It rained (and even sleeted) all day yesterday, so I went upstairs to the office and worked on the dollhouse. I’d had an idea that painting the roof – even a preliminary coat – would help to define the stone exterior and that by doing so, I might like it more.
I have lots of photos of English stone cottages and they seem to have roofs that are dark in color – they may be some kind of slate for all I know. I hoped that I had some sort of dark color on hand, gray or black, that I could use without spending any money. Thankfully, I did.
I spent about 4 hours painting the shingles and I have to say, it’s the best thing to quell anxiety. I was in my happy place. This photo shows you a solid dark gray, but there are traces of the brown of the shingles showing through, which is what I wanted. I may age them more, but for now, here it is.
Painting it accomplished just what I wanted. The contrast shows off the stonework and I’m happy with the look.
We’re watching Unbelievable on Netflix. I sought it out because Barack Obama put it on his personal best of 2019 list. It’s based on a true story involving a serial rapist. I can’t say enough about the quality of the production. There are 8 episodes and we’re halfway through. Excellent.
What do we have planned today? I’m cleaning a bit, working on Dove Cottage. Don will no doubt practice his guitar. And Don is making the dinner we were going to have on Christmas but were too tired and full to make. I think we’ll appreciate it more tonight; it’s a calmer day all around. We’ll watch more of Unbelievable and then, I can guarantee it, we’ll go to bed early.
Happy New Year, my friends. I hope the coming year brings peace and joy and an end to the ongoing attack on human rights and civility and a new beginning on the path to healing and tolerance and good.
Happy Tuesday.
Claudia, it looks terrific. You’re right about the definition with the stonework. Love the open window and peeking through. Oh, the stories one can imagine!
Sounds like a lovely new year’s. Rick is off to baby sit the grands in Detroit, which he promised to do before I hurt my back. I could go but I don’t think I’m up to the Toddler Twosome and frankly not up to the ride down in the crummy snowy weather. It’s our first New Year’s apart in two decades and while it would be nice to see the new one in, I think I’ll be short for the world tonight and am really OK with this. That said, I’m headed to the store to get some sushi and a mini-bubbly! Have a wonderful New Year’s — your dinner will be wonderful and I think you’re right about the lack of stress compared to Christmas! Happy New Year!
Toast yourself tonight, Jeanie! Don and I were apart for a couple of New Year’s – it’s strange, but you’ll get through it!
Amen, my friend.
May we all find, and appreciate, the blessings of peace and joy in 2020. ♡
My fervent prayer, Chris.
Happy New Year to you and Don! Thank you so much for your creativity, photos and knowledge you share with us.
Happy 2020,
Alice
You are very welcome. Happy 2020, Alice!
A happy and blessed New Year to you and Don.
Thank you, Cathy. The same to you and your family!
Dove cottage is looking quite smart. What a difference in just painting the shingles.
Wishing you, and everyone, a peaceful, and less stressful new year. A new year filled with above all good health, laughter and kindness. Happy 2020! ;)
All good things, Donna! The same to you and yours.
The cottage looks wonderful Claudia. What a difference the colour of the roof makes.
Happy New Year to you and Don too. May 2020 bring good health, peace of mind,
love and lots of laughter to us all.
Amen! Thank you, Lea!
The cottage is looking so good. I can’t wait to see it all finished. Happy New Year to you and Don.
Thank you, Carol! The same to you and yours.
Happy New Year!!
Peace,
Monica
The same to you and yours, Monica.
Happy New Year to you both!
Happy New Year, Judy! I just saw that Susan is doing better. What good news! xoxo
Yeah, we’re getting no tax refund; have to pay this year; sigh. My husband retired but is still freelancing, and that will go on for as long as he can do it. We need the supplemental income.
I thought it was the other way around, but I’m finding I know, or know of, more seniors who are working than who are not. It just takes a lot to live. (I, for one, cannot believe what we spend on groceries; I’ve gotta find a discount grocery market, soon! Food is expensive.) But some people my age are telling me they’re too afraid, in retirement, that their brains are turning to mush without the structure of paid work and a more rigid schedule to their days; one day just blending into another with the feeling of LOSING days.
