Friday, Dec. 21

Happy first day of winter! The winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. We can now look forward to lengthening daylight as we inch toward spring.

We were up around 7:30 this morning, and I did stair stepping, resistance bands, and weights exercises after breakfast. Later, Hubbie accompanied Mother to our house, but we didn't accomplish much before noon. I felt lazy, and just wanted some down time after all the activities of the past weeks.

Got a call this morning from a staff member at our local newspaper informing me that I'd won the $50 prize for this week's word search puzzle contest. Nice surprise. Mother won the contest a few months ago. Now it's time for Hubbie to win, so we'll now submit puzzles in his name.

Goofed off until lunchtime, and then after we'd eaten, Mother went to the couch for a nap, and Hubbie ran errands...Christmas shopping on Mother's behalf, I think.

I finally got ready for the day, and then, on a whim, I decided to go online to the department store that has a December promotion going on where customers can enter code numbers from the backs of metal buttons for possible prizes. I'd gotten two of the buttons yesterday, when I shopped for a gift for Hubbie, but figured there wasn't much of a chance for winning. One of the buttons was not a winner, but lo and behold the other one netted me $10.

We should have been stopping by the store every day, since you don't have to buy anything to get the buttons. But this afternoon, after I dropped by the newspaper office to pick up my winnings, we stopped by the store, and we each got two buttons apiece. We can only enter two of them a day, so we have enough for two days. We'll pick up more tomorrow, and those will take us to Dec. 24, the ending date of the promotion.

Spent quite a bit of time at the newspaper office, where one of staff members snapped
a photo of me to include with the puzzle contest Monday. I'm not keen on having my mug shot in the paper, but it'll be a really small one, so maybe no one will notice.

Visited quite a while with one of the reporters, who has a story on the front page of the paper tonight about a baby with some sort of birth defect that will not allow her rib cage to grow as she does. Right now the baby is on oxygen, but she is due to go in for surgery in January to have an adjustable rod added to her rib cage.

When the rod is inserted, the doctors will break her ribs on that side. Then four months later, she'll have the same procedure on the other side. After that, she has to go in every six months to have the rod adjusted for her growth, and she'll have to do this until she's fifteen years old.

Then we talked about being so late getting our Christmas cards in the mail. This inspired him to tell me about sending a card to his cousin in another state, whom he communicates with only once a year. The cousin is now in prison, because he became involved with a woman who got him on drugs. Then the two stole his grandfather's 18-wheeler truck and drove it until it ran out of gas. To get money, they robbed a gas station. For their efforts, the young man got a prison term.

All this time, Hubbie was waiting in the van. "I thought they'd decided to put you to work," he joked, when I got back.

Back home, I relaxed until Mother finished her nap. Since I'd forgotten to present her with today's twelve days of Christmas gift this morning, I did it now. Today's gift was a gift card to a grocery store we frequent. I figure she can use it to help pay for medications.

This afternoon, we watched the movie, "A Christmas Carol," starring George C. Scott, a version of the movie recommended by Sis, and one which I ordered online recently. I have lots of versions of this classic story, but I don't have the one starring Patrick Stewart, or the one starring Reginald Owen.

Later, we had breakfast for supper...scrambled eggs, biscuits, and gravy. Hubbie accompanied Mother home afterward, and then around 6:30, he and I went to the old movie theater downtown to see the new James Bond movie, "Skyfall."

There were only about 50 people there, but among them were our dentist and his lady friend, and a couple who are friends of ours. The wife worked in the same building as we did before we all retired. This couple is scheduled to spend two weeks in Hawaii in January, so they are pretty excited.

The movie is one recommended by Hubbie's daughter and son-in-law. It's a definite guy movie, with lots of action, daring exploits, explosions, car chases, etc. It wouldn't be a movie I'd pay full price for in the regular theater, but it was okay for $2 admission.

We were back home at 9:30, and finished the evening watching a little TV.