Well…a new year. Here we are. Where did December go, you ask? Not entirely sure. Anyway, here’s a dazzling photo of the sunrise way back on Dec. 22nd. I’m pretty sure Kevin must have taken the picture…
And then there was Christmas…it all went OK, and here’s just one photo from Christmas day, me with my beautiful new ukulele that Kevin gave me for Christmas, along with my festive headband from Randy. Kevin has his traveling guitar, and I know we we played a little bit on that day and I’m positive it was highly entertaining. Kevin also gave me a lovely strap for it.
About that ukulele…it’s still sitting there on the floor next to the hearth. How have I not managed to take the time to practice? I have high hopes for today…OK, moderate hopes. Not moving too fast today.
There was a spectacular moon on January 3rd, and I first noticed it when I was in the fenced yard with Riley, as it was just peeping up over the shoreline. By the time I’d rushed through the house to get a photo from the yard, it was already up a little bit and of course it was about two million times bigger than it looks here.
A couple of hours later, and you could clearly see the planet Jupiter to the right of the moon. Such an amazing sight.
I have high hopes for the new year, and I guess we’ll see about that. I wrote a whole lot on a new “Gracetalk” and finished it months ago and now I need to pare it down and get motivated to perform it somewhere. I also want to practice my ukulele. And I started taking a class at the Art Association with my friend Erica; in the class we’ll paint a pet.
My pet will be Lester, of course. We had our first of eight lessons on Tuesday evening. It lasted two and a half hours and the time flew by…we learned a fair amount about the color wheel and mixing acrylic paints to create new colors and it was way more challenging than I’d thought it’d be. It made me pretty sad that I’d never asked Dad to teach me to paint. But there’s nothing to do about that now, except to try on my own. In the class, which is taught by a cheerful woman who must be older than 17 but doesn’t look it.
Weighing me down a lot lately has been Lester – he was diagnosed with Hyperthyroidism in the fall and we’ve been giving him medicine but he’s just so thin. It’s a daily struggle to try to get him to eat; we’ve bought about a million new kinds of food, some of which he loves but then abandons but then sometimes seems to like it again. The vet said that maybe it isn’t his thyroid, it could be lymphoma which is common for cats, and in that case Les would die. But she re-checked his blood last week and his thyroid level was elevated so we’re increasing his medicine and so now we just wait and see. It’s just worrying. Plus, Mom and Amy and I are going to Florida in a week, leaving on Jan. 21st which is suddenly coming right up, and I worry about leaving Les for that long. But I rationally know that Kevin will take good care of him.
Whew. It’s always something.
Ok then,
2026 G.