So, it’s the balance, the happy medium; like part-time work, middle of the day when energy is good; that sort of thing. Like, a friend of mine who’s age 69…she commutes a half hour (pleasant drive, easy drive) to her part-time job, gets there about 9am, takes a half-hour lunch; ends her work day at 2:30pm and is home by 3pm. She enjoys her job. (She has a [very] small dog and she’s allowed to bring her dog to work; he sleeps in a little bed at her feet in her cubicle and is the office mascot!)
For me, lots of plans at home for the new year, new decade, new start. I want a productive, clean year where a lot gets done! I’ve got health issues but already have appointments set up with some really stellar new doctors Jan-Mar so I’m excited for improvement and new info. Medicare (and supplemental med insurance we pay for [each month {a big bite out of the Social Security check}]) has allowed me to get to the specialists I need, now that the HMO noose is no longer around my neck. None of these new doctors are anywhere near me; we have to travel to them. But it’s do-able for the better care. I’m grateful.
Again, I’m stoked; feeling empowered and positive about 2020 (hope the feeling lasts!).
Happiest of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day to you and Don, Claudia! Thanks for all the wonderful conversation and info here on the blog in 2019.
Happy New Year to all the wonderful readers at MHC, too. (You have a nice community here, Claudia!)
Yes, we get the supplemental insurance as well. Hate seeing that deducted from my Social Security! Ah well.
Happy New Year, Vicki!
I always misspeak about this medical stuff in retirement. The Social Security gets the pinch because of the deduction for Medicare, but then our checking account gets a LARGE hit each month for the supplemental medical. And then I have another supplemental for prescription drugs that I pay once a year. And yet another for other drug/health-related supplies as needed. Again, not ungrateful for all the help, but it whittles the fixed income, for sure. (This stuff confused my husband and me so much that we had to go to a broker; we let her figure it out!) I have to really plan carefully each month because, the way our birthdays fall for the Social Security disbursement, it’s all jammed up at one time of the month, so there’s this ‘dry’ period in between and I never had to deal with that before (or at least for a long time), so it’s all been quite an adjustment to the ‘budget’. But how can I cry the blues when I have seen with my own eyes, for instance, an elderly person at the pharmacy counter who cannot afford to pay for the medicine and walks away. They are so vulnerable. It could be me if I wasn’t so lucky (“There but for you go I…”); my husband’s worked hard when I couldn’t, to get us from there to here although, Claudia, I’m tell’in ya, I hear you; frugality must rule in 2020!
It’s like this stupid thing about flood insurance, at least in California, where if FEMA requires you have it, you can’t get homeowners’ insurance unless you can prove you’ve bought the flood insurance each year; and of course you can’t get a mortgage loan or refi a loan, etc., unless you’ve got homeowners’ insurance on the property/structure. My ins guy was telling me how he has older/elderly clients who simply cannot afford the flood insurance (the first year, ours was $1000/yr; it’s a bit less now; fluctuates). Maybe their home is paid for, but they’ve still gotta cover it with homeowners’ insurance, but how, because they can’t afford the flood insurance, so they take a massive risk with not being able to overall insure their home, likely the biggest asset.
Life for however beautiful is sometimes just darn hard; complicated!
To something else: I keep forgetting to tell you that I love how you did the stonework on the doll house using egg cartons. I’m so glad you’re in doll house mode. Is fascinating for us to watch what you’re coming up with…
….and, yes, a terrific way to relax. Hobbies/passions are good! I did NOT relax this Christmas/holiday season. Here I was today, madly scrambling to write out checks (and call in payments) right up to 5pm closing for the post office and I barely made it to the bank before 6pm closing, last day of the year, tons of business people in line. I can never have this be like this again, constantly feeling behind. I think my time management is just shot to H*LL lately. Keep adding to my notes…I actually wrote all this down for myself…on what didn’t go right this year and how I want Thanksgiving-to-New Year’s to be diff in 2020; just not so harried. Unnecessarily harried! Must start earlier and pace it out better. (I guess I’m slowing down at older age? Horrors.)
