Forgive my absence.
April was such a cold, damp, and dreary month that most of us in "The Land" felt it was November.
May, thus far, hasn't turned up anything better. Mother Nature is certainly behaving like she has the pip and is exuding all the warmth and chariableness of brittle thin-lipped, uptight spinster at a performance of "Oh, Calcutta." So the first week of May is more like an add-on to April; we hope things will turn around at the end of this week.
The Cookie's continue to nest in our new house, and we are finding more and more surprises.
We have ordered new storm windows and screens. new storm doors. When the porch door is added, we'll be able to actually walk out of the back porch into the back yard.
A pleasant surprise was that our knarled dogwood turned into a Japanese maple. When I saw what these were selling for, I had a moment of elation. A tiny one is about $350. Ours is at least medium, reaching about 10 feet in height.
I just returned from my annual trip into the Genealogy world. The convention and annual meeting aren't the draw they used to be. I go any more to see friends, go out to dinner, and partake in game nights.
This year, we played a new game, Dead Grandma. The premise is this, Grandma is dead and everyone around the table are her beloved heirs. Cards are dealt with dollar amounts and "actions" that can be played on others. To start, you place one card down to bid on one of Grandma's most cherished possessions (like her handbag full of melted sticky butterscotch drops), and then you play to win by stiffing the other people. If you win the hand, you keep the card. The first player to win three cards the same color, or one card each of three colors.
We also played Crack List, and another game, but honestly, that name escapes me. It was kind of like $25,000 pyramid, but with a 60-second time limit.
A merry time was had by all.
My sessions included Genealogical DNA, deciphering "olde tyme" scripts, how to search for women in court records when all you have is a married surname, structuring files, and indexing.
As you can see, Cookie leads an interesting life.
The only Angst, and I capitalize it, I have experienced all week is due to politics and the potential loss of our freedoms in our country. I am sick with worry.
So I have been focusing on what I can do, which is getting through each day and cheering any victories as they come.
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