Back to life, mostly

Here's my teeny tiny little nativity scene in the lower right hand corner under the teeny tiny little Christmas tree, and the stereo - O's pride and joy.

I am just getting over a bout with strep throat, with complications. Who knew that strep throat turned into swollen hand, swollen elbow, swollen hip, and swollen ankle just on the left side? I wish I'd have known it was strep - I would have asked for penicillin long before things started to go downhill (the snakeskin cocktail didn't work, by the way). Anyway, all is better now, except for the ankle, which is still somewhat swollen and now has tiny blisters erupting on it in the portions of skin that have been stressed by the swelling. No gory details here, just happy to be back among the living.

Christmas was uneventful for the two of us. We gave one another no gifts, except wishes for continued love, happiness, and the sweetness of life. We did finally get a painting to put on the wall above the sofa - one bare wall down, several more to go!



Our Christmas tree was quite small and not a real tree, but we do still have the two avocado trees that seem to be flourishing! The jade tree is surviving, although it's either shedding its leaves or replacing them at kind of an alarming rate. A "love plant" also found its way into the house. Happily, Celeste hasn't shown much interest in the plants, so maybe her weeding binge in her puppyhood was just a passing fancy. Apparently, she is not an aspiring gardener anymore. Whew! That's a relief to me - and to the plants too, I'm sure.




My purple winter reading selection has arrived! "The People's Act of Love" is the chosen book for the reading discussion. It came today and I got the first chapter finished. Along with it came "The Red Tent", "The Thirteenth Tale", and "Deception Point". We aren't posting comments until February, so that should give me time to read through it. I haven't belonged to a book discussion group for a very long time, so I hope it will be fun. Sometimes my point of view is 180 degrees out from most everyone else's, which tends to make things difficult.

Yesterday was O's birthday, and we had some friends and a few of his cousins over. I have some pictures of that. I made appetizers and everyone expressed their complete surprise that I was able to make them and that they were edible. They were not made in the typical peruvian style, and everyone here knows that people from the US never learn to cook (we only eat in restaurants, you know). Aside from me feeling very insulted by all that, things went well.









In the photo above, O is wearing birthday cake frosting on his face. It seems to be a tradition here, at least with this group, that when one blows the candles out on the cake someone comes from behind and pushes the birthday person's face into the cake. Last night they pushed him so hard that the whole cake nearly hit the floor. I don't find it a particularly fun tradition.

The living room and Celeste, post-birthday party: