Tuesday, Dec. 7

Today is Pearl Harbor Day, so the first thing Hubbie did was hang the flag on the well house. Hubbie was around when Pearl Harbor was bombed, but I was about a month from being born.

Up around 8 a.m., and did a treadmill session and weights exercises after breakfast. Mother came over mid-morning and continued working on Christmas cards for Caring Hands Hospice. Later, I helped her choose paper suitable for inserts in the cards, as well as searched out colored card stock for making more cards at the card-making session tomorrow.

I got an e-mail from the Caring Hands Hospice coordinator today advising me that the group will meet at 1 p.m. tomorrow at an independent living center, which means that Mother and I will be able to attend after the Water Babes Christmas party.

After lunch, I put together a gift basket for a "dirty Santa" exchange at the Water Babes party. Included in the basket is a loaf of yeast bread, a jar of cherry preserves from the Amish store in Branson, MO, and an assortment of hot chocolate packets and hot apple cider packets.

Mother baked the bread from a frozen loaf I bought at the WDCS. I was perfectly willing to bake the bread, but she said that the day she couldn't cook anymore was the day she'd hang up her spurs (or something to that effect).

So she's going to bake another loaf tomorrow to include in a gift basket for a "dirty Santa" gift exchange at the Master Gardener's Christmas party Thursday. Besides the bread, this basket will include a jar of the cherry preserves, a couple of packets of hot chocolate and a couple of packets of hot cider mix, as well as a bird house and a package of birdseed.

The large baskets being used for the gift packs are ones we bought at a discount store and a flea market.

I'd bought red "grass" at the everything's a dollar store for the gift baskets, but discovered I needed more, so Hubbie and I went to that store to buy more. It takes about two packages for a large basket. Fortunately, I'd bought several packages of cellophane bags a few months ago. So the baskets placed in cellophane bags and tied with big red bows make for very presentable gifts.

Before I put together the Water Babes gift, I prepared an apple pie for the oven...I give one of these to Daughter each year for her birthday, which I'll give to her this Saturday, when she and Grandkids come for a visit.

After that, I finally sat down to read last Sunday's newspaper, as well as today's issue of our local newspaper. That took me up to suppertime. Tonight, we had leftover pork roast and veggies.
Mother went home afterward, and I went to the college for a session with my student.

Tonight, we learned the plurals of words, as well as new words, like waiter and waitress, doctor and nurse, factory worker, and taxi driver. The object of this teaching approach for English-as-a-second-language students is to help them understand common words and phrases that they'll need for a job, for making a doctor appointment, for eating in a restaurant, etc.

In this session, we also covered how to respond to "what's your name," "what's your address," and "what's your telephone number."

The student has difficulty with the letter "v" as in "driver." We worked quite a while on this word, which she kept wanting to pronounce as "dry-ber." I finally had her hold her upper lip up while pronouncing the letter. Her daughter, who accompanied her tonight, found this to be hilarious.

We also had to work quite a bit on the word "address," and our state's name. "Waitresses" was a bit difficult, too. But her daughter wrote down all the words she needs to practice.

And we worked on hearing the sounds of letters, as in the "e" in the word beat, and "e" in the word bet, or "a" in mate, and "a" in mat, and learning which sounds were the same, and which were different. "Sock" and "suck," for instance are close in sound.

Got back home around 7:15 and watched Hubbie sleep through TV programs, while I half watched a show and played on my laptop. When he woke up, we watched a PG-rated, 2006, true story movie on DVD called "Follow the River,'' starring Ellen Burstyn and Sheryl Lee.

In frontier days, a woman, her sister, and her six-year-old son, are stolen by Shawnees from their home and taken to an Indian encampment, where they learn to blend with the natives. On the way, she gives birth to a baby that she has to allow an Indian wet nurse to care for, because she herself hasn't enough milk to keep the baby from starving. Finally, the woman becomes determined to return home at the first opportunity, and convinces another woman to join her in an escape.

This movie, which meets with mixed reviews, is one I picked up in a bargain bin. It's an okay movie, but apparently doesn't come up to the standards of the book its based on, though I haven't read the book.