It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like . . . Bedlam

It's been a hectic few weeks here at the Posy house. We ended November with a broken clothes dryer and a dicey sewer. The second week of December found our yard populated with plumbers and equipment for three days.

Just what you want in your yard two weeks before Christmas.

Luckily, we did not have to replace our drainage line, despite the fact that it is clay tile that is almost a century old. Our house predates the installation of sewers in our town by a few years, but I'm guessing they got on line fairly soon. The first sewer system in town was completed in 1908. And while they are still intact, those clay tiles allow tree roots to infiltrate everywhere there is a joint. With our big hackberry tree as well as shrubs, etc., our pipes were pretty well clogged with tree roots. That is more than you wanted to know about that, I'm sure, but suffice it to say that it was a big (read expensive) job, so I've told the husband to expect a roll of toilet paper as his Christmas gift. He thinks I'm kidding.

In between appliance deliveries, plumber visits, etc., I have managed to get all my Christmas baking finished. Five types of cookies and also mini peanut butter cakes. None of which I have pictures of because I popped them all into the freezer. I polled the family at Thanksgiving and got two requests for Italian wedding cookies and one for orange chocolate chippers. I also made a batch of cream cheese-walnut cookies, a favorite around here. The new cookies this year both came from the December issue of Country Living magazine: red velvet cookies and triple chocolate hazelnut.

I've been feeling a particular sense of urgency in my Christmas planning this year as I will be away from home the entire week before Christmas. I'm hoping to get home by evening on Christmas Eve if everything goes according to plan -- God willing and the creek don't rise (or, more appropriately, the snow don't fall). So even though, as I told the husband last night, I feel like I'm living on a knife's edge and it won't take much to push me over, it actually is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Mini nutcrackers standing guard in the entry hall.