In Celebration of...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Welcome to 2010 and here's hoping it's a truly fantastic New Year too.

However, judging by the actions of certain small children -actually, just one of the two - it's starting out as a one filled with a lot of crying, whining, bad behavior too in general.

No one is quite sure exactly what time Maya got up this morning -other than that it must have been quite early. I know for a fact it was after 5 a.m. because that's what time I put the embroidery up and went to bed and she wasn't up and at 'em then.

But whatever time it was when she got up, she apparently rose on the wrong side of the bed though because she's been a busy little beaver this morning, getting into things!

At some time this morning, she decided to put her culinary talents -which are rather sparse -to work by making some concoction she calls "Chocolate Soup." Much as I do love chocolate, I maybe should have her mix this up daily and just looking at this mess makes me NOT want chocolate in my diet!

From that, she moved on to sloshing a lot of chocolate syrup in one small bowl and in another bowl of the same size, she filled the bottom of it with strawberry syrup -all because she wants to do some painting. Don't know what she planned on painting with these two items but I'm glad someone of the adults in the house apparently caught her in the nick of time and put a stop to that idea.

She's obviously working on not enough rest, in need of a little nap now in hopes that would curb the inability to sit quietly and behave. (OKAY, so I dream a lot too that a little rest will cure most anything. But, it could happen, ya know!)

The pork and sauerkraut - a traditional meal for New Year's Day - is in the crockpot, cooking away. Hopefully, it will be ready by 3 p.m. for dinner. I don't know if we'll have anyone else here for New Year's Day dinner or not as I can't get in touch with Clate and Betty -calls to their cell phones are going straight to their voicemail which apparently they aren't checking since they haven't returned Mandy's or my calls as yet. Carrie had to work last night and called this a.m. to say, weather permitting, she and Robert are hoping to be able to come up for dinner though.

New Year's Eve here was really quiet. Not just in this house, but apparently all around the village too. We watched the ball drop in Time's Square and when all the party people there began shouting "Happy New Year," Mandy turned from the computer and quietly spoke to Bill and me, saying simply "Happy New Year." I waited -and waited some more -expecting to hear some gunshots going off from one neighbor up the street as well as one down the road who ALWAYS go outside at midnight and fire a couple of shots into the air but last night either they were all in bed and not celebrating or they have decided to change from that traditional greeting -or "ringing in" if you will -of the New Year.

That was my first celebration for the New Year.

I fixed myself a little plate of cheese, crackers and some summer sausage to munch on and cracked myself open a nice cool can of Busch Lite (a pounder, no less) to have my own little food fest celebration of bringing in the New Year and after polishing that off, returned to my new, current embroidery project I started earlier this week. I'm working on a sampler, done in counted cross stitch, and the theme of this one is a Christmas one. I figure as slow as I am at counted cross stitch, as many times as I always have to remove stitches, redo them because I ALWAYS manage to get myself confused and mess up on the counting of those darned things ya know, that if I want to have this done by next Christmas, now was definitely the time to start working on it!

There's my second celebration for the New Year.

By 5 a.m., when I decided my eyes were getting too tired, starting to cross on me, I put it up for the night and went to bed. But at that time, I had finished one small block of the picture in the bottom left-hand corner anyway and hadn't had to rip any stitches out then either.

That was my third celebration.

But, by the time I had finished washing up the dishes this morning and moved to my comfy recliner to pick up on the cross stitching again while trying to enjoy the Rose Bowl parade, it became apparent the celebrations were going to be very short-lived.

Maya and her mood was not making it easy to try to enjoy the Rose Bowl parade and then, trying to get her to settle down and be quiet, I missed a stitch and didn't realize I was off on my counts until I had done almost half of one side of the small wreath item in the center of the bottom of this sampler. Thus began the ripping out of stitches and re-doing that part.

Bill finally got ready to burn the trash and in celebration of doing that, he decided he would take Maya and Kurtis outside with him so they could have some fun playing in the snow and watch as a fresh coating began to lay down a new blanket of snow then too! That idea of taking the kids out to play had a two-fold reason behind it -one, being that it was something the kids would enjoy and two, maybe it would tire them both out enough that when they came back inside, they'd both decide, on their own without major coaxing, to take a nap.

