...from the well

This is Artie arriving from WA. Happy family.

This is the makeshift menorah that Michael made because our other menorah is packed away.

This is our Dr. Suess style gingerbread house that we made.

Annalise wrote and asked if I had fallen down the well again. Yep.
It all started at the beginning of Chanukah when we finally received an appraised inventory of my mother-in-law's personal property. I spent some time going over the list and then looking at pictures that we have from the interior of her home before she passed away. It soon became clear that there were things that I was seeing in the pictures that I wasn't finding in the list. One thing led to another and Michael and I spent Chanukah creating our own list of items that we could not find.
On the Friday before Xmas Michael, Xan, and I came down with the stomach flu (my second round). We had to postpone leaving for my Mom's for a day. We had a funny thing happen on the way to MA. We were driving on the Mass Pike. I was driving and looked in my side mirror. There was a small car coming up in the fast lane with an Xmas tree roped to the top. I told everyone to look out at the car that had it's Xmas tree on the top. The car passes us and it turns out to be some friends of ours from Saratoga. We called each other on our cells and met at the rest area. We had a fun visit with them with no hugs because we were getting over the flu. Our friends were going to their family's house and bringing a tree to set up and decorate. How fun, huh?
So everything is good until Xmas night and after dinner Michael and Xan revisit the stomach flu and Artie gets a whopping, nasty respiratory flu. The poor kid was congested within an inch of her life. My mother has a sort of boy friend, a bridge partner, that joined us for Xmas dinner. My mom and he drank before dinner, had a bottle of wine at dinner, and then drank 1/2 a bottle of Drambuie after dinner. My mom woke up in the wee hours of the morning quite ill. I think that she did not get the stomach flu, I think that she poisoned herself with alcohol. I must admit that I felt like the "typhoid terras".
There was no going to see "Blue Man Group", no driving up to NH to stay with our best friend Andy, no going to Maine and having a lobster dinner, no seeing our friend Toby in Maine, no fun trip to LL Bean, and no going to the La Cruset outlet to look at groovy cookware. I didn't even get to visit with my brother because he couldn't come over because we were all sick. We stayed at my Mom's the whole time and watched a billion hours of TV. She has dish so we got to see many movies. I found the groovy health food store in New Bedford and got to know them pretty well over there. I got to visit with them 3 times. I can't tell everyone enough how good the Boiron homeopathic remedies are. They saved us!!
We are back home now. I have a cold and feeling marginal. Everyone else seems healthy and happy. Artie still has a nasty cough but she's in good health.
Yep...that was my second trip down the well.
I work at the Saratoga Farmers Market and last Saturday all the talk was about Global Warming and how sick everyone has been this season. We still have no snow here....very weird! and I am a walking testimony as to how sick everyone has been.
I hope all my cyber friends had healthy, happy, merry ones!
I am now planning a vacation. I decided that we need to get away and have some fun. So we are thinking of AZ. Flying into Tucson and visiting there and driving up to Phoenix to do some visiting there. I'm just waiting to talk to our lawyer and see if the timing is good. He might tell us that our timing sucks and we need to stick around and be available for estate stuff. I really hope not!!!
Hello to all from the well.