sick

Yep. The annual cold has found me.

It started with A's dry cough last Wednesday. Which my body, seeming to think sounded pretty nifty, decided to pick up on Thursday. It was one of those coughs that tires you out by constantly being there and not actually accomplishing anything. A has mostly dealt with coughing and fatigue, but it rapidly hit the stage for me where every nerve in my skin gets hyper sensitive. If I touched my hair, the follicles hurt from moving. Moving meant clothes sliding over my arms and back, and it was as if my tshirt was made of burlap. To bed I duly went, coughing all the while. Joints hurt, and I had a mild fever so kept tossing covers off only to be grasping them back again, shivering.

The next day R joined in. Hooray! D held out until Sunday when he started with more of a true head cold. On Sunday afternoon I lay in bed and realized that I could pinpoint everyone's position in the house by the coughing.

Side note: a day in bed sounds much more luxurious when you don't actually have to spend a day in bed.

Over the last day my cough has changed to a more nasty sounding one, with lots of loveliness in my throat. I'm hoping it doesn't decide to go any lower.

M, our little nurse who has made and served many pots of green tea, started this morning. It really is nice to do things together as a family.

glee

I saw something today that made me do an entirely unplanned, completely reflexive, scream. It slipped out before I could stop it and I realized when it heard it what it was.

An explosion of glee. Simple, unadulterated, honest glee.

I saw the cover drawing for my brilliant author friend's book. And, to the illustrator who I'm sure will never read this blog: you, too, are brilliant. The faces! The images! For crying out loud (and I almost did. No, on second thought, I did. There were more little glee-plosions, resulting in happy shrapnel everywhere) even the FONT were amazing. This amazing story, which so deserves the light of day, by an author who so deserves all the accolades that I'm sure she will get, is going to be available next December.

I am so happy for my dear Seren. It's gonna be beautiful.

gleegleegleeglee... what a fun word.

home

Home feels new. Three and a half weeks away was a great time, seeing family, meeting friends. Thirteen different states, no idea how many miles traveled. D was his usual amazing self, driving almost all of the distance, and the girlies were fun and much silliness was had by all.

Now it's home, to a house that was clean and intact but for evidence of partying mice. Traps have been set. Picking up Sam today, chickens sometime soon, and a new hamster this weekend (as pet, not for aforementioned traps).

making rather merry, sir

What a funny Christmas.

I had no Christmas Eve service to plan.

I did not decorate my house.

I did not buy a turkey, mash potatoes, make stuffing, plan a meal, fuss over details.

Gifts among our immediate family were all opened by the 17th.

There's not even a chance of snow here.

In some ways, all is so foreign, yet... here I sit, as the girls play in their silly camaraderie among cousins and uncles and aunts, old jokes being dredged up and laughed at yet again, and new jokes being forged as we laugh our way through the holidays. And it's right.

Some of the laughter is because of the jokes, much is just because it's so easy to laugh when we're all together.

More people than ever, yet not quite all. Tonight on the way home the iPod kicked into "All is Well". About one verse in, I switched tracks. "I like that one," said D. "It reminds too much," said I. "Enough said," he replied. What an amazing guy.

What an amazing family.

I am, in so many senses of the word, ridiculously blessed.

Merry Christmas. And God bless us, every one.

nature, sort of

Sometimes we learn things here in odd ways. For example, I found out last week that we have ermine living here on the farm. They're cute little weasels, and in winter their otherwise brown camouflaging fur turns pure white except for a little tuft of black at the tip of their tail (question: why the tuft? answer: I have no idea.) in preparation for the snow that will come.

The odd way we found out? Found one drowned in our pool. Oops. Sorry, little guy.