Low Key Christmas

My mother-in-law died early in the morning on Christmas Eve. It wasn’t a surprise. We all knew it was coming for a while. Still, it does spin the holiday down a bit. Christmas Eve was just the BaldMan and I, and Christmas Day one of our daughters was here. The BaldMan has a sister but she has been full-time caretaker for their parents (we lost his Dad last summer) for almost two years, and she decided to just spend the two days with her husband. And, of course, now they are dealing with all the arrangements for the funeral (today) and the immediate things that need to be dealt with in this situation. So, quiet and simple was the theme this year.

In other goings on, we had the winter’s supply of pellet fuel for the stove delivered. Which meant the fun of hauling 40 lb. bags of wood pellets into the back room where the stove is. The BaldMan had the very good idea this year of using one of the pallets from previous years and adding heavy-duty casters so we could just roll it to the slider door, load the bags on that, and wheel it into place in the corner. Well, up to a point. Turns out that with all the bags on it, the pallet was too heavy to move even with the big casters on it. We had to unload some of it and then push it as much as we could into place. Next year, we will not fully load it from the start. Not as convenient as we hoped it would be, but it will save hauling all the bags individually across the room.

Starr got through her week plus a few days after her spay surgery without too much trouble, and is now out of the E-collar and back to normal activity. She did develop a bit of a seroma under the incision, but that’s not highly abnormal and our vet is not concerned, and says it should resolve itself. She’s also better when she plays with Tucker. She’s almost seven months now, and is learning that she doesn’t have to be climbing, play biting, and generally terrorizing him all the time. They take breaks out in the yard and just sniff and explore before they take off running, chasing, and wrestling again. She’s growing up!

I am about 3 1/2 weeks out from my knee replacement surgery now. Next up will be the pre-op appointment at the hospital for bloodwork, EKG, and chest x-rays, plus all the information I will need to know for the surgery and immediately after. It may sound odd to say it, but I am looking forward to getting this done. I am tired of being in pain all the time. I have a feeling I am going to be looking to getting the right one done sooner rather than later, as well, but I am going to wait and see on that. One thing at a time, right?

And that’s about all there is for now. Drink your water. Eat a vegetable. Get outside and refresh. Be nice to one another.

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My latest book is a collection of very short stories, half science fiction and half fantasy, called “Crossed Wires and Other Very Short Stories”. I have also written a few other short pieces, another collection, two novels, and an urban fantasy series. You can find most of them at Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and wherever e-books are sold. A few are also available from Amazon in paperback. My novel, “Circle Unbroken” is also on Kindle Unlimited, if that’s your reading preference. You can find out about all of them here.

There are also some stories you can read here on my site, mostly the yearly Halloween short I write, but there are a few others. You can read them from here