price, so I bought a few of the nicer ones to use for Best Costume prizes for the ladies at next year's Halloween party. They also had sales on their Christmas items, and I found beautiful gold reindeer ornaments at just $3.00 each.... I bought ten of them, and I've already put them away for next year...... I intend to use a reindeer at each place setting for next year's Christmas dinner. (I've learned that when you see something you can use, especially at a sale price, buy it and put it away till you're ready to use it. Otherwise, you could look and look when things aren't on sale, and not find what you're looking for.)

The temperature is a little warmer today than yesterday. It was freezing last night--- sure was a cold walk home from J's house, even though it was just two streets. I let the cats sleep in the house again last night.... all three of them were curled up on our bed. They're getting so spoiled... when the weather gets back to being warmer, they're not going to want to sleep on the screen-porch, no matter what kind of comfy furniture is out there for them.

The reality of the cold nights is that I don't get to sleep through the night. The cats wake up during the night, and they wake me up, and that's that. I can't even ignore them during the night, because they are relentless. AngelBoy woke me up at 3:30 last night because he had used the litter box in our bathroom. He wakes me up so it can be cleaned out. Honest. It sounds so silly, but that's what he does. That cat cannot stand for a litter box to be soiled. An hour after he woke me up, ShadowBaby was up...... seems that he was hungry and didn't want the dry food that was in the kitchen for him.... he wanted the canned food. Well, I'm not starting with that in the middle of the night.

Mickey Kitty slept straight through last night, but that's probably because he was up four times the night before--- I was up four times also, pulling him out from the branches of the big tree in the living room. He has been so good with that tree, not even sleeping underneath it...... but the night before last, he decided to try and climb it. And he's still little enough to get inbetween the branches and spiral himself up the tree, walking around the branches near the trunk. As tired as I was, he just looked so darn cute with his little head sticking out of the tree that I couldn't even scold him. (You can't scold a cat anyway... it never works because they don't ever think they've done anything wrong.)

Again--- just who was it that said having cats lowers a person's blood pressure. Well, it may lower your blood pressure, but having cats in the house also decreases your sleeping hours.