Missy's blog: December 2023

This December started promisingly with a cheese and a jam advent calendar.

That lasted a whole one day as my perfect Missy brain left the cheese out over night. Good gracious.

The jam was good though and I got to do that calender with my excellent sister. We compared jams and spreads for a month and that was fun.

I got my Christmas cards out on the first of December. Some of them took 3 weeks to get where they were going. Mannn the mail is slow these days

I got a beautiful wreath at Costco. I love how every year the sun bakes the wreath a bit through the storm door. Every time you open the door this powerful evergreen scent blasts you right into holiday cheer.

David and Kiernan did the outside decorations. They looked great.

Megan designed me a hairstyle to recreate. I did so to the best of my abilities. She's so artistic!

Speaking of whom, look at this please-buy-our-merch bait the school picture people sent to me.

Tempus fugit y'all.

I took and did well on my piano exam.

I got to meet Krishna's baby and have lunch with the girls. Glorious all round.

I worked on my Mari Llewyd

We got our Christmas tree. His name was Bartholomew. The kids zoomed right too him. I think we were there for maybe 3 minutes before he was selected and 2 of those were going to and from the car.

We got him home and set him us and felt cozy and festive.

I love Christmas so much.

I made a forbidden Tudor spice bun

They were hard to tax because they were not quite a bread and not quite a cake and they got restricted to funeral food by the government but the people snuck them around anyway.

We got a small snow in Mount Airy. Frederick didn't get anything but rain so I was particularly pleased to live in the cooler spot.

The dog and Bartholomew had a disagreement. It's hard to say who won.

They were both fine and restored to equanimity in fairly short order.

Poor things.

The guilty parties restored. Poor Pax.

My 50th birthday happened. I made Cuban food and ate a bunch of Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake.

It was wonderful.

For my birthday two things of note occurred (other than turning 50), the first is that the girls gave me a book and a bag of gifts to go with it. Every once in a while a passage would be marked in the book and I would dig through a giant bag of gifts that they provided me and open the gift that went with the passage. This was so thoughtful and fun. I have never had a gift set like that. It was like a game and an interactive treat that lasted a whole book long. It was amazing!

The next thing is that I decided to spend my 50th year refocusing a little.

I suspended my audible membership and my Haven membership. I was going to suspend my gym membership as well but David vetoed that one since he loves our gym.

I am hoping that streamlining the outside stuff with lead to more focused and deliberate inside stuff.

We shall see.

We got a generous package from Dad and Mary in Hawaii of fruits from their garden.

I reached a spectacular number on my Duolingo.

We had a rather unfortunate need to replace our roof.

David went up and cleared snakeskins from the attic and Brandon (a Haven member and roofing guy) came over to have a look at the house.

We ate doughnuts and played the lyre and he did a full inspection on his day off.

Its possible that the previous owners never did anything to the roof. It was in pretty rough shape with about 20 boards needing replacement and some mold and all sorts of leaking going on.

Plus December has just been super rainy and that was making things worse.

We bit the necessary bullet and Brandon moved us to the front of his queue and now we have a new roof.

I made more bread.

I used my birthday money to start a walking challenge.

This year I will walk to Mordor.

Last year I started in the Shire and got to Bree.

I was using it to help me get ready for Spain. This year I am hoping to use it to get my foot back into shape. Its still hurting quite a bit and I'm discouraged about it but I am up and moving and hopefully time and walking will set me to rights.

I made some fudge.

We too down everything from the walls because roofing can knock things off with all the vibrations.

The walls looked strange.

The roofing happened over the very long course of 2 days.

It felt strange to have all the people and the noise in our safe and quiet place. We worried about the money and everything.

It was stressful.

It was a cool process to watch though.

Things were flying past the windows on all sides.

I decided that I wanted to do something fun with my hair. This was a combination of things. Partially I wanted to see how much gray I have now (quite a lot) and partially I was missing my colorful hair I had back before I got fired from Qiagen. I dyed my hair back a normal color when I went interviewing to make myself more ...normal..hireable..something.

I missed feeling excited about my hair so off I went to do something more punk rock.

Here is my before hair. Also here is the roofing process when I walked out to get my hair cut.

I went to hair cuttery and asked for a mohawk. The girl was very concerned that I really wanted that. She was very sweet and kept asking me if I was sure.

I reassured her and she had at my head.

Right at the end of the cut she said (forcefully) "Oh no!", and I thought she must have given me a bald patch or something but then she ran to the back and someone yelled for bandages!

She came back out having cut her hand pretty badly and I said please let someone else finish or let me come back later and she said no. She was determined to finish the job. Lots of other hair dressers came over and showed us their many scars from when they had cut their hands. Hair cutting is a battlefield y'all.

Anyway she cut my hair while I made her an urgent care appointment and then gave her a big tip and we went our separate ways. Me with a shiny new mohawk and her with a bloody glove.

I suppose it was pretty punk rock after all.

Yikes!

The slightly traumatized Missy in the car after the poor lady cut herself.

Megan asked if she could dye my hair since I usually do hers and I said yes (slightly nervously). So I bleached it and she picked some nice colors and had at me.

The roof neared completion.

Mom made a billion Christmas cookies.

David and Kiernan wrapped presents.

Mom and Meg and I decorated a billion cookies.

Then we took cookies around to the neighbors houses and the roofing guys finished.

I collapsed into a chair and didn't move for a bit.

We got matching jammies for Christmas. Kiernan had a bad cold so he was particularly ninja like when Opa and Aunt Lore came over.

We did lots of presents on Christmas eve and had a lovely time.

We even sang a carol.

On Christmas morning I made ebelskivers as usual. It was a particularly good batch with all the jams we had.

We had a big Christmas brunch with lots of cheese and mom brought out the tablecloth that her mom had hand sewn.

We ate too much as the good Lord intended and had nice loud Christmas crackers and stocking full of slinkies and fun.

I went on my first really long post surgery walk with hurt like crazy but made a great difference in my biomechanics starting the very next day.

We had mince pie with maple walnut ice cream (thanks mom!).

I got many lovely gifts this year but wanted to make a special shout out to Mrs. Scearce for this stunning lamp.

I love it so much.

I got my covid and flu shot and my poor arm yelled at me.

Apparently now that I am 50 I will also be getting a shingles shot. Will the fun never cease?

I was a bit worried about the timing of these shots.

I always try to get them on a Friday so I can recover over the weekend but I did these on a Friday just before we had big Saturday plans.

The next morning I got up and went to the dump.

I told you I had big plans.

I took old skis and old bikes and tossed some and recycled some. Thanks to the waste management guy who sent me to the metal scrap with the bikes first bringing my car weight down to a very nearly free trip.

I got home and made scones.

We had at the many jams again.

Seriously 24 jams is a looottt of jam.

I think my favorite was the cherry Christmas spice.

Then we went and did our actual big plan. I got us tickets (free) to the Library of Congress.

It is such a beautiful building. Outside its very gray and square and has some cool carvings but inside its the Italian renaissance. Its so crowded with color and detail. I though it would be too busy to enjoy but it was wonderful.