The day is relatively warm at 42°. A bright sun is here but is sharing the sky with clouds. I can see a few hanging brown oak leaves swaying a bit. All in all, it is a pretty day.

Henry is doing better. He longer scratches his ear though he still shakes his head but hardly as often. Now I’m worried about Nala. She has been sick twice this morning. I hope it is a two on and done, perhaps an upset stomach as Henry blew my vet budget, nearly $400.00, and the vet is pay as you go. I’m keeping a close eye on Miss Nala.

My mother gave each of us a box of ornaments. They were some of the ornaments which hung on the Christmas tree every year when we were kids. They are colored glass, and each has a decoration etched in white. I always put them on my tree. They are memories.

The other day I saw a house with a picture window covered in white stenciled decorations. My memory draws flew open, and I remembered the picture window in our house when I was a kid. We’d tape on the stencils, dab them with a white sort of removable paint and carefully peel them off after everything had dried. The window was covered in Santa Claus, a bell, a tree, a snowflake and a candy cane. They seemed to shine in the sunlight. At night, the window and the stencils were highlighted in orange from the bulbs on the candelabra on the window sill below.

I remember the cardboard Santas and the cardboard trees. We’d tape them on walls or on other windows. Before taping, we’d peel off the yellow tape from years before. It came off easily but left permanent outlines on the back. They were like tree rings. We knew how many years we’d used those cardboard decorations.

Our tree stood in the corner between two windows. That was a good thing. I remember when the tree fell. My brother and I grabbed it and stopped it from falling completely to the floor. Our parents were out so we were forced to make-do. We each took turns holding up the tree until our parents got home. Then it was my father to the rescue!! He grabbed heavy duty string and wound it around the trunk while we held up the tree. He then attached the ends of the strings to each of the windows. The tree was safe, secure. Many, many years later my dog Shauna, my first boxer, pulled down my tree a couple of times. I knew the solution. I wound heavy duty string around the trunk and attached one end of the string to a window and the other end to a nail on the bottom of the fireplace mantle. My father had taught me well.

This entry was posted on December 7, 2025 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.