Christmas is busting out all over

Tom with Father Christmas

This is the weekend when we all go mad with Christmas shopping. It seemed less mad in Mahone Bay where we ran into Father Christmas today. He was so cheerful and let me fawn over his costume, which was splendid. He and Tom looked handsome together with all that white hair between them. (You know you're old when you look like Santa Claus).

We bought some gifts at the Pottery place, whose owners we liked a lot, and at the Vintage Store, which was filled with clothes from the sixties. I am not the same size as I was in the sixties. They had gaudy costume jewelry--I love those rhinestone broaches and matching earrings. The salesladies in that store were also my vintage.

There's a decor store called My Own Bay, that my sisters would have loved.  Fat puffy pillow ticking pillows and one black one with white lettering that read, "Go forward; there's no going back," and a brass clock that looked like a scale and black wire baskets. You know the kind of store.

We also went to the shoe store where all the shoes were European--I take a size 40. I need winter boots.  And the yarn store from knitting heaven, with yarn from special, very special sheep, that were nurtured in very special places and so the price of the yarn was also very special. I bought something for George. If I want knitting help, I can go there on Wednesdays.  They have an old table with mismatched chairs around it for the knitters. I can also go to YouTube, but that's not the same at all.

We ate an early dinner at Rebecca's and learned that almost everything shuts down for six weeks in January until Valentine's Day.' How will we eat?

So that might be a good time to go into hibernation.  One thing I've learned is that we have lost a lot in not having wood-burning fireplaces anymore.  I'm sitting in front of one at this moment. That crackle and smell can't be imitated. I know about pollution, but out here the trade winds carry the smoke away and drop it into a valley in Utah. 

A fine day.