You might wonder where I have been all day. It is quite a story. The guys came to put up the lights. First thing was they broke the floodlight by dropping it on the floor in the hall. They couldn’t find the dustpan, but I was assured they had cleaned up the shards without it. I was skeptical for good reason as later I found several pieces, and I also found the dustpan they couldn’t. It was on the stairs, and they went right by it several times. The next problem was an order I had placed on-line with Amazon. I love Amazon and have bought many items from them, and this is the first glitch. Yesterday they verified my order by e-mail. Today I found another e-mail from Macy’s that they had sent my order. I hadn’t ordered from them. They were sending similar items, not quite the same and not the right number and the cost was higher. I called Amazon. They are flummoxed. The man I spoke to for a long time said that order was not given to Macy’s and is coming directly from Amazon. All the information I had given Amazon was there. The guy thought it could be a scam, and I have a virus. The e-mail was not a scam, and I explained about my MAC, but the tech guy just couldn’t figure out why the Macy’s order and wanted me to run a virus scan. I had to download Norton and am running it now, but there won’t be a virus. Amazon is on this as they haven’t ever seen anything like it before. They told me to have my sister, the recipient of the order, refuse the Macy’s order. I had an another problem with a different company but that was far more easily solved. I’m exhausted and I haven’t done a darn thing.

Today is beautifully warm with muted sun. I’ve been on the deck a couple of times just to enjoy the day and will go out again to fill the feeders. Gracie has been outside a good part of the day. She didn’t even take her morning nap.

I am so excited my Christmas lights will be lit tonight. I’ll go outside just to admire the house. Later I’ll bring up the dining room tree, the scraggly scrub pine I always put in the corner and decorate with vintage ornaments. The house will be a multi-day task, a few things at a time. I get excited when this time of year rolls around. Like so much of my family I am a Christmas bug as my mother used to say. We all caught it from her, and we’ll all glad we did.