Recap

So, as I poured my coffee this morning, I thought, “OMG! Don’t I have a blog or something?” Oh yeah, that’s right.

Well, it hasn’t been that bad. I have meant to blog. I just haven’t done it.

Let’s see… when we last left our canine hero, Teddy, he was getting over his mystery bug and grumbly tummy. So, on Christmas Eve, it was off to MWK’s for our Christmas, a pleasant, low-key affair. We ate the traditional Christmas tamales* and exchanged gifts. We both kept the gift-giving (not the “gifting,” which is something people who hate the English language do, but “gift-giving”) on the modest side, going for “thoughtful” over “how much can I use my credit card,” because we hate America and wanted Baby Jesus to cry and we express this by not spending scads of money. Or something like that. Far away, Bill O’Reilly grumbled in his sleep as we failed to observe the holiday with the appropriate level of consumerism.

Among my goodies – an Apple Magic Mouse, which I really love, and… an ibrik!

What is an ibrik? It’s a little pot for making Turkish coffee. Yay, now I can make incredibly dense, sweet sludge-like Turkish coffee in the comfort of home!

There was other neat stuff but I am not going to list all my presents. (That’s how I keep the blogger mystery alive.)

Teddy knew something was up, and the next morning, or really “middle of the night” because it was so early, I got that “Hey…” look as we departed for the airport.

Then, several days hanging out with my parents and enjoying the natural beauty of South Florida:

It was a nice visit, just sort of relaxing and hanging out with my folks. It had been a year since I was down there, and that’s really too long; I’m already planning a trip for March or April.

I had loaded up my Kindle with free ebooks, mostly things I have always meant to read or reread. Emerson and Thoreau. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. I settled in to read The Scarlet Letter, which I loved in high school and haven’t read since.

But then the Florida sunshine penetrated my brain, and I said, “Oh, not this weekend,” and downloaded Stephen King’s new book and actually liked it. (Get this: it’s set in a small town in Maine. Shocking, no?)

Monday: time to come home. After an uneventful flight, MWK was at the airport waiting for me, with Teddy in the back seat. Yay! We went home, and I got out the special post-Teddy toy that was in the trunk of my car.

He behaved himself well while I was gone, although was a little clingy from the sounds of it – I’m sure he wondered where I was – and had four days of total stimulation hanging out with Bucky and Satchel. So, back at home, he ran around with his new toy for five minutes… and then promptly went to sleep. All that fun is tiring for a pup!

Now I am home, it’s dreary and rainy, and mostly I want to straighten the house and drink coffee. Which is what I will do after I finish this.

Hope you all enjoyed whatever you did for the holidays. And happy New Year! I promise I’ll blog more next year. “Promise” in the sense of, I will definitely think about it. The reality is that for quick funny things, I wind up just putting them on Facebook. Sorry. 

* Okay, the tamales are not my Christmas tradition. Or MWK’s. But our friend I made a gazillion tamales and so we have some. They were yummy.