the busy heart

Merry Christmas!  This is the first time we've ever decorated our house for Christmas.  Sam's mom sent us ornaments that Sam's received every year since he was a baby, and it was cool to see him remember them and be excited.  I don't think of him as the type to get terribly excited about things like Christmas, but, well, he was terribly excited. So were the kitties.  As soon as we set up the Chirstmas tree, they assumed positions beneath it, which is precisely where kitties belong.  When I was a wee lass, we had a kitty named Smokey who was always beneath the tree at Chirstmas time, swatting at bird ornaments.  (If you look closely in the top picture, you can see little Sprout to the right of Meatsock under the tree.) And here she is up close.  And the tree in its glory. And my favorite ornament. Sam's mother also sent us a gorgeous nativity that Sam's great grandmother made.  It's so beautiful, so so beautiful, and...

this is honestly my idea of a vacation: you go to a beach. you sit on the beach.  you read a book.  that's it.  that's all i need.  in mexico, in addition to that, we had the perks of comfortable chairs and sun umbrellas and people bringing us fresh limondas and "coca lights."  we had big plans to go parasailing this day, but once we realized we'd have to actually  stand up , we opted to stay put and read some more.                                                  [cool. dude.]                                      ...

[sunrise.] Before we left for Mexico, we watched a few of those Planet Earth movies, and happened to see one that had a shot of hundreds of sailfish swimming through the water like kites.  Oh, they were pretty.  So although we were looking forward to fishing, we were reluctant to find one of those guys on the other end of the line.  I needn't have worried.  I didn't fish a bit, since about a half hour after I got on the boat I threw up my breakfast over the side, and pretty much stayed horizontal with my eyes closed for the rest of the day.  Seasickness was not a good time for me.  But I did manage to get some pictures, and Sam did catch a sailfish.  It was enormous (you'll see), so I think by the time he got him in the boat, after several near-escapes, Sam didn't care about the scene where they all looked like kites.  At least not when it came to this guy.  Kite, shmite.   ...

[they jump. we grin.] When we landed in Mexico, a woman on the plane told us about swimming with dolphins and I was instantly obsessed.  Granted, it also made me think of this New Yorker cartoon , wherein two dolphins are swimming around and one says to the other, "If I could do only one thing before I died, it would be to swim with a middle-aged couple from Connecticut."   I find that endlessly amusing, and thus felt a little silly about wanting to have a swim, but, seriously, look at them.  And look at those enormous smiles on our faces.  We'll be the couple from New England any day if we get to hang out with these guys. [we pet a dolphin belly.  i think this one's name was habana, since she was cuban. (they spelled it with a b, yes.] This was one of those things that was exactly as cool and exhilirating as I dreamed it would be. Okay, it was probably cooler. I have to say that at first I was frightene...

[the pools and view from the condo.  zihuatenejo, mexico.] Sam and I went to Zihuatanejo, Mexico for a week at the beginning of October, just after we moved.  We visited his parents, who rented a condo down there for six months, and are generous souls.  They treated us well.  It was a whirlwind of swimming in the pool, reading books in lounge chairs, eating fresh-fresh seafood, fishing, eating more fresh-fresh seafood, swimming with dolphins, drinking limonada, nursing sunburns, practicing my (meager) Spanish skills, and taking very long naps.  Can strenous relaxation even be considered a whirlwind?  Anyway, it was grand. [i love this one.  gosh it was gorgeous there.] I'll cover other material in a few more posts (swimming with dolphins!  fishing (and seasickness)! glamorous book reading by the pool and sea!) but I must first tell you about La-La the porcupine, whom we met at a animal rescue type place called ...

One morning I went out into the living room and near the table I stood very still and gasped.  There was an enormous bug on the inside bridge of my nose.  I reached up before I could think too hard, plucked it off, and threw it violently to the ground.  Then I realized it wasn't a bug.  It was the nosepad to my glasses.  I got down on my hands and knees and searched for it, but it wasn't to be found. Later, standing in the only eyeglass store that was willing to help me that day , I tried on these glasses.  By the time I realized the techs in back could fix my previous ones, I was already smitten with these.  What could I do?  I was in a swank glasses shop in Cambridge, a man with artfully disheveled hair was telling me how cool they looked, and I was simply putty in his salesman hands.  

My friend Em and I made this quilt for a girl at church and her wee babe.  Please note: Emily did the ENTIRE quilt in LESS time than it took me to make the meager little flowers.  (sigh.) (It was a strange shower, since she had also received some sort of clothes hamper that looked a lot like a rubbish bin, and every gift she opened went straight into that to keep them all together, I suppose. So our quilt and all the pretty pink outfits? Seemed to go straight in the trash ... Oh well.)

I've been playing with my editing software.  I'm certain I'm an amateur, but I'm having a lovely time.  So is T.  Can't you tell?