The paperwhites in the den will be opening soon. The beauties in the kitchen are open and fragrant and lovely. I even got a whiff of their scent while sitting in my chair here in the den.

I love when I hear bird song on these wintry days. I heard some this morning so I turned around and looked out on the porch and there were two chickadees, one of which which was singing. He/she spent a short time on the porch railing and then took off in search of food.

It really makes my day.

Speaking of the porch railing, I looked out there the other day and there was a big, fat cat sitting and relaxing on the railing.

That’s a first.

I’m sure it’s one of my neighbor’s cats because I’ve seen him before.

I’ve been falling asleep early in the evening lately. The moment we sit down together on the sofa after dinner to watch television, I can’t keep my eyes open – even when the movie we’re going to watch is one of my favorites. Last night, we were debating what to watch and I pushed for Casablanca, which was on TCM. So we watched that and I swear I missed half of the movie!

Is it a letting go? Is it the cocooning of winter, which is like a hibernation of sorts? I’ve had this happen before and it’s usually in the winter. Maybe I’m finally relaxing? I don’t know.

We’re taking it easy today.

Stay safe.

Happy Sunday.

For those of you who get the post via email who might be wondering why there are two posts titled Day Two Hundred Eighty-Five? Well, I mistakenly wrote the wrong number on yesterday’s post. Reader Petra kindly pointed that out to me. Unfortunately I was sitting in the car waiting for Don to come out of his eye doctor appointment at the time and had no way of correcting it until I got home – which I did, but it was too late to change the email version of the post. A big thank you to Petra! We’re back on track.

The morning sun was hitting the paperwhites with a sort of spotlight this morning. I took a series of photos and every one of them has this orb of light that you can see on the right. Magical!

We’re pooped. Don’s appointment with the eye specialist is always stressful…no one wants a shot in the eye. The side effects vary every time. Sometimes there’s no pain and it’s as if it never happened. This time there was more soreness afterward and a lot of blood on the eyeball. It’s slowly getting better. I’ve encouraged him to lay low today. We are officially starting our ‘no chores-listening to music-reading-relaxing’ days leading up to Christmas. Of course, I’m cleaning the bathroom today but that’s because I like things clean before Christmas. And since we’re getting lots and lots of rain tomorrow on top of a snow pack and temperatures in the 50s  for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, with a 20 degree drop on Saturday, we’ll probably be out there salting as the melted snow turns to ice.

Our Christmas – at least the outdoors portion of it – is not going to be pretty. Indoors? Pretty.

Today, however, is sunny and quite beautiful.

This arrived at nearly 10 pm last night:

A big thank you to UPS drivers who are clearly working long, long hours. (By the way, we’re still missing our USPS packages – not their fault, of course, just annoying.)

Anyway, this is the Beacon Hill dollhouse kit. We haven’t unboxed it yet, but it weighs about 40 pounds and we’re going to have to drag it upstairs later this morning. I’ve been reading lots of posts about constructing this huge house and they’re very helpful. But I had to stop reading them for the time being. If I kept on reading, I would never start the project!

By the way, this is for Jeanie, who mentioned she’d like a photo of the den in Hummingbird Cottage all dressed up for Christmas.

Stay safe.

Happy Wednesday.

The sun finally came out yesterday. I shoveled and Don worked the snowblower. Even though the snow was relatively dry and fluffy, there was about 14 inches of it. And the driveway slopes downward to the street, which means the amount of snow down there is much higher. Since the county plows had been up and down our road several times, the mound of snow at the bottom of our driveway was huge. I don’t know how he does it. Our snowblower is really hard to push (I can’t do it on my own.) If we had to do it over again, we’d have purchased something lighter that I could manipulate as well. At one point, a stone got in the blades and the snowblower stopped. Don wasn’t sure if he needed to replace something, so he had to push it back up the drive (with no power). Impossible! So I went down there and we each took a handle and pushed it up the drive together.

Today, I’ll dig the car out. We were both exhausted after all of the cleanup and I can’t say enough about the work Don put in. At some point, we’ll have to hire someone to do this kind of thing and it can’t be a plow because the plows destroy all the gravel on the driveway as they push up (and down) the driveway. It would have to be someone with a snowblower.

Today, we take it easy – except for shoveling around the car.

In the meantime, both of us are waiting for packages that seem to have disappeared within the postal system. Everything with a tracking number has this message: “In transit, arriving late. Your package will arrive later than expected, but is still on its way. It is currently in transit to the next facility.”

In some cases, it’s been “in transit to the next facility” for well over a week. I’m now worried that presents won’t arrive in time for Christmas. I mentioned this on IG yesterday and so many people responded saying they were dealing with the same thing. I’m not blaming the USPS at all, I’m blaming Louis DeJoy, who did his best to hobble the entire system so that Trump could win. Add in a pandemic in which more people are ordering online than ever and you have a big mess.

Forgot to include a photo of the tree in the modern dollhouse. The only houses that don’t have Christmas trees are the vintage houses. They’ll get them eventually.

Okay. Have to go. I asked Don to hold off on recording a song until I finished this post. He asked me to join in on the chorus with some harmony, so I’m going to do a little singing today.

Stay safe.

Happy Friday.