We were 71 degrees today, sunny & warm in SoCalif; the Santa Anas died down a little while ago (blowing the past couple of days). Our ground is actually still somewhat wet from the last rains, so it’s okay to dry out. (We had wild wind and rain on Christmas night; snow on the local mountains rimming our valley; was still a smattering like powdered sugar on the uppermost peaks even yesterday.) They’ll have picture-perfect weather for the Pasadena Rose Parade tomorrow. And then Thursday, despite other appointments and errands, we’re headed to the beach for reported high surf/major high tide, and we like all that dramatic ‘nature’!!
We don’t get our Social Security payments until the last Wednesday of the month. Both of us. Makes it difficult.
Glad you’re going to get to the beach. Oh, how I wish we were there! Happy New Year!
sounds like another lovely day … minus the sleet. and i’m not sure i could watch that program (given the topic), but i am glad you found something that you know to be well done and worth watching.
i know it takes time to prepare posts … heart and generosity, too. thanks for all you’ve shared with us over the past year (and beyond), claudia!
i wish and pray for a very healthy, happy and peace-filled new year for you and don, your families and friends, everyone who gathers here and the whole world!
kathy in iowa
meant to add … the roof color looks great, really shows your hard work on the “stones” and eye for color , details!
kathy in iowa
Thank you!
You could watch it. It’s about the investigation, not the actual rapist (only briefly). It’s about the two detectives in Colorado who are looking for the suspect and who eventually connect it to a case in Washington. So it’s about the after-effects of the attacks and the investigation.
Thank you for your kind wishes, Kathy. The same for you!
that sounds like it might be a bit easier to watch. i like mysteries, but try to avoid things based on true crimes or creepy stuff because it all stays with me a long time.
thanks, claudia.
Understandable!
Claudia – HAPPY NEW YEAR from Guelph Ontario Canada.
Always enjoy your postings.
Thank you, Susan. The same to you and yours!
Wishing you and Don a happy,Healthy and Blessed 2020. The roof looks good. You did a great job.
Marilyn
Thank you Marilyn!
Home with the cat and in bed watching TV. This is my happy new year for sure. Finally have told my Mom she has to move to a senior living facility and she isn’t happy but is going to have to do it. I cannot continue to be her full time caregiver. So 2020 will have some big changes in my life. Looking forward to them for sure. I watched Unbelievable and it was so good. Enjoy your evening and on to 2020.
to linda mackean …
wishing you and your mother lots of peace, ease and comfort and a healthy, happy new year!
kathy in iowa
You have made a wise choice. We want to do what’s best for our aging parent but it is IMPOSSIBLE to live two lives and bury your own life for someone else, even when it’s someone you love. I made myself sick over elder caregiving. (I mean, actually/literally sick with two deadly physical diseases, both of which had a component of stress.) It also changed the relationship I had with my mom, not in a good way. She was very, very needy due to disability; I became more servant/worker than adult child/daughter. I tried to have a good attitude, I loved my mom, my husband and I turned somersaults for her, trying to make sure her life in the day-to-day was as unchanged as possible after she was widowed, although it drastically changed our own.
Elder caregiving is relentless; there are no days off … no weekends, no holidays, no evenings, no vacations (and certainly no paycheck for really hard work). Even after we had paid caregivers in the home for Mom (about half way thru the nearly six years), since she refused the mostly very-good senior living facilities, it was still a daily responsibility for me, and it wasn’t that I was trying to shirk it, but my health and other relationships and home were being neglected, one for the other.
