November at My House

This is Daughter #2 standing in our front yard. She's wearing a very large, hooded cloak that a friend of hers made, but badly. So, I had to take it apart, cut back the HUGE shoulders that had been built into the cloak, and re-put the hood on, RIGHT-SIDE UP. Her friend had put it on upside-down. The fabric was 3 layers thick, for warmth, and lined in purple. And she paid for the materials, but not the labor, which was a good thing, because her friend really didn't do a very nice job. I mean, this young lady sews all the time, and she couldn't tell she put the hood on upside down? C'mon! Anyway, doesn't Daughter look so nice and witchy? In front of our witchy-type cottage? The sky was actually much cloudier and grey, perfect weather as far as I'm concerned. Daughter #1 took the pics.Daughter #2 doesn't really have a deep-grey line going up the middle of her-- that's a little crabapple tree she's hiding behind to make Grandson laugh.

This is my grandbaby standing by the falling-over fence in our front yard. He's 4, and we measured him against me yesterday when he came over for Thanksgiving. The top of his head comes to the bottom of my boobs, and I'm 5'4". And, no, it's not because my breasts sag to my belly. They're actually very perky D's. I'm kinda proud of 'em. And proud of my very tall grandson.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I hope you all had a good one. We did. I made 6 pumpkin pies Tuesday night, and 3 apple pies Wednesday night, and got our 21.56-pound turkey in the oven at 7:05 Thanksgiving a.m., sharpish. I got up at 6:30, so got its butt all nice and stuffed in time to get some more sleep before starting the serious cooking.

What did y'all have on your tables? We had what my Son #1 calls our "generic holiday feast"-- large meat-thingy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli, corn, cranberry sauce (only at Thanksgiving, though), and stuffing (also only at Thanksgiving, unless we have a turkey as a large meat-thingy at another holiday meal). Dessert. Meaning pies. Oh, yeah, and giblet gravy.

Sent the sons and grandson home with turkey and mashed potatoes and pie. Son #2 wanted the mashed potatoes. They were real, not boxed. All nice and lumpy like we like em.

Oh, boy! Just had some excitement!

We have a security door on our screened porch, and it just got pulled open and a flashlight shone through the lace on our front door. Thought it was one of the Daughters come back for something (they'd just left about 20 minutes earlier with a friend come down from Oregon for a visit), but my big dog was barking.

IT WAS A COP! ON MY PORCH! SHINING HIS FLASHLIGHT ON MY LIT-UP FRONT DOOR! ON MY PORCH!!!

Forgive me. I should have said, "POLICE OFFICER!"

I called off the dog, told her to stay (more excitement-- she stayed! So now our police department thinks we have a well-trained, obedient dog!), and said, "Is it my Daughters? Are my Daughters all right? Where are they???"

Yes, my Daughters were fine (how did he know? I think he was just telling me that to keep me calm so he could ask me ABOUT THE MAN WHO JUST JUMPED OVER MY NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS' FENCE!), but did I know anything about a man who was just seen jumping over my next-door neighbors' fence?

It took every ounce of my self-control (which I don't have much of) not to grab him by his bullet-proof vest and yell at him for scaring me so much about the Daughters. He was gracious enough to apologize to me.

But, no, I did NOT know about a man jumping over the next-door neighbors' fence (not the penis-thumping one; these ones are on my other side).

Keep in mind, this was at night. Almost late. (In California, late isn't until after the news at 10 is over.)

And how come an Australian can be an officer of the law in California? But he was way nicer than our usual ones. Very polite. I guess he hasn't lived here long enough to know how he's supposed to sound yet. Maybe he's an Exchange Officer. Or maybe I made him nervous and he didn't want to set me off.

I followed him out to the sidewalk, and there stood the neighbors, who were very, very skittish, and looking around a lot, and who talked reallyreally fast, even faster than Californians usually talk (which is only reallyfast). But I think that was just because they were scared.

We established amongst ourselves that no one jumped over MY fence, and that our dogs only bark at people, not at cats or each other (we were lying through our chattering teeth about that last one), and that we'd keep our eyeballs peeled and let each other know if we saw anything, from now on. (I don't know about them, but there's no way in hell I'm heading over to their place if I hear anything-- we didn't exchange phone numbers because this is California and we're all snobs, or at least very cautious, about who we hand out our numbers to-- I'll just call the Australian police officer. Probably they were thinking the same thing about me.)

I guess something good came of it-- after living in this cottage 3 years, I finally know the neighbor's names. And what they look like close up.

So, hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and Black Friday! I know I did!