I follow Heather Cox Richardson. Lately, she’s been sharing some texts that went back and forth during the insurrection on January 6, 2021. Oh, my gosh…was that just this year??? The texters were texting things they ought not to have been texting and it’s going to come back and bite them in the butt, I do believe. At any rate, it got me to thinking about the digital footprints we leave behind without giving it one bit of thought.

Mr. FixIt and I were sitting in the living room yesterday waiting for his friend to call. They were heading to one of the grandkid’s house to deliver a load of wood for their Christmas present. If it’s warm enough outside, we like to leave the inside door open so we can see outside through the full-length glass storm door. It is a rare occurrence that a bird hits this particular glass, but sure enough, one hit it hard just when Mr. FixIt was walking by.

Mr. FixIt had a routine medical procedure done early yesterday morning. I sat in the truck, browsing through the comments on the tributes to my dear friend, Sparky…tears slowly streaming down my cheeks. I can’t think of her or talk about her or text with someone about her without crying. This is what fresh grief is. This is mourning. This grief will be with me for a while because dealing with loss doesn’t work on a schedule. 

“Converting the sofa to a spare bed in the RPod 196!”

I am crushed. I found out yesterday one of my dearest friends in the world has passed away. Sparky was short but she loved big. She gave selflessly to the underprivileged and had a huge heart for animals. She told me she was one cat shy of being an official Cat Lady. She shot from the hip and didn’t pull punches. If you ticked her off, she’d tell you so to your face. We sent all those “not safe for work” memes that you can’t put on your Facebook page but that we thought were uproariously funny. She adored live music and went every chance she got. We chatted almost every day`and never went more than just a few days without checking in.

For those of us who are “of a certain age”, we recall hearing about something absurd called “The War of the Worlds”. On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater Company broadcast a live radio show…an update of H.G. Welles’ book of the same name. They announced it for what it was at the beginning of the programming hour. But most people were finishing listening to Edgar Bergen and his ventriloquist act with the dummy, “Charlie McCarthy”. When they switched stations at about 8:12PM, “The War of the Worlds” was heating up and it sounded real to those tuning in. By this time, sound thinking, logical minded people believed we were under attack by Martians. While there was no lasting damage, and no laws were found to be broken, the networks made an agreement with the FCC to be more careful in the future with such programming.

There are so many good memories wrapped up in this Holiday Season. Memories of Christmases past can bring us so much joy and peace. Unfortunately, these times can also bring us hard, painful memories. Hurtful things may have happened to us as children and the holidays can trigger that. And, some of us are experiencing our first or second holiday without our person and we find little joy in the twinkling lights and merriment invading the sturdily erected walls we’ve placed around our hearts. 

The #32 pan has a lip on it which keeps the oil from spilling over into your flame when it bubbles up.

I never heard of aebleskivers till my friend Judy showed me how to make them back in the ‘80s. Aebleskiver literally translates to “apple slices” in Danish and the filled spherical shaped pancakes of the same name are made in a special pan. A long time ago, I had a nonstick aebleskiver pan and used it a few times. It went to the wayside when I downsized and sold my Colorado house. A few years ago, I bought one off of Amazon and when it arrived, it was cast iron. And not the nice smooth cast iron of years past, but the rough cast iron that’s made nowadays.

Our Christmas tree is giving up the ghost…slowly but surely. Mr. FixIt came back in the living room last evening and looked at the tree with a puzzled expression.

“I think more lights have gone out.”

“Oh, surely not,” I said as I whipped around to look. Indeed…there was a mysterious black hole where I distinctly remember light the day before.

There is nothing in life that is perfect save for the love of God. Flaws face us at every turn and no matter how hard we try, we will never be perfect. When you operate as a perfectionist, you rob yourself of so many opportunities to laugh at yourself. You cheat yourself out of the glorious feeling of being good enough. That doesn’t mean you don’t strive for better. We all should. Like Little said this summer when we were baking together in our country kitchen in West Virginia….”We should have a baking show! We’ll call it Bear and Nana’s Baking Show. And our tag line will be…It’s Good Enough!” My Little Bear gets it! I wish I would have at that age!

I went outside last evening to do something and stopped in my tracks. The curve of the moon…nothing more than a thumbnail…was like a cup, ready to catch the “falling star” that was Venus. It took my breath away. Anytime the moon is near the horizon, it looks much bigger than it really is. And unless you have the proper camera lens, it’s not going to look like much more than a dot on a picture. But I loved the way the Christmas decorations shed light up on the naked maple tree with just the ghostly images of the building and fence. And there was the celestial spectacle, just waiting for me to see it.