You are no good to your mom if you break down and get sick over the stress. It’s so especially difficult if you’re in one place and your parent is in another, such that you’re bouncing back & forth between houses multiple times a day, even if it’s in the same town (and there’s nobody else in the equation to help you out). I had a discharge administrator at the hospital try to talk sense into me about not trying to be a (untrained) nurse/companion/caregiver; that she’d done it in her own personal life, and it brought her to her knees. But I didn’t listen; wish I would’ve. My husband was heavily involved and it took a toll on his health, too. The effect is long and lingering, even now. There are a lot of great assisted-living places out there, entirely suited to an aging person; yeah, it’s not ‘home’ but they often have a lot more helps & services than ‘home’ which is the point. We’re not talking a nursing home, but really-elderly people can’t seem to understand the diff or what ‘graduated care’ means.
Anyway, just had to weigh in. You’re not abandoning your mother; you’re guiding her toward what’s best and safe for her needs (and your own) at this stage of life. There has to be practicality! Compassionate and thoughtful decisions; sensible decisions. My family doctor used to tell me, “You’re enabling your mother to your own total detriment and destruction. ” It’s sometimes so hard to know what to do. Best of luck to you. Take care.
Vicki I hope you get this message and that you might consider email me. I am so touched by what your wrote and printed it out to re-read. It is not going well so far and I need all the support I can find. My email is lindamac@gmail.com thanks you.
Here’s what maybe I can offer:
Talk to your mother’s primary care physician/family doctor. They can offer suggestions; maybe some contacts/resources to help. They know her health better than anybody.
Talk to your own doctor. The caregiver can often wear out before the person they’re caring for; I might have said that already. The doctors run into this sort of thing with families all the time. There are a lot of baby boomers out there who are aging themselves, still taking care of an elderly parent, yet they sometimes also still have a kid in college (the ‘sandwich’ generation). There’s a lot of stress when there’s so much on the plate. Doctors can offer referrals to people/places who can help you. They don’t want your health to tank; you are their patient and their responsibility!
Rally any relatives you have; I had to make the decisions alone; maybe you don’t have to. Brothers, sisters, adult children/grandchildren; everybody should be involved in what’s best for ‘Mom’. Make a joint decision on her behalf when need be. If you have these people in your life, make them help you! It often falls on one adult child to do more than their share, which isn’t fair.
Can any neighbors step in to help share your load? I had none, but it would have been nice.
We had, in our county, a volunteer Caregivers organization. For free, they’ll come to the house and help your mother pay bills, feed the dog, bring in the mail, throw in a load of wash, help your parent with a walk around the block; that sort of thing. They could stay maybe 2-3 hrs, a few times per week. What they wouldn’t do is drive out of the area, and that’s really where I needed some assistance (my mom had out-of-town medical appointments, twice per week).
Talk to your local Hospice. I hadn’t realized that there are caregiver support groups. You can be in a group discussion with other people going thru the same thing you are and not feel alone. Info will be shared about what each is doing and what kind of helps they’ve found. Hospice also will loan out, for free, home health equipment like wheelchair, walker, cane, potty chair, etc. Our local hospice had a grief group, and a whole library of books about all these subjects. I just found out about it all a little too late.
If you have your mother’s power of attorney, go talk to her lawyer or get one of your own. Google online to see if there’s someone in your area who specializes in elder care law. Or an estate lawyer. Or maybe any kind of lawyer. We have, in SoCalif, the area where I live, a county healthcare organization who offers all sorts of resources, like how to prevent falls, how to cook for diabetes, how to get Lifeline support in the home, elder law of what I just spoke (legal aid?), caregiver support group, exercise classes for arthritis, etc. I think you can find out about these types of organizations, where so much is also of no charge, when you call 211 (or used to could; just like 411 was to dial for ‘Information’ or 611 for phone repair, or 911 for emergency). One phone call could mean a real difference for you. Here is an example of finding out about this one organization thru my mom’s doctor.
