Just Thinking about Christmas

This year most of my family isn't going to be here with me for Christmas. They're back in Oregon and with all the rain from the "pineapple express", we'd need to build an ark to get there. I've been feeling twinges of homesickness the closer it gets to Christmas. My youngest daughter and her sweetie are here in Washington so I'm going to cook dinner for them for the holiday. Once I got the two little grandchildren to raise, my energy didn't cover being the mom who does big family dinners after the kids are grown. Having just come back from a lupus crash, then becoming caregiver to two babies, my energy just didn't cover big family dinners. My oldest daughter stepped up and started doing the family dinner thing but she's in Oregon. I'm gonna miss her holiday dinners and especially the way she makes brussels sprouts with bacon.

I didn't bring any Christmas decorations with me when I moved here from Oregon. Who can be thinking of Christmas when it's 100 degrees every day and stays at nearly 70 degrees even after dark? We had to move me in the wee hours of the morning just to get through it. Every one of us was so bedraggled and exhausted from the heat that Christmas was the very last thing on my mind. My grand-daughter Sadie came along to help me get settled. She and I both just opened the windows of the apartment and went to sleep in spite of the sea gulls causing a ruckus outside.

I only have $19 left to stretch for the rest of the month, so I guess I'll be hitting the Dollar Tree for some decorations. I think $5 and a lot of imagination will work. I have to go to the doctor for some lab work tomorrow and then grocery shopping. It's been raining cats and dogs for days and days now. The town of Olympia reminds me of San Francisco or Hood River or Oregon City because it's  built on hills. It also reminds me a little bit of Carmel, a little hobbit town with all the twisty little windy streets. I live at the bottom of the hills, so water is going to tend to all end up down here where I live. The port is only a block away. I should go have a look to see where the water level is.

Speaking of seagulls----the window washers came last week and washed the seagull poop off our windows. The forestry people or somebody came earlier in the fall and moved all the seagulls off to somewhere else so I don't hear them anymore, They were nesting on the roof and it was so bad that they said the seagull poop was running down the walls on the outside of the building. They had to put a new roof on both buildings. I realize the gulls were a big problem but I still miss hearing and seeing big flocks of them. I do see and hear an occasional one but not very often or very loudly and in spite of wind storms,  there's no more  gull poop on my windows. Yet.