Uh Oh - Virus

It's a beautiful day in Iowa! Sunny and 48, no wind. This winter has been unbelievable so far.

Tim has been hauling corn, and they have one bin empty so they're cleaning it out. Usually they don't haul corn until later after clearing away snow from around the bins.

We had a nice Christmas with my mom in Indiana, getting back last night.

My laptop has a virus so I'm using Bill's. I'll do a longer post when I get organized. May need to run mine to a computer repair place this afternoon but wanted to let you know. I think I got the virus when downloading music using ITunes. My cousin showed me how to do that so I can use the IPod I recently got from Diane when she upgraded to a new one. Darn technology!

Bill has a nasty cold and it'll be a miracle if I don't get it after riding in the car together for 10 hours yesterday! (washing hands a lot)

Christmas Eve

Bill, Mom and I went to a Christmas Eve service tonight - quite a production. This church is very large. There was a gathering area that had a bunch of these really pretty Christmas trees. Afterwards we drove around and looked at Christmas lights. One home always has lots of lights synchronized to music. See video below! Hope you are having a nice Christmas weekend and remembering that Jesus' birth is the reason for the season. Luke 2:1-20

25 Days of Small Gifts

I mentioned recently that I've been reading the blog Reluctant Entertainer. Here's part of a recent post there with some good ideas for all year round.

“25 Days of Small Gifts.”

Here are a few ideas:

-Buy coffee for the person behind you in line.

-Over tip the breakfast waitress.

-Write a thank you note.

-Strike up conversation with someone in the grocery store.

-Take another family a “surprise” dinner and leave it at their front door (and include the recipe!)

-Over pay your babysitter.

-Offer to help remove groceries from the cart to the car for an elderly person.

-Have your kids tape a little money to a vending machine and write a note that says, “Candy Bar on US!”

-Go to lunch with a neglected friend.

-Help a coworker scrape the frost off their windshield at the end of a long day.

-Buy lunch for the person in front of you.

-Offer to do the dishes when it’s your kid’s “dish day.”

-Give a back rub to someone in your home.

-Shovel (or blow) your neighbors’ sidewalks too.

-When playing games with your children, let them win.

-Watch It’s a Wonderful Life, together as a family or with friends.

-Slow down and prioritize a date night with your spouse.

-Encourage your kids to share musical talents with the elderly.

-Hug a person.

The list can go on and on …

Don’t you think this is a great idea to share with your family? It gets us thinking more about others, less about ourselves.

Caramels

This year rather than spending lots of time making 75+ Christmas cards, I've been doing some other things. Several people like my caramels I make at Christmas time so this year I decided to use my stamping supplies to make toppers and package them cute for gift giving. Bill helped me wrap them which was great! He does it so you just twist them and the paper unrolls.

I did a post with the recipe and pictures last year on Dec. 15th. If you want to see it, look in the right column for the Recipes label, click on Recipes and scroll down to Dec. 15th. The post is titled "In the Kitchen". I notice this time last year in that post I was talking about being careful on the ice. This year it looks like our area will be having a Brown Christmas which is unusual.

There's a guy here in town that likes to give little things to people randomly. This past fall during harvest he gave me a caramel and said he buys 80 at a time for $35 from the Amish. I told him I'd have to give him some of mine at Christmas - so one of these is for him! The first time I met this guy was several years ago when Mom & Dad and I were here visiting in the Fall. A friend of Glenn's let me take a wagon of corn to the elevator with his pickup and Diane was with me. This guy went down the line of people waiting to dump their loads giving us water or pop from his cooler.

**That trip to town with the wagon could be a blog post by itself. Diane had her learner's permit and I let her drive while we were waiting in line - inching forward slowly. When we got to the scales, we didn't get on there straight and a guy had to help us. Dad was not happy that I had let Diane drive! Now that I live here, I wonder what all the others in line were saying about us!

