30 Days - Day 11

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It made for a long day today as I was volunteering for all of the afternoon followed by the Volunteer Dinner. Pro bono, I put together the monthly financial statements for a recycling/recreation/community project group. Bigger than it sounds as there are quite a lot of transactions needing the right pocket to fall into for presentation to council, etc.

The photo above I took in the general area, I drove out a ways on the "arm" (i.e. localese for "bay") and took Ansa for a walk and found this old boat which begged of me a shot. I wanted to lie down and angle a little upwards but the dirt was not accommodating and it wouldn't look well to show up for the din with clay falling off me.

Food was cold plate which always leaves me hungry, don't know why. But a jolly evening, I escaped just before 8 as there were reports of moose gallivanting along the road, released from winter confinement in the hills perhaps.

Right now, I'm boiling up some kidney beans on the woodstove having soaked them for 24 hours. I'm going to make my famous chili and freeze many wee pots of it.

Oh yes, on Friday morning I have a semi-public read-through of my mystery dinner theatre play. I hadn't read it in 6 months as those who commissioned it wintered in Arizona. But now they're back and rearing to go with it. I did a read through by myself this morning and I must say I'm delighted with it.

Usually with such a time lapse I find many flaws with my writing but these characters hold their own and are hysterically funny and the whodunit was a bit of a shocker even to me.{grin}

I love surprising myself and I'm so glad that the project is back on stream.

Music and Friends

I was invited to a Christmas Eve "Ham & Lamb" last night at the home of dear friends. "Your appetite and chat" was what I was told when I asked what I could bring.

Two of the triplets (the two girls) - now 36 - were home and there was a large assortment of others including some 'come from aways' visiting for the holidays.

This Ham & Lamb dinner is a custom they've had forever. Dinner starts at around 11 p.m. and finished, in our case, at 4 in the morning.

Their house is incredibly decorated, a miniature village cast upon the stone hearth of the fireplace, a bunch of alders caught in a corner with pictures of their triplet grandchildren hanging from it. A huge Christmas tree selected and cut by the husband and his daughters a few days before and decorated with all their school hand-crafts. Gifts stacked so high they could just about swallow the tree.

One of the guests, a judge out of Toronto with a passion for Michael Collins that we sunk our teeth into for an hour or so, was celebrating his birthday Christmas Day so a little cake was presented to him on the cusp of midnight and we all sang "Happy Birthday" as one of the girls played her guitar.

I wanted to pinch myself a few times, the conversation and the talk of the old times was so perfectly marvellous. Most people there had traced their roots way, way back for centuries and could knit together all the delicate webs of family connections of their founding Irish forefathers and foremothers and the years of their arrival in Newfoundland from Ireland and on down through the years to present day.

The pile of us squeezed around that large dining room table and the laughter and the talk never ever stopped. I felt so privileged to be included amongst all these family members and old friends. When I mentioned this at one point, I felt tears spring to my eyes when the host said:

"We'll have none of that now. Ah, sure you're one of us!"

Yes I am.