trout lights

It's time to celebrate. The trout lights are up, strung around the door. Beautiful. Too bad they aren't brook trout!

The Hermit and I finally came to a decision that we don't want to travel anywhere on Christmas Day. We'll have our feast here, with kids older and younger, maybe some skating on the pond (I hear I'm getting new skates...heeheehee...) and good fun. Extended family stuff can wait a while. If we were in the new house, I'd invite the extended family and have them see what it is like to drive over a hundred miles one way for a holiday.

I took the day off because Mr. Attitude still wasn't feeling quite right, and it turns out he has strep throat. Not that the doctor could have diagnosed it from his demeanor; by the time Mr. A was examined, he was feeling pretty good and talking up a storm. We had made an original appointment for 9:30, but after we had arrived and waited for fifteen minutes the receptionist informed us that the doctor was running an hour late. Since I had gone ahead and made a hair appointment for 10:30 (why waste a trip to town!) I asked if we could come back at eleven. Fine, we even worked in a trip to the library, but when we got to the salon I had to wait fifteen minutes while my stylist was working on someone else, extracting an earring from an infected pierced ear and replacing it. Ummm...I hope she washed her hands real good before she touched my hair!

So we were late back to the doctor, but we still got in quickly and they did a quick throat culture before we even went in to the examining room. Then the doctor came in, a doctor we hadn't seen before, and he was definitely one that was good with kids, even a squirmy, talkative Mr. Attitude. Quick examination, quick diagnosis, quick prescription for Amoxicillin. While we were waiting in the pharmacy, my neighbor Patty came in. I just can't get enough of this small town life, this meeting friends and neighbors everywhere. Definitely not like where I grew up.

Mr. A and I went to the grocery store and got his usual deli chicken dinner, I got soft tacos, then we proceeded to the park by the river, which is where The Hermit and Mr. A always share chicken dinners. We ate our dinners watching the little flow of fast water rush over an old logging dam, there in a deep (for here) river gorge with bare birches all around us. Then it was back home the long way, with stops to watch a male Northern Harrier, which is really not supposed to be here this time of year, and a Rough-legged Hawk perched in a tree. I had never had such a good view of one perched before. I saw two more rough-leggeds before we arrived home.

Then I put up the trout lights.