Even if you have no plan (or think you can’t afford ) to hire a paid caregiver from an agency, where they come to you bonded and referenced and qualified, you could still ask around for info about a variety of agencies, just call ’em up, and they’ll send out one of their social workers to assess the situation you and your mother find yourselves in. In a gentle way, they will tell you what they think is needed. Again, this is their business and they see families in these circumstances all the time. Your parent can often ‘take it’ from an outsider, in this case a professional, when they won’t listen to you/family.
I used to think, “How do people find these great caregivers for the home?” Start with an agency. Once we hired someone from the agency, she knew of several other women who were NOT with an agency yet longtime caregivers with good references; they seem to have their own network!
After my mother suffered a significant injury, Medicare sent her home with a physical therapist and visiting nurse. The nurse had so many ideas and references; she would actually visit patients in institutionalized care, or at their senior apartments, etc. Again, they see EVERY situation. She told us about options, such as a group home for seniors who can’t quite live alone, like where maybe four ladies live in a house, a single-family dwelling, supervised by a certified…I don’t know what you call the person…house mother?! They feel like they’re still home, yet somebody else cooks and cleans, etc. There’s someone there to call for help if the resident needs it, etc. I knew of one place who even had a resident kitty, which was very therapeutic for the elderly ladies. Lap cat.
If you could just get your mother out to go look at a few places; most of them seem really nice. And not just in my area. My husband’s grandmother was in a superior place in Ohio; big place, multi-stories, but welcoming and ‘homey/cozy’. She had her own apartment with a nice, screened porch off the back that looked out onto some greenspace as she had a first-floor unit; it even had a small kitchenette, but also the valuable panel of buttons on the wall to push for whatever help she needed (Granny was in her 80s; in a walker; she’d press the button and a nurse-person would come help her shower when her adult daughter couldn’t be there). The facility had a reading room/library; a music room; a crafts room; entertainment. Granny was happy there, coming from Sun City retirement communities in Arizona, in order to be closer to her adult child who lived in the same Ohio town. The only thing she didn’t like was the communal food because the cooks made the meals low-salt, to be healthy. It seemed like a jolly place and what’s really cool is that there’s loads of companionship for your parent, all the other residents to sit with and talk to, watch TV with or listen to the piano playing, which sure beats sitting alone in your house all day long.
Do you have senior daycare? I forget the actual name of it. Again, it was a leg of hospice. But I had a friend whose dad had Alzheimer’s and the dad’s wife needed some respite from the daily care. So he’d go to the senior daycare for most of the day, which allowed the wife to do other things, such as things for herself, even if it was just the freedom for a few hours to do nothing. And he was engaged with all kinds of positive activities at the daycare. For this, I do think there was a fee, but you could read up on it; if there’s anything like that in your area.
A friend of mine has his mother in a senior community/assisted living where she actually is in a sort of duplex on the grounds; a bungalow. Whereas some of her neighbor-residents are in a high rise with a good elevator.
My in-laws were in ‘graduated care’. Where they started with their own apartment but, as needs progressed, they were then cared for in the nursing facility on the grounds, just like many of these sorts of communities also have a separate Alzheimer’s unit, for when the time may arise.
At one point, before we had paid caregivers for my mom at home, a neighborhood teen who needed summer work from school, was ready to devote her entire day to my mother, but Mom would have none of it (even though I-myself was paying the girl). The girl was very responsible; willing to do everything I was doing for Mom, even drive her to appointments; but, you know, the bathing, the cleaning, the cooking, the washing, taking out the trash, bringing in the newspaper off the driveway; all the things my mother could not do. The most Mom would allow was one hour, twice a week, so the girl fed the pets and walked Mom around the block but she would have done so much more, was very capable and WANTED to help. Maybe you could get a teen to be with your Mother a few hours after school each day, to spell you a bit?
At peak, I counted it up, and I had over 30 ‘extra’ people in my life because of my mother. It takes a village to keep an elderly parent at home who is as disabled as mine was. I still think she would have been much better off in assisted living, where a facility is designed for the elderly. For instance, in my mother’s house, we were about to build a ramp to get a wheelchair in and out of the house (raised foundation). You couldn’t get the walker thru the narrow doorways of an old 1950s tract home. It was a step up and step down to the shower stall which was difficult for her. The home was designed for post-war families, young-healthy people, not old people. All my mom could do was look out the window. She couldn’t go outside into her yard due to the steps.
