All Things Nice . . .

 

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My driftwood fire burns and glows,

A hundred shades of jade and rose,

With tongues of red that softly turn

To roses in a copper urn;

And sheets of purest silver blaze

Against a shifting purple haze.

A chunk of cedar fills the air

With fragrance of the beaches bare,

Clean sand drips down upon the floor,

The salt damp smell of seas once more

Drifts through the room like a lost breath,

Of someone walking close to death.

A hundred pictures shift and blaze,

Of far dim lands and other days;

Perchance that beam of sodden oak

Was once a swinging coolie's yoke;

It bears the shape of tired backs,

And breathes of dusty human tracks.

Perhaps that pole was once a mast,

Swung high to let the dawn go past,

Or gaping yardarms staunch and wide

A mocking servant of the tide,

It makes a cloven tongue of fire,

And fills my room with hot desire.

And then a stick of Douglas fir,

Perfumes the air with fragrant myrrh,

And I am home in quiet aisles

Of stately trees where sunlight smiles;

No vagrant dreams to stir my thought,

In little rooms that love had bought.

~Edna Jacques, Driftwood Fires,

Beside Still Waters, 1952

Reading this poem made me think back to when I lived in a house with a woodstove to heat it. I used to love to lay on the sofa in the living and watch the flames of the fire within flicker and flounce, casting dancing lights across the room.  The sound of the logs snapping and crackling the beat to its flickering tune.  Oh, what a cozy song it played.  I used to fall asleep watching it, not a care in the world. So long ago now.

When I am out and about during these Wintery months, I will often catch the fragrance of someone's woodfire in the air and it is the most delicious scent to me. I love it so . . . it is a smell that speaks to my soul and the sweet memories of my heart. 

I saw this Lego toy in Walmart yesterday and was sorely tempted to get it, but I resisted. I still have not made the Lego Flowers that I bought last year. Perhaps that can be one of my goals in the near future, to get those made.  I have always loved playing with Lego. It was not a toy I had as a child, but it was something we did buy for our children and something they really enjoyed playing with.  I used to make myself a small Lego creation every year the last five or six that I lived in the U.K. Usually Christmas ones.  I enjoyed the creativity of it.  

Lego is celebrating 5 years of success for its flagship sustainability initiative Replay which allows consumers to ship used and unwanted Lego bricks back to the company for redistribution to others. In a pair of lovely celebrations in Boston and Richmond, giant Lego birthday cakes bearing the number ‘5’ were decorated by children who then got to take sets made of donated Lego bricks home with them. 

 The Replay program launched in 2019, and five years on there have been 1,229,072 lbs. of Lego bricks donated to the program which has distributed them to almost 400,000 children over this time. 

The donation process is simple: collect any loose Lego bricks, sets, or elements, place them in a cardboard box, and visit lego.com/replay to print out a free UPS shipping label. The package will be sent to the Lego Replay facility, where each brick will be sorted, inspected by hand, and given a rigorous cleaning. Donated bricks will then be distributed to kids throughout the U.S. by nonprofit partners. (I am not sure what the process is in any location other than the U.S.)  I think it is a brilliant idea, however and one that I wish would catch on everywhere.

And not just for Lego toys.  For all toys. How wonderful it could be if unwanted and used toys could be refurbished and made new again for other children to enjoy, instead of ending up in landfills.

 

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I think I read yesterday evening that the Government has ordered Postal Workers back to work. I am not sure what this means.  It is probably still too late to get cards in the post.  It will take more than a few weeks for them to sort out the backlog of things that has built up over the past month.  I know I have at least three major items caught in the system. A dress, some books, stickers, along with a few other bits as well. I wonder if I will get them all in the end.  We shall see. Things often go missing in these types of instances, but I will remain hopeful.

I think there are certain areas of employment that should not be allowed to strike. Any type of necessary services, such as health, postal, transportation, etc. I am probably wrong to think such things, but perhaps protocol could be put in place that these workers never feel the need to go on strike.  I am not an expert by any means.

 

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I enjoyed my time out and about yesterday. It was nice to get out of the house and spend some time with Cindy as well.  We dropped dad and his friend off and then went to the grocery store and then to Walmart and a few other places.  Everywhere is getting very busy in the run up to Christmas. Everyone out there looking for deals.

When I got home my heater wasn't working. The batteries had died in the remote and so I had to replace them.  I finally got it working. I had wondered why it was getting colder in here and upon investigation that is what I discovered. I had no idea that the heat pump also needed the remote working in order to operate properly. I also had no idea the batteries had run out.

We didn't have such things before I moved over to the U.K. and of course in the U.K. they did not exist, so I am really not up in the know about heat pumps and how they work.  It is nice and comfortable in here this morning, despite it being very cold outside, so all is well.

It is -5*C/23*F, but it says it feels like -14*C/7*F so yes, quite cold.

No snow, however.

 

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All this past week, I have been listening to Christmas Music on YouTube. Ambient Calm Soundscapes channel is the one I've been hooked into. I really have been enjoying it.  Classic Christmas music combined with a very pleasant screen saver for the television. It's really very nice.

