One thing and another

I always thought cats were very clean pets.  They carefully bury their poop, and they spent a lot of time washing themselves with their tongues.  Blue does a lot of grooming, but he is NOT a clean cat!  Every once in awhile he will come in with half-dried mud on both sides of his body.  I never could figure out how he got so dirty until a couple of days ago when he followed me to the mailbox:  There was a tire track the mail lady had left behind that was muddy and wet.  Blue went right to it and laid down on one side in the mud, smiling at me as if to say, "Oh, this feels so good."  Then he turned to the other side.  He must think he's a pig!

On another note:  Cora and her dad came over last weekend with some candy they had made.  Cora had been with her Iowa grandma over Thanksgiving, and the two of them created a decoration made of insulation foam in a can for us to hang over our front door.  In case you wonder what it is, I'll tell you.  It's supposed to look like giant popcorn balls.  There are lights on it, and they even supplied the batteries to keep them going.  We weren't very excited about putting it up, but we'd do anything to make Cora happy because we had her around from the time she was two months old; she's 10 now.  Don't laugh at the way it's hanging; we just did it the easiest way we could, and Cliff has been having dizzy spells lately.   Obviously, it isn't lit up right now, at 8 A.M. in the morning.

 We haven't had a Christmas tree in at least four years.  I've always preferred real Christmas trees, but we finally bought a fake one and used it one year.  It just wasn't the same, so after that Christmas we took it down, took it apart, and stuffed it into the box it came it.  I had the grandson put it in the attic of his garage and forgot about it.

I don't know if it was Cora bringing us her project that triggered me or something else, but I got to thinking it wouldn't be such a big deal to use our fake tree this year.  Cliff and Arick neither one recalled it being put in the garage, but I was pretty sure that's what they did.  Tuesday night Arick came over after work and said he'd see if it was up there.  Sure enough, he came over with the box in hand, twenty or thirty minutes later.  Yesterday I got it out and put it up in a corner, and Cliff dug out the Christmas lights and such.  All things considered, it doesn't look bad, and it was fun looking at the little doo-dads I've had for years that I decorated many trees with.  And when Christmas is over, I won't have all those needles in the carpet like I had all my life.

Well, it's winter, and I've been reading most of my days away.  My latest reads have been All My Knotted Up Life by Beth Moore; I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, and Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano.  I have five books I'm waiting in line for:  Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, Crow Mary by Kathleen Grissom, and Being Henry... the Fonz and Beyond by Henry Winkler. 

This morning I started All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers, and I already love it.  This book had me from the first line:  "The residents of Wakarusa, Indiana, could spin gossip faster than a spider spins its web..."

I think we're going shopping today.  Bye bye.

Well, we didn't get a mile away from the house and Cliff was once again stricken with vertigo, so we came back home.  He called the doctor's office and set up another appointment like the one he canceled because he thought he was over the dizzy spells.  His new appointment is six weeks away.