To sum up, start with your doctor; her doctor. Get some advice on the subject of your mother and what’s going on. A caregiver support group would be very helpful; exchange of ideas but also to be able to share your emotions. As I think I said, there are caregiver support groups online, too.
Remember that your elderly parent is probably putting on the skids to whatever you suggest because she is frightened. They get old, they feel their increasing dependence, they may start fearing their end is too near; they’re just trying to get thru their days, often fighting depression. They can’t see beyond their own needs when they’re barely hanging on, seeing their life slip away from them, whereas maybe in another part of life, they’d been the most unselfish person in the world.
One social worker told me, “Don’t let how your mother is now, damage how you feel about her overall. Don’t let these last years of her life be representative of your otherwise good and loving mother/daughter relationship. Remember instead how you were and how she was, in other times of your life, when she was the real her, and healthier, happier.”
From the minute my dad fell ill, I moved in with my mother to care for her in his place. I have an understanding husband who I left on his own for 10 months. When I realized Mom had no interest in changing her living arrangements (she also didn’t want us moving in with her, and she wouldn’t come live with us), I told her I had to get back to my own life and my own home and my own pets and, most of all, my own husband. (I also wasn’t healthy; I had a lot of my own medical issues stemming from a previous surgery; I was sick long before my parents were. I had daily, chronic illness and still do.) When I said I was going back to my own house, Mom accused me of abandoning her. My doctor said at the time, “You’re not abandoning her. You live three miles up the road.” He told me he had more than one patient who was actually not ambulatory, had a limited amount of caregiving in the home during the day, but was alone at night, unable to get out of bed when there was no assistance, but it’s just the way of some situations, and how you can’t be completely risk-free. Even in a convalescent home, my great-aunt took a fall.
Nursing homes, the end care, can get a bad rap. But I’ve had a lot of older relatives in them, again more toward the end. I have been on the other side of the curtain when I’ve heard and seen loving care toward a bedridden patient. I visited my great-aunt, in a nursing home in another town, every single day without fail for the six months she was there and I’d go at all diff times, they never knew when to expect me. They treated her very well. All the time. But my mother’s fear of a nursing home was overwhelming, and she tended to let her worries and fears rule her. I became acquainted with a woman in another convalescent home who only seemed to have one bad knee. She told me, “I fell and hurt my leg. I had to go live with my son. I needed help. Then my daughter-in-law hurt her back trying to help me in the shower. I felt I was upsetting their life. I said, ‘Find me a place we can afford that doesn’t seem too hospital-like.’ This place was small and a little shabby around the edges with a variety of ailments in the aged patients, but the people who ran it were experienced and good-hearted. So I said, “Okay, this is where I’ll live now. Just don’t forget to come see me now and then”.’ She’d made her peace about it and accepted it as her home. She’d sit in the lobby with her foot propped up and watch the world go by at the front door. But I think there are few elderly people who make such a change this willingly, and it’s very understandable, because home is home, home is safe, home is familiar.
Again, I wish you all the best. I’m sure you’ll find the helps you need. I know I wrote a lot, although I think in this one case it’s okay with Claudia; she had brought to my attention that you’d left a comment to my comment. It’s all I can say; I don’t know what else to suggest. And I now need to personally concentrate on a rather immediate matter, as I go in for a medical procedure tomorrow. I know I’ll be fine. But I’m getting old, too; just like Mom!
I know how difficult that must have been and how worried and stressed you were about breaking the news to your dear mom. I’m glad breaking the news to her is now behind you, my friend. We had to do that with my mom. It’s heartbreaking, but the right thing to do. A blessed New Year to you, Linda. xo
Happy New Year Claudia, Don and all your readers! It’s 2020 here and almost 2:00 in the morning. Claudia, I am holding you personally responsible for the fact that I’m just off to bed, having binge watched four episodes of Unbelievable on your recommendation.
