Long story: Mark handed this bottle of champagne to my brother at our wedding and told him to "hold on to it". Then he forgot all about it, as I guess so did my brother, until last year when he had my sister bring it to my mother's house . It's been in her fridge for weeks.
On a recent visit to her I opened it. There was zero fizz and it had turned brown, but before I could stop her, my mother grabbed the bottle from me and took a swig of it!
She missed the wedding, so she finally got to toast me with my sparkling wedding wine, 37 years later. And the rest of it got poured around her yard.
Ambulance lights bouncing off the house next door and lighting up my front windows gives me that flashback feeling of doom. And in this case, it was my next door neighbor who has cognitive decline and was so weak from covid that her husband could not get her into the car. Oy.
Upside: I met another neighbor who is very nice and he expressed his condolences to me.
HEB apparently thought everyone in Austin, Texas was going to make a gingerbread house this year, so they had a bunch of different types of them on clearance and I bought one for The Girl for next year. That and a roll of wired ribbon constituted the extent of my after Christmas sales shopping.
Another freeze, and this time the pipe broke below the cutoff valve so...
The top of my hill was a flooded mess. The only thing I knew to do was call The Girl for advice, shut off the main water, and turn off all the breakers in the pumphouse. {in hindsight, I could have skipped step one above} There's no sense in me berating myself for not fixing the pipe once and for all, then wrapping it securely in insulation. It didn't happen. Now I have a new project out there.
To work off extra energy I gathered up a load of things to take home: all of the remaining firewood, the windchimes, the sink table from back here, the 5 gal bucket, most of the extension cords, and misc. crap. I will continue carting off my old life at Highlands one pick-up load at a time, I guess.
{I emptied the bulletin board - clean slate}
On NY day I got up at my regular time and starting my yearly cleaning, organizing, and purging.
The Christmas tree went back to to the garage, and I decided to put the fiddle leaf fig in the front room and remove the side table that Mark wanted to use for his morning coffee cup. Everything got dusted, vacuumed, or wiped down.
I made the best skillet of sauteed cabbage I ever have, and enjoyed my Swedish ham balls, black eyed peas, and some wine as I sat out on my patio. Then I read for a while and went to bed by 9:30. An altogether pleasant start to the year. And whether good things or bad things happen this year, I am going to do a better job of dealing with life.
My peeps are ready to move forward - and so am I.
Gina
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