return

Since I last stopped by, we have made a trip north to visit with son-in-law to be's family and do serious wedding chat, stayed one night in our favorite place in the world, Cooperstown, and returned home to prepare for "the holidays."

It's been a very interesting December. Teaching almost full-time while having four writing assignments all due this month while having builders, plumbers and electricians parading in and out while they renovated the master bathroom-which we did not plan to do, by the way. But needs must where the shower faileth. Consequently, we were down one bathroom for most of the month, including over Christmas. DD (otherwise known as Princess Long-shower) was home for a week and we crammed in wedding planning, doctor appointments, dentist appointments, bridesmaid dress hunting, florist interviewing, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day-all full of mandatory family events...and in the midst of it all, a mystery wet spot appeared on the dining room ceiling. Appearance of spot means that now I have a 4'x4' hole in my dining room ceiling-which pretty much told us it wasn't plumbing-as there is no plumbing anywhere near the origin of the spot-the outside wall. So, add insurance adjuster to the list of people in my house. At the moment, insurance adjuster and contractor seem to think it is from wind-driven rain. Fabulous. That means another trip up into the scary crawl space for contractor-or equally scary trip up a very tall ladder to the steep roof. we need to find out how it got in before we close up the hole.

On the upside, we found a florist, they found a dress for the bridesmaids, I found a dress for me, we enjoyed the fun family events and survived the uncomfortable one, I avoided cookie overload-mostly because I didn't have time to bake any-met all my writing deadlines and have had great feedback from my editors. It is New Year's Eve tonight-will walk across the street around 9 for champagne and desserts. Tomorrow pork and sauerkraut twice (that should solve the financial crisis!) Lunch with family then dinner with friends after watching their son play ice hockey-and then back to normalcy. Or what passes for normal around here.