Christmas 2014, an inside job

No outside lights or Christmas decorations for us this year. We haven't turned into a bunch of Scrooges. The contractors tell us they're going to be installing siding starting next week, I think. Removing old siding and installing new is kind of rough on wreathes and swags. The other thing that just occurred to me is that we're going to need to look for new ways of hanging outside decorations next year, since I don't think it will be easy to tap a nail into our new cementitious board siding. (Take that woodpeckers and rodents!) This is what our outside Christmas lights looked like last year, and, hopefully, next year, will look at least this good again.

lights of Christmas past

Photo by J. Harrington

Yesterday, the driveway looked much less festive, but more active.

a new roof for Christmas

Photo by J. Harrington

The non-structural cracks in the living room ceiling have been taped and mudded. Ceiling touch-up painting is planned for tomorrow. All in all, things could be worse, and may well get there, but for now, and maybe from now on, we're going to take our small victories where we can find them. (I hope my Better Half is sitting down when she reads that.) Our (much smaller) family once survived a major remodel of out only bathroom, so I suppose we'll make it this time too. As the song goes, "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." [Thanks once again, Mr. Zimmerman.] Fortunately, none of this affects baking or eating Christmas cookies. Now, if only the sun will come out and play for awhile...

Snow-flakes

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Out of the bosom of the Air,

      Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

Over the woodlands brown and bare,

      Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

            Silent, and soft, and slow

            Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take

      Suddenly shape in some divine expression,

Even as the troubled heart doth make

      In the white countenance confession,

            The troubled sky reveals

            The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,

      Slowly in silent syllables recorded;

This is the secret of despair,

      Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,

            Now whispered and revealed

            To wood and field. 

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