Friday, Dec. 28

Tossed and turned last night trying to go to sleep...just couldn't seem to get warm, even though there were plenty of blankets on the bed. I guess just the thought of all that snow outside chilled me. I don't know how folks are coping who have no heat due to a power outage.

We were up around 7:30. Mother had been awake for a while. Daughter slept a little later, until around 8:30.

I did stair stepping, resistance bands, and weights exercises after breakfast, and then got a new jigsaw puzzle ready for Mother and Daughter to work on while I got ready for the day.

The puzzle only has 300 pieces, so by the time I was dressed and back downstairs, they had gotten a good start on it. When Daughter abandoned it in favor of checking her social network page, I worked on the puzzle for a while.

After lunch, Mother continued to work on the puzzle, while Daughter and I went upstairs to try to read "The Night Before Christmas" on a recordable book. Our intention was to take turns reading the pages. Before we started, we read the book aloud for practice. We were flawless.

So, I began recording the first page, but I guess I read too slowly, because the tape ran out before I got to the end of the verse.

I didn't know that each page had it's own recording space, and that I was supposed to hit record, wait for the signal, read, and then hit stop. I thought the thing continued to record until we reached the end of the book.

So we read all the way through, and then went back to the beginning to listen. All that was there was the first verse, with the last sentence omitted, followed by a loud beep.

This struck Daughter and me as being hilarious, and we had a good laugh. We finally managed to compose ourselves to begin again. I made it through the first page without the recorder cutting me off. But when it was Daughter's turn, she blundered on a word, and we cracked up again.

We composed ourselves again, and she re-read the page. Now it was my turn. I hit record, but forgot to wait for the signal, so I was already talking when it beeped. "Oh, crap!" I said, which of course recorded.

This sent us into hysterics, so that we had to make a mad dash to the bathroom. It was hopeless after that, because we couldn't stop laughing. There was nothing we could do but set the book aside to try again later.

Back downstairs, Daughter worked with Mother on the jigsaw puzzle again, which they finished around 3:30. After that, Mother went to the couch for a nap, Daughter continued on her social network page, Hubbie (who in the throes of a head cold) watched a movie, and I figured out what to have for supper.

Supper was leftover chicken and dumplings, a choice of Lima beans or large butter beans, canned cranberry sauce, and sourdough bread and butter. Mother finished her nap in time to sit down to the meal.

Afterward, we watched TV, including "Happy New Year, Charlie Brown," and "She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown."

We followed that with a new Lifetime Movie Network movie, "Sexting in Suburbia." A teenager commits suicide by hanging herself in her room. Her mother sets out to find out what went wrong, and uncovers a startling secret.

Finished the evening watching a documentary called "Back to the Beginning," which takes a television journalist on an odyssey to the lands of the Middle East in order to follow the stories of the Old Testament.