Happy New Year Rabbit Rabbit

You know the drill. Ya gotta say Rabbit Rabbit on the first of each month for good luck. It's the first day of the new year, so you just better rabbit rabbit for sure.

Hope you animals don't have a hangover this morning.



In this neck of the woods you have to eat pork and sauerkraut on January first for luck as well. Whatdaya have to do where you live?

Good Health and Happiness to You

We've been busy with family and friends so I haven't been posting or commenting on your blogs much. I do think of you all. Heck, it's just as if you were real people! You bloggers.

My husband and I have two very good friends with whom we generally have dinner on New Year's Eve. This season I have been spending many hours sitting with Leah at the hospital by her husband's side as he lays dying. He's been sick since October 17 and has undergone so many treatments and procedures as the doctors kept saying "everything he has is reversible." He has endured much. Finally he is receiving palliative care. Last night he looked so peaceful.

Leah asked me to bring out a book to her last night because she was spending the night there again. So I grabbed the latest book by Sue Grafton. Leah and I have read all of those, and I knew she hadn't gotten to this last one which is T is for "whatever" -- .Can't remember right now what T is for.(If you aren't familiar with that series, it starts with A is for Alibi.)

Anyhoo-- I thought maybe I should take another book in case she didn't like the Grafton book -- it involves an old man who is under the care of a criminal caretaker, and that's sorta maybe not what she would enjoy right this minute. So I grabbed a John Sandford book: Dead Watch. I was almost out the door with it! Jeez! So dumb! That me. I ran upstairs and picked up ---honest to God --- A Widow for One Year. Good God Gertie! Sigh. My husband Niks laughed so hard at me. Leah and I laugh a lot together, and someday I will tell her about all the books I almost took out to her. When she's ready to laugh again.

In the end I took the Grafton book, the latest Reader's Digest, and Snow by Orhan Pamuk. I give my books away after I've read them, and Nik's books are mostly deep, heavy philosophy. This house is full of books, and there's nothing to read.

I wish you all the very best for 2008!

Merry Everything

Merry Christmas. Happy Festivus for the rest of you and yours.

Home at last

This is part of the mess in our side yard. It doesn't do justice to the way things were. Whole trees snapped and fell. Lines were down all over the place.

Although it was disconcerting to be without power, and away from home for days, it was beautiful.


Below is just ordinary grass. Each single blade is coated with ice. The world was lovely.


But all is well at last. The most annoying thing about it was the electric company itself. The lack of information was a killer.

I was hearing branches crack and fall all night. It really does sound like a rifle firing. Finally the power went out for the third time, only this time it didn't come back. I called to report the outage at 4 AM, December 16th.

Automatic recording: Your call has been noted. If the power has not been restored in three hours, please call again.

I call three hours later.

Automatic recording: Are you calling to report a power outage? If so, press one. I press one. Are you calling about an outage that you reported earlier? If so, press one. I press one. If you will be reporting using your telephone number, please press two. I press two. Please enter your telephone number starting with the area code. I enter my phone number. It has been determined that your power outage is due to the weather conditions in your area. Ya think?? Gee. I shoulda looked out the window. Duh. Your power will be restored at approximately 11 AM, December 16.

Eleven AM comes and goes. No power. Repeat above "conversation" with a machine. Now it tells me that I will have power by 3 PM. At three PM I call just to hear the machine. I think I'm in love. This time it tells me I'll have power by 7 PM. Each time it tells me, sweetly, that it has been determined that the power loss is due to the weather conditions in my area. That machine.

We left the house at about 6 PM. It was dark and I felt that the machine was just playing with me. You can't trust a machine that you've never met in person.

I call that machine obsessively every three hours. It gives varying answers. On Monday the 17th after getting "three hours" 'til you get power and "six hours" 'til you get power and then "three hours" again, I started hitting the 0 for operator button when I called the electric company. And yes, I do know the number by heart. The machine got a tad nasty with me. That bitch. She sounded down right testy. She has power. What the heck does she know about doing without?

I get a real person who says, "Your power should be restored by 11 PM on Tuesday the 18th." Woe. I think I may have let a little resentment creep into my voice 'cause she was not as polite as the original machine had been. Little tart.

The next morning I called again just to check. What else have I got to do all day anyway? The machine is being all sweet to me again. Telling me that the power will be restored in approximately three hours. YEA! I'm so happy. But it was just another one of her damn lies.

I persist and get another real person. A very nice woman who says that the machine and the first real person are wrong. Power will not be restored until Wednesday, December 19th at approximately 6 PM. I thank her, 'cause she was nice and all, even though she did give me bad news. So, we drove back to the house and packed more stuff for another day and night. I also flip up the lamp post light switch so that my across-the-street neighbor can call me when the power comes back on. The other side of our street got power back in less than 24 hours. I have to hate them all of course.

My cell phone rings at about 6 PM that same evening, December 18th. It's Janet my neighbor and she tells me that my lights are on. MOST of our lights are on. We kept forgetting and hitting the switches when the electric was out and half the lights in the house were on. So in the end, not one bit of information that I got from the utility was correct.

We came home to a very cold house, but there was no damage of any kind. The electric company is being investigated by the Public Utility Commission now. Each day after the storm was a sunny day. It should not have taken so long for people to get power back, and as I write this on December 20, there are folks who still don't have power. There were lines down in populated areas that were live and on the sidewalk for three days without attention from the utility!

I'm so happy. HAPPY TO BE HOME.

Pez Family Report

My husband and I have been without power since Sunday at 4 AM. We're not staying in our house of course. I don't have easy access to the Internet or e-mail, etc., so I'm not checking blogs. We won't be back at home until at least Tuesday night, and maybe not even then.

Daughter Actonbell is on a cruise, daughter AP3 is probably buried under snow in MA (haven't been able to get in touch with her), daughter 3D has electric power, but no Internet or television. She's had a minor surgery and is at home. If you're going to be home sick, you need one of those two things. No one knows when things will be back to normal.

I'd settle for heat myself. I'm not going to try to do the necessary links for the daughters' blogs because I can't imagine that there's anything new posted there anyway.

Lazy as ever.

Snow day

It snowed all day yesterday. It didn't amount to much, and our little school district is so small that we don't do any busing of students, so school was not canceled or shortened. We have maybe two and a half inches of snow on the ground.

But, for some reason, my church's version of a "prayer group" was canceled for this morning. Yea! Teehee. I got a snow day! So I'm gleeful. You can add that to the list of things for which I will be burning in hell. If there were one. But since there's not, you can add it to the list of things I don't have to do today.

Promises promises

This is what we were promised night before last:

This is what we got:



That's the Walnut Street Bridge in Harrisburg PA. It's always lit up like this. At Christmas it's even fancier. I couldn't find a picture of it all fancy for Christmas.

My point is that we missed all the snowy weather that the TV folks promised. Heck and tarnation.

Please note that I am not in charge of the weather. My hoping for snow does not make it snow. So if you live in the Northeast and hate snow, don't blame me when it snows. Save your pennies and go on a cruise. That Actonbell.

December Rabbit Rabbit

Rabbit rabbit y'all! December can be so much fun. Just don't take it all too seriously, okay?

Good luck this month.

P.S. THANK YOU! to all the folks who dropped by to wish me a happy birthday. It was happy indeed. I read all the comments, sometimes over and over, but mostly don't comment back. I'm rude. It's okay. Old people can do that.