Friday, Nov. 23

Planned to sleep late this morning, but Hubbie got up around 7:30 to go to a Black Friday sale, where he hoped to find a pre-lit Christmas tree for the living room. I warned him that he was probably too late for any bargains, but he thought that even if he had to pay a higher price, there'd be trees available in the size we wanted.

As I guessed, the door buster ones were gone, and he wasn't sure if I'd like the ones that were available, so he returned home without a tree. By this time, I was wide awake and downstairs enjoying coffee.

After breakfast, I did stair stepping, resistance bands, and weights exercises. While I did this, Hubbie accompanied Mother to our house. When I'd finished exercising, I gathered ingredients for making ham salad. Mother chopped onions, celery, and bell pepper, then cubed ham, and diced deviled eggs. I added pickle relish, mustard, spiced mustard, salad dressing, no-salt seasoning, paprika, and pepper, and Mother mixed the recipe together. I put the salad in the fridge to meld until tomorrow, when we'll have it for supper.

In the meantime, Hubbie took the autumn display off of the mantel. Once I was showered and ready for the day, I removed fall decorations from around the house and stored them. We hope to get a lot of the Christmas decorating out of the way this weekend.

After a lunch of leftovers, Mother retired to the couch for a nap, and Hubbie and I went in search of a Christmas tree. We started at the WDCS, where there were a few trees on sale. But the one in a size we needed was skimpy, with a skimpy number of lights on it. While we were there, though, we picked up a few grocery items we needed.

And then we went to the home improvement store, where I settled on one I think will work. It was hard to tell if I'd like it by viewing the sample, which was displayed on a high platform, and which had colored lights on it. But there was a boxed one with clear lights. I figured if it didn't have as many lights on it as I like, we could fill in the spaces with regular strands. We were pleasantly surprised when the tree rang up at almost $20 less than the sale price listed on it.

Back home, Mother was still snoozing, so we settled in to watch our favorite college football team play their last game of the season. They've had such a miserable season, that they will not be playing in a bowl game this year, but we were hoping they would be triumphant today. Unfortunately, they lost, but not by a wide margin.

While the game was playing, I prepared a supper of Thanksgiving dinner leftovers, a meal that was as delicious today as it was yesterday.

As soon as the game was over, Hubbie accompanied Mother to her house, and then he put the new tree up. We were delighted to see it is full and beautifully lit. It's going to save a lot of time in tangled light frustration. But we will still have to frustrate ourselves with tangled colored lights for the large tree.

Later, Hubbie went out to the camper to turn on the heater, since temps might plummet tonight. Unfortunately, the heater didn't work, so off we went to the WDCS to buy another one.

Finally, around 8 p.m., we were finished with today's tasks, and ready to sit back and watch the "National Dog Show." The dog with the strangest name was a breed from Mexico, called Xoloitzcuintli (pronounced show-low-eats-queen-tlee). It's a hairless, black dog, with very tall, pointed ears, and slanted eyes.

Speaking of canines, we noticed on our way back from errands tonight that a fox had been hit and killed on the road.