Merry Christmas!

Since we are getting ready to set off on our Christmas trip to Arizona and I'll be out of blogging for a while, I was looking for a yule-tide picture to post and found this one in my files. It is of farmer Render standing by with Santa (my dad) at the helm. I'm not really sure how the John Deere was involved, but hey, if ya got it...

(We sent my dad the Santa suit some years ago thinking that, with all the grandchildren coming up, he'd enjoy the role. But kids evidently don't actually LIKE Santa in person these days and it was less than successful. The adults had fun with it though. I have pictures of everyone sitting on Santa's lap... somewhere in my vast collection of digital photos.)

Merry Christmas!!

It just makes sense

Years ago, when I was studying in the field of Rehabilitation, we focused on the idea of doing Strengths/Needs assessments with developmentally disabled clients - working out how to use a person's strengths to address their weaknesses and help them be employable. For example, a person's innate eagerness to please others can be an asset in learning how to get along in the workplace.

This always seemed like a good idea to me. Use something positive to solve a negative. Take something bad and use it in a good way. Match excesses to deficits.

An example: It's hard for me to break bad habits or change how I do things. Health issues particularly give me trouble. I usually go for what is comfortable, feels good, tastes good... instead of eating right, exercising etc. I started walking, not really for exercise and weight loss (which was certainly the 'need') but for the joy of being outside and having time to myself. Mark and I continue to go on hikes and walks because we like to spend time together - and the health advantage is the 'extra' rather than the imperative. I know I wouldn't do it if all I was going to get out of it was long-term health benefits. I'm just 'wired' like that.

Looking at most problems and solutions in this way has advantages. Negatives and positives can often match up with a 'positive' result. Of course, sometimes that isn't the case - another example: In Seattle's early days an unscrupulous lumber mill owner convinced the 'city fathers' to haul away his unwanted sawdust to use as fill to build the town up above tide level. This resulted in the eventual decay of town streets to the point where potholes were named and mapped, and were so deep and wide that enterprising citizens built rafts and ran 'ferry' services to help people cross them.

Better examples surely abound of making lemonade out of lemons... but I can't think of them at the moment. Except for the one that prompted this discussion in the first place - a headline in today's news:
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"Human fat fuels boat"

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Now there's an idea!

Warm and cozy

We just had a new gas fireplace insert installed to replace the totally ineffective unit that came with the house. It was an easy matter, since the gas and electric lines were right there anyway. This is a "furnace-rated" unit that will easily heat the house in case of a power failure - something the old unit failed at utterly. It is the last of our 'panic' responses to the 8-day power outage we suffered last winter in this backwater place we call home. No more life-threatening disasters for us. Winter, bring it on!

It's not the end of other problems though. We have a chair sitting too close to the new fireplace that now has to be moved to the opposite wall, which means the 'entertainment center' furniture piece on THAT wall has to be replaced because it is too big for the new location that IT, in turn, will need to be moved to. And of course, the new entertainment center is sized for a flat screen TV, not our old TV, so we'll be needing a new TV at some point too (which is just as well because all of our DVDs seem to be formatted for wide-screen and look funny on our old conventional TV.) And moving the chair to the 'tall' wall means that new shelves and art work will need to be found to fill in the space so it looks nice...

Do other people have these problems? Or is it just me? (Certainly it can't be said that I don't have long-term goals.)

It IS warm and cozy in here though.

The REAL names?

From one of those things that circulates through the Internet, without an 'author' name or anyone to credit it to, comes this little bit of holiday cheer:

Try to guess the real names of these Christmas songs...

1. Bleached Yule
2. Castaneous-Colored Seed Vesicated in a Conflagration
3. Singular Yearning for the Twin-Anterior Incisors
4. Far Off in a Feeder
5. Array the Corridor
6. The Quadruped with the Vermilion Proboscis
7. Query Regarding Identity of Descendant
8. Delight for this Planet
9. The Dozen Festive 24-Hour Intervals
10. Our Fervent Hope is That You Thoroughly Enjoy Your Yuletide Season
11. Obese Personification Fabricated of Compressed Mounds of Minute Crystals
12. Proceed and Enlighten on the Pinnacle
13. Monarchical Triad
14. Frozen Precipitation Commence
15. May the Deity Bestow an Absence of Fatigue to Mild Male Humans

(Are we getting into the spirit of the season?)

The Pineapple Express

We are having weather disasters again. Vast amounts of rain - one news report described it as "a firehose pointed directly at us" - are dropping from a tropical air mass coming straight from Hawaii. The air hits the northern Cascade mountains, and Bam! The Pineapple Express, it's called.

So here we are - soaked and worried about trees coming down again and wishing we'd manage to get our new gas-run fireplace installed already. (Not until next week - we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed that we won't lose power in this - a not very effective strategy, admittedly.)

The river has flooded and the valley road is closed, and while there is still one road out, we are afraid to use it, fearful that we couldn't get home again.

A good time to bake Christmas cookies? Too early probably. Put up the tree? Maybe. Take a nap? OK!


(Interstate 5 is closed, due to flooding, for 20 miles somewhere between Seattle and Portland. The detour, if you have to make the trip anyway, is 440 miles long!)

December!

How clever of it... December came in with a bang!