Thank you, it’s superb!
Dee Dee x
Ah! My work is done here! I’m so glad you like it, Dee Dee.
P.S. I did have a short interval at Midnight to watch the Fireworks Display live from London!😀
Oh, good!
Real Italian pizza for supper and now we’re all sprawled out on cushions in front of our very tall windows waiting for the local fireworks to start. I had my cards done and 2020 promises to be hard work. (No surprise there.) That was just a bit of fun, but I’m actually very superstitious when it comes to the New Year. Everything has to be clean, all debts paid and any grievances dealt with.
I wish you and Don and all your readers a very happy New Year. Thank you Claudia for making this a good place to visit every morning.
to barbara w …
i think that sounds like a really great plan … to have debts paid, everything cleaned and all grievances dealt with before a new year begins. i am going to do that, too … and not wait until next new year’s eve … just a good way to live easier. thank you!
your evening sounds nice. happy, healthy new year to you and your family … and no too-hard work allowed!
kathy in iowa
Thank you Kathy for your kind words.
I truly wish all the best for you in the year to come.
Barbara
You are most welcome, Barbara. Happy New Year to you and yours!
Happy New Year, Clay and Don.
Sadly for us, my Dad suffered a stroke yesterday and the children and grands spent the day and evening at the hospital. Dad is responsive though and eating well. I’m grateful that we have the kind of family where everyone steps in to be with Dad, and to help and support Mom in rotation.
Sorry, didn’t catch that autocorrect…Claudia!
xo
to wendy t ….
sorry to hear that news about your father having a stroke, but glad he’s responsive and eating well and your family is close to help him, your mother and each other. will be praying for you all.
kathy in iowa
Thanks, Kathy. My siblings and I and all but one grandchild are close by, so we are all pitching in. Unfortunately, we decided on hospice today. My brother will move in with our parents for the duration.
I’m so sorry to hear this about your father, Wendy. The closeness you have as a family is a blessing at any time, but especially now. Sending healing thoughts and energy to your dad and love to your family, Wendy.
Thanks, Claudia. Dad will be put into hospice, but he’ll be home. My siblings and I and all our children except one are nearby so we all pitch in.
Happy New Year Claudia, I wish you and Don health and happiness for 2020 and beyond.
The same to you and yours, Miche!
Happy New Year Claudia and Don!! I can see how bringing Dove Cottage to life (and I love the significance of that name–all of the significances of it) would be a satisfying way to put an end to 2019. Thank you for your wishes for the new decade. I fervently hope they come to pass. Not just our own country, but all over the world we have dire need of a return to civil humanitarian values. Meanwhile, reading, art, friends, nutritious meals shared, and hot beverages can go a long way in making tough times bearable. And as you know of course, gratitude for the availability of them. Thank you for helping us get thru the last year. XO
If I didn’t have reading and art and my husband, I don’t know what I’d do! Blessings to you and yours on this New Year, Nora.
Yes I agree with Vicki
Frugality in 2020
How much do we truly need?
Exactly!
The cottage looks great. I can see how getting absorbed in that could be very soothing. I have Unbelievable on my watch list and will hopefully get to it soon. Happy New Year, Claudia. xo Laura
Happy New Year, Laura!
Happy New Year to you both. I too am praying for a return to a world we recognize. It’s never been perfect but there was always the hope that with respect for each other and a sense of dignity we could make it better. The past 3 years have been a constant work in reverse. One of the things that has given me hope is your blog where like minded people restore my faith in the future. I appreciate all you share and hope your new year is a happy and healthy one. 😊
Thank you so much for your kind words, Janet. Happy New Year!
Dear Claudia and Don, Happy New Year to you both! May this year bless you with love, happiness and lots of work! Looking forward to reading more about your life adventures into the coming year ahead. April xo
Thank you, April. The same to you and yours!