Around Town

Ok, I was just in town mailing a package at the post office and saw the funniest thing! We just have a flashing red light in the middle of town (no stop lights - it's great!!). We have so little traffic in town that most of the time you "could" walk across the street from the library to the bank or wherever and not even look to see if any cars are coming before crossing! (almost) Well, just now this woman was stopped at the flashing light - in the middle of town - and texting and totally didn't have a clue that not one but TWO vehicles were behind her because normally you could do that, no problem! ha ha!! And, they were both waiting patiently - no honking even! :) Bill always tells me to have patience like that (I'm getting better/slower), and has always said that here you can stop and have a conversation with someone in another vehicle in the middle of town in the road and people will just wave and go around!

For those that used to live here, I took this picture so that you could see that Ropa's, our only restaurant, is being torn down. That corner is going to look different - already does.
Overheard in our little grocery the other day, someone was picking up a pizza and said "I sure hope you never close or I would starve to death"! The grocery now does pizza, broasted chicken and some other things for carry out.

I was going to get "stuff" done today but Diane called this morning and wants me to run to Ft. Dodge with her and Camry this afternoon. She needs to pick up something for Todd's ice fishing shack and wants to go to a "big" grocery. So off we go! Things will get done, right? (I'm taking my old Amy Grant Christmas CD that Diane and I always listened to in the car when she was like 8-12 or so!)

Interesting Experience

Last Fri. I did something I had not done before. I volunteered to take a lady to her chemo treatment in Mason City. I'll call her "G". The hospital there is very good and is sometimes called "Little Mayo" and is affiliated with Mayo Clinic. It's about a 2 1/2 hour drive from here so for those that have to go for several treatments it can be difficult just getting there.

This is a woman who turns 60 this month and had never had a mammogram but found the lumps herself. She is a teacher and has told her story to those she works with and her students hoping it will encourage others to be sure to get their mammograms and other preventative check ups which is also why I'm blogging about it and sharing her story.

We left her house in Emmetsburg at 8:00 to be there by 10:00. She first had blood work, then a talk with the dr. where he checked her blood levels which were ok for her treatment. She was to have a 4 hour treatment, but this day also needed blood which added an hour and a half. They have small alcoves large enough for the patient's reclining chair and a chair for their driver/guest and a TV with floor to ceiling windows overlooking a courtyard with some trees, birdhouses and a small waterfall. There were 11 of these. Very nice. They bring around a cart at lunch time with sandwiches and chips for the patient. "G" likes their egg salad sandwich and was able to have that again.

I went out for lunch. I wanted to see what the Mason City mall had in it. I was driving around and found this cozy looking coffee shop which had a "Lunch" sign in the window so I stopped there and had a chicken salad croissant.

The mall was nice and I did find a few more little gifts - one I will post about after Christmas! I was gone for a couple of hours which gave "G" some time to doze.

"G" was nice to show me things like her port under her skin where they can easily stick the needle in each time for her treatments, talked to me about how nice the American Cancer Society is and how much they do for people that you would've never known and talked about her hair loss and wigs and hats, etc. She just kind of wanted me to know how it all works. She and I had a lot in common: she has been divorced and single for many years like I was, has bought a home where things are handy and in a good location etc. thinking of her later years - all things I had thought of. She faces surgery in about a month and then radiation treatments. Her dr. says she has an 80% chance of being in remission after treatments.

I'm thankful to not be working so that I can help Bill in spring and fall (and whenever) which I love, but also want to do things like this when I have a chance. I hope I'll get to be "G's" driver again. Just wish I lived closer so I could share some meals with her! And chocolate - we're both chocoholics!

(: a person who craves or compulsively consumes chocolate) ha ha! I had to look up how to correctly spell chocoholic! I read this definition to Bill and he said "we know what they are - we are them!" But, sadly, "G" says that chocolate doesn't taste good to her right now - but she thinks maybe that's a good thing. :)