Happy New Year! We are off to a very soggy, foggy start to our new year. Here is the scene in our back yard as I write this entry at 12:36 p.m. Is it day? or night?  It rained overnight, nearly one inch. The yard, not frozen, has turned into a muddy mire from the dogs. Lovely. But, we are cozy and happy in our house. We just finished lunch of champagne [to toast the New Year as we went to bed before it arrived last night] and salad with poached pears and gorgonzola cheese. We just watched some of the Rose Parade. It’s pretty, but really what is the point of wasting all those gorgeous flowers? What happens to all the floats tomorrow? Truly a waste in my eyes.

Rick is out in the kitchen starting a new batch of cheese. Soon I will return to my Zelda game on our new Nintendo Wii. I need a few hours of fantasy!

A more thoughtful, deep post regarding the New Year to follow tomorrow. Until then, enjoy your first day of the year!

Above: Doris visits the front yard on Christmas Day

It was an interesting morning which began with a phone call from my neighbor Kim. She’d been out for a walk with her two dogs and they led her to the storm drain grating at the foot of our other neighbor’s driveway. When she looked in she saw a huge bear staring back up at her. She was worried that it was stuck and couldn’t get out; what should she do? Should she contact Friends of the Bears? My first thought was that it was just looking for a place to hibernate, but then again with heavy rains expected tonight and tomorrow I sure didn’t want a drowned bear on my conscience in case she really was stuck.

So I took a look for myself with flashlight in hand. I could hear heavy breathing when I got to the grate. I peeked in. Yup, there she was looking back at me with big black eyes. Oh hello beary-boo, I crooned softly to her. are you stuck? She looked like she was trying to climb up the concrete wall. She looked back at me woefully and retreated a little bit back into the largest drain pipe. I couldn’t tell if she was stuck or not. I walked back to the house to get Rick.

After getting down on our hands and knees to peer into the grating, we could see that three drains come together at this point with a small area in the middle. Rick went down to the drain outlet by the creek that runs in back of our house and looked in. When he shone the flashlight up the pipe he could see a pair of eyes staring back at him. Well, he said to Kim and I, she’s not the only bear in there! At that point I knew she must be Ursa with her two cubs, the bears that do the twilight bear parade.

I decided to go back to the house and get some suet that I had bought for the birds [but can’t put out because of the bears] and see if she would venture into the middle area to get it. At least that would allow us to see if she were truly stuck or not.

At this point we were all peering down at her, and she up at us. I dropped a piece of suet down and within a few minutes out she came. So, not stuck at all. She thought the suet was pretty tasty so I dropped another piece down to her. She looked up at us and was making wierd snuffly noises, more like huffing. Hmm…I thought, that doesn’t sound good. We all put our faces closer to the grate. Quicker than any of us could even think, the bear jumped up and gave a mighty ROAR right in our faces! YIKES. Scared the beejezzus out of us! Thank goodness for heavy grates! Scary. So much for all that oh poor beary-boo talk.

I heard other noises behind Ursa and sure enough, here came a cub to see what all the noise and excitement was all about. Usra left as if to say to her cub, think nothing of those stupid humans looking down at you. The cub came too late to get any of the suet; Ursa had eaten it all. We got a good look at this yearling cub and I’m convinced it was the sweet shy cub in my previous blog post and photos. She’s grown A LOT since then but still had fuzzy baby fur instead of the sleek coat of her mother. She just looked up at us sweetly. No more surprises there.

Kim walked down to our neighbor that loves the bears and found out that their son had seen the bears down in the drain last week and called the Friends of the Bears. They said that if the bears can get out alright to just do nothing. So, that’s what we did. I feel better knowing they aren’t going to drown. I would miss them. Now it makes sense why we see them where we do so often, as it’s right on their exit route from the drain.

All in all it doesn’t look like too bad of a place to stay. A nice bear cave. Unless of course it rains heavily…

First of all it’s my birthday today. Happy Birthday to Me! It’s not really a big deal, just another day. It comes every year like clockwork, right in between Christmas and New Year. No stopping it. I don’t feel any older; nor wiser.

We had a very nice Christmas with my sister and Mom. We drove up last Thursday to pick up Mom. It’s only 3.5 hours away, but doing the up and down trip in the same day is a bit tiring. Traffic wasn’t too bad and the weather co-operated by not raining or snowing. On Friday we shopped for Mom’s Christmas present to herself, a new plasma television. We found one and got a good deal on it since it was “open box,” meaning someone had returned it to the store. It did not appear to have even been set up since the remote had not been used and we had them plug it in and test it. It seemed fine, so we bought it.

Saturday found us driving up to Warwick to pick up our Buche de Noel [Christmas yule log cake] from Jean-Claude’s bakery. We had heard it was so special that people drove from miles around to get one. It looked yummy! The rest of the day was spent just enjoying each other’s company, preparing dinner and waiting for my sister’s phone call about which train connection she was able to make from Penn Station. She arrived just in time for dinner and it was a short drive to the station to pick her up. Dinner was Coq au Vin [chicken in wine] and we had picked up some small treats while at the bakery for dessert.