Looks like that plan was only successful in that the trash got burned -finally -and the kids did have fun playing in the snow. But now, the rumblings from Miss Maya are back to the argumentive side so the thought of a little nap is probably not going to happen. She's decided she doesn't want to "hear" anything, so the tv went off. Bill's trying to convince her and Kurtis to have lunch now -which will screw up any ideas I may have had that they might actually be hungry enough to break down and maybe at least eat some potatoes and a hot dog when we have dinner. Sure would be nice if he would think about things like that before fixing something, ya know, but that's something a bit much for him to do -"THINK" ya know! Oh well, what the hell! Just go with the flow and don't let the little things like that bug me -that's my new mantra for the New Year.

The head cold I thought I was getting the other night seems to have not had enough steam to develop fully into a cold -now there's something, for sure, to celebrate, isn't it. However, it seems that it's just a bit of sinus irritation -just enough to be a bit of an annoyance but not enough to really bother me. No need to go sign my life away then to get some kind of cold meds that the government says you can only buy so many of these at a time because it makes them think people who try to do that are going to use them to make some other concoction othat will provide them with some kind of illegal drugs they can use and/or sell! Sometimes, I think some factions do try to meddle just a tad too much with the "Big Brother knows best" routines ya know!

The snow has now stopped falling -at least for a while -but the forecast for the whole weekend is for snow showers, intermittently, with a possible accumulation of 2 to 4 inches more snow, over all, between today and Monday.

That kind of reminds me of the winter of 1994 when the snow began falling on January 2nd and didn't let up -it snowed (and blowed) a lot that year and we ended up not seeing the ground until the end of March! Snowfall was pretty much a constant, just about every single day I think it was, over that winter and into the beginning of spring. That also included getting hit with a blizzard in early March too then and I really don't want to see a re-run of weather like that!

Yesterday morning, I got word that a good friend of mine had passed away. If that is not a precursor of a lot more of that to come this year, then it will give a bit of a cause for a little celebration, wouldn't it? Although I'm sorry to lose the friend, considering the problems she'd been having for the past several months, that she has now been released from all that, well my faith is such that it is then actually something we should celebrate.

The diet is going -not easily, not showing major weight losses as yet but then, it's only been practiced, somewhat, for two weeks but according to my scale -which has a mind of its own and sometimes gives a correct reading, sometimes not (and you never know which way it's working at any given time either) it would appear that I have apparently lost about 3-4 pounds. So if that's a true reading -and I'm gonna take it as such at least for today -then that is a cause to celebrate at least a little bit, isn't it?

I've been trying to do some walking -mostly walking the dog -as much as possible. This week hasn't been all that great for doing that because on Monday and Tuesday, it was cold with rain -freezing rain off and on at that -and I'll be darned if I'm gonna venture out on the iced over roads to walk Sammy about a mile and a half, round trip! The last thing I need is to do that and in the process, slip and fall, breaking a leg, arm or worse yet, my hip! So Sammy and I have been able to only venture out and walk twice this week. Today, I should be able to manage a bit of that exercise -as long as the occasional output from the sky is only coming down in the form of pretty white snowflakes! But, I have to admit those walks do seem to be helping me considerably so that is something I am celebrating and hope I'm able to continue doing that as much as possible anyway.

Well, the peace that existed when I sat down to start this little post has totally disintegrated and now, we're all being "treated" to a bit of a meltdown! Wonderful. NOT! The wailing, though not pleasant, is something that may end quickly if she ever just puts her head down on a pillow for oh, say five minutes!

And if she does and that happens, you bet your bottom dollar I will definitely be celebrating -again!

Hope your New Year's Day is going smoothly for you. Things here will eventually calm down again and who knows, maybe I'll even be able to watch the Capitol Bowl Game and see the last appearance this season of my beloved Nittany Lions.

Win, lose or draw though, I'll still be saying "Go Lions! WE ARE! PENN STATE!"

And along with many, many others, who like me, are not "fair-weather fans" will enjoy the game and yes, we'll celebrate!

Because it is, after all, a New Year and that alone is reason enough to find the good things, isn't it?

And it is a Friday and time again, to celebrate that with an "Only The Good Friday" post!