Do you enjoy listening to Christmas music? What is your favorite era?  I like the 40's 50's.  

I really need to perhaps watch some of those older Christmas films this next week as well.  I always enjoyed the original Miracle on 34th Street, White Christmas, Holiday Inn, etc.

Yes, I am very much a creature of habit, and I like what I like.

 

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I started to watch the film Mary on Netflix last night. It's quite a different story, but apparently it is based in biblical facts.  I did not know much about Mary other than she was the mother of Jesus, etc.  I knew nothing of her parents, childhood, etc.  Anthony Hopkins is in the film. He plays Herod.

I will probably finish it tonight.   I find these days I don't really have the attention span to watch a film all the way through. It has to be really good to keep my attention for longer than an hour. I usually watch things in bits.

I also tend to fall asleep unless I am really interested in something. Not full-on snoring sleep, just nodding off struggling to stay awake sleep, so that I miss bits and pieces. Nutmeg is usually snuggled into my side and Cinnamon just behind me on the back of the sofa. Like my two little guardian angels.

Have you watched that film yet?  Mary.  What did you think of it?

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I am enjoying seeing everyone's Christmas trees and decorations online.  Some people really do have a talent for decorating.  I love to see all of the different ways they decorate and I am enjoying seeing how the Elf on a Shelf behaves in different households. Some people get very inventive.  There was no Elf on a Shelf when my children were growing up.  I think it would have been fun to participate in that and create something new each night for them to see in the morning.  But then again, it must be difficult to come up with a new idea every night.

When we were children an American cousin of our mother used to send us gifts each year for Christmas. I remember one year my sister got a Rupert Bear annual. Oh, how I coveted it. It had magic paint pictures that you could paint simply with a brush and water, and small origami lessons and of course there was the Rupert stories and cartoons.

I had started to collect replica copies of these older annuals when I was in the U.K. I do not know what happened to them, but I am hoping that they went to good homes. I had thought to gift my grandchildren with them one day, but ended up falling in love with them myself.

I am incorrigible in that way. I have always felt that the best gift to give someone is something that you would really enjoy yourself, and then I have a difficult time parting with it. lol Often if I can afford it, I will buy two. One for me and one to give away.

 

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Do you turn off your Christmas lights at night?  I leave mine on all the time, so they are the first thing to greet me (aside from the cats) when I come out here in the morning. There is nothing that cheers the heart more than sitting and working under the light of a Christmas Tree. Most are battery fueled, and the actual tree itself has led lights, so it doesn't use a lot of power.  My tree has multicolored lights rather than just white. I do like to see all the different colors.

The other day I was remembering my father putting the lights on the Christmas tree each year.  It didn't seem to matter how organized he had been in putting them away the previous year, they were somehow still tangled when he went to take them out.  We would be sat on the sofa watching him, under strict orders to be quiet. It was quite the job untangling them.

Inevitably one of the lights would be burnt out which meant that none of them worked and so he would have to begin testing each one to see which one it was so that he could replace it and get them all working. Once that was done, he put them on the tree.

Mom did all of the tree decorating. We were not allowed to do much. We just watched. She might let each of us put on one decoration at the end. I cannot remember ever being allowed to put any of them on.  I do remember every year thinking that it was the most beautiful tree ever.

And the smell of the fresh tree was intoxicating. I know it was a bit of a pain as the needles dried and fell off as the days wore on.  And sometimes they would catch in the toes of your socks if they hadn't been vacuumed up yet and hurt.  I remember mom having a special piece of white fuzzy cloth that covered the tree stand and that had little colored sparkly bits all over it, and of course there was the tinsel.  It used to be made from metal but as we got older it began to be made from plastic and the static electricity in the room would make it grab onto your clothing if you walked past.

 

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Oh, did you do this when you were a child?  We used to like rubbing our socks across the carpet and then shocking each other with the static electricity by touching each other with our fingertips.  And I remember sometimes at night the static electricity in the bedroom making bright snapping lights in the dark.  I remember my sweater snapping with little jolts when I would take it off and then when the children were small and I was folding laundry, there would be static in the laundry as well.

Occasionally I will get some of it in here.  Especially when I go to turn on the bathroom light or some such.

Well, it has gone past 9 a.m. now and I have been sitting here since 6. I don't know where the time has flown.  My mind does tend to wander a bit from time to time, and I do get distracted by things I see and just have to investigate, so it is not surprising really.  I will leave you now with a thought to carry with you for the weekend.

A thought to carry with you  . . . 

° * 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ •

•。★★ 。* 。
° 。 ° ˛˚˛ * _Π_____*。*˚
˚ ˛ •˛•˚ */______/~＼。˚ ˚ ˛
˚ ˛ •˛• ˚ ｜ 田田 ｜門 ★

 *.˛.°Winter reminds us that

everyone and everything

needs some quiet time.

~unknown  ° * 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ •

° * 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ • 

In The Kitchen today, Christmas M&M Cookies.  The small batch.  Recipe makes 9 very large cookies.  These are really festive and delicious.

I hope that you have a wonderful weekend!  Whatever you get up to, stay warm and stay safe.  Be happy.  Don't forget!

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And I do too!