On Sunday we had planned to drive into the city and see the tree in Rockefeller Center. Everybody thought we were crazy for going in on Christmas Eve and advised us against it. We were all tired anyway, so we opted for a drive to Warwick and the little town of Sugarloaf instead and a lunch out. It was enough of an outing for everyone. We had quiche and salad for dinner and bowled right in our livingroom with our new Nintendo Wii.

The bears also cooperated and made their appearance. Both sets! The usual nearly-dark parade of the one bear with her two cubs in the woods behind our house, and the bear that was at our bird feeder most recently made a particularly brazen visit to our neighbor’s front yard, then on to ours and finally right down the middle of our street on Christmas Day. We know it was the same bear as she has something wrong with her right hind foot or leg. She limps and also holds it up when standing still.

Our prime rib dinner on Christmas was the best we’ve ever had. Cooked to perfection and very tasty! We didn’t exchange gifts this year, but we enjoyed watching the dogs and cats open and play with theirs. Our Buche de Noel was a huge disappointment. After looking so wonderful, the taste did not live up to our expectations. The frosting was a buttercream, and almost pure butter. Way too rich. Almost like eating pure grease. Sigh. We tried but it wasn’t good. We won’t do that again.

We dropped my sister off at the train station yesterday morning on our way to take my Mom back. We set up Mom’s new TV and she was thrilled with it. Until that is we got home about 5:00 p.m. and while talking to me on the phone, the screen of her brand new TV went totally blank and black. AARGH!!! Must be defective as we tried everything and it would not power up. So, tomorrow Rick will head back out and pick up another TV and spend the night at Mom’s. Even though the TV appeared to be fine in the store and it was working for several hours at Mom’s house, it was obviously not right. We will never trust “open box” again. Wouldn’t you think they would know if it had been returned because it was defective??

The other disappointing news is that Bart is not eating. We’ve been spoon feeding him a chicken and rice gruel but he doesn’t really want it. He is really heading downhill in a hurry. I just hope he can make it through the weekend. It’s so sad to watch. We took him with us yesterday on the ride to Mom’s. He was happy that when we arrived at her house we were greeted with a couple of inches of snow. He wandered around eating snow and enjoyed his time alone with us and being away from the other dogs. Three dogs in three months is just too much to bear. But, it has to be faced.

All in all, it was a lovely family holiday and I hope my sister and Mom enjoyed it as much as we did. It was nice to be together for Christmas after twenty some years of spending it apart.

On to the New Year!

In Santa Claus, that is. I don’t remember how old I was, but I remember the exact moment like it was yesterday. It was after the photos below were taken, and most of these were taken in 1957 and 1958. Just look at the glee on my face as I see my new doll carriage! I don’t look big enough to push it properly, do I? I remember the Christmas my sister and I got matching Patty PlayPal dolls, they were great. The next photo is my sister and I with our grandfather. Our grandparents played a huge role on Christmas Day. As if all the presents from Santa and my parents weren’t enough, the package parade would start anew when my grandparents came over. Talk about overload! We were quite spoiled as children.

I remember Christmas as being magical. The glittering Christmas tree with all the tinsel and bright lights. Baking cookies and decorating them, then leaving some out for Santa to munch on. It hardly seemed like I could stand to wait for Christmas Day. Finally the day arrived and we awoke to find a tree bursting with presents beneath it. After all the packages were opened, I would always put everything back under the tree to be taken out and played with or admired for the next three or four days. It was quite the ritual to sit under the tree and draw out my presents one by one to give each one individual attention.

My sister popped my Santa Claus bubble. One Christmas she came to me the week before and told me that Mom & Dad were really Santa and that she had seen what we were getting in their closet. She took me to their closet and opened the door. Sure enough, there were two beautiful canopy doll beds. I was crushed. No Santa? No magical sleigh with eight reindeer flying through the sky? OH NO! For years I resented her for telling me. But really, I can’t put the blame on her. She was older and wiser than I. It was just a matter of time before I would recognize my Mom’s handwriting on the thank you note from Santa for the cookies, or some child at school would laugh at me for still believing.

I often wonder in today’s modern world how any child can really believe in Santa past the age of two! They all seem to be so grown up much earlier than we were. Such a shame. It was fun while it lasted and I look back on those years with very fond memories.

Withouth any snow of my own, I thought I’d share a gorgeous photo sent to me by my good friend Linda in Denver. Like I said in my previous post, I can’t remember it ever doing this at Christmas when we lived there. Isn’t is beautiful? Thanks, Linda for sharing! By the way, that “lump” is the car that didn’t quite make it up the driveway! How do you feel about all this snow now Linda?