Much to my surprise, a couple of weeks later one of the intended recipients told me that she was thinking about buying one of those Himalayan salt lamps online. She showed me the picture of what she wanted, and it was exactly the same one that I had already bought for her! I told her that I had bought one for her for her Christmas present, and not to buy one herself. She asked me to give it to her now because she wanted to start “enjoying the benefits” immediately. Well, I agreed and I gave it to her. She was happy and took it home with her.

Less than a week later she told me that her daughter told her that she hated it, that it made her feel depressed instead of happy, and she gave the lamp back to me and asked me to give her something different for Christmas. I agreed to do that, and now I am using it in one of my bathrooms. I like how it deodorizes and helps to dehumidify the room. As for the original recipient, well, I ended up giving her a gift card to Wal-Mart. I know she buys things there, and I think that maybe I’ll just keep giving her gift cards in the future.

The cake was VERY chocolate-y. I usually can eat a large piece of cake, but since I had two slices of pizza before we had cake I only had room for a small slice. I hope there will be some leftover to raid tomorrow!

Right before Christmas my mother decided that she wanted me to accompany her to a fantastic display up at the Shenandoah Caverns. The display was of historical parade floats, and antique
Christmas window displays from storefronts.

Having always been fascinated by things like that, I readily agreed, although I would have preferred doing it after Christmas. Nonetheless, we went up there and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the window displays. One of the things that I really appreciated was the fact that the main room of the window displays was decorated with artificial flowering wisteria hanging from garden arbors.

The effect of the flowers climbing the arbors was very effective, and it made the entire room feel charming and romantic and old fashioned. The display has inspired me to put an arbor on my “wish list” for the landscaping plans for the side yard of the house.

Don’t get me wrong, they are all great vacation spots; I’m sure that a lot of people go there and have a lot of fun. But when I go on vacation I tend to go visit family, and they don’t live near any fantastic tourist spot that is going to offer great cheap rates on any kind of travel, whether it is last minute or not. In fact, the closer the travel date, the more expensive the tickets seem to be. Sometimes I miss the days of my youth when I would just throw my sleeping bag in the back of my station wagon, grab some maps and drive south until I reached someplace that seemed interesting. I looked at life like it was one great big adventure back then. I’m no longer interested in roughing it any more than staying in a five star hotel!

She was the director, and my boyfriend and I were the stars of the show. The scene started in one of the bigger neighborhood parks. At the time it was supposed to be a romantic comedy of boy chases girl to steal a kiss. Thinking about that, nowadays that would be a scary stalker movie! The video starts out with the female star (me) sitting in a covered shelter filled with Picnic Tables. I was eating an apple while reading a book. My boyfriend sneaked up behind me, tapped me on my shoulder and when I turned around he plants a kiss on my lips! Then I slapped him across his cheek and started to run. And he started to chase. The chase was in the style of the Keystone Cops. We ran over top of Park Benches, through the various forms of playground equipment, going down slides, ended up running out into the neighborhood and “stealing” bicycles and tricycles to continue the chase.

Of course it all sounds so lame, but when my family sees that video, the room rocks with peals of laughter at our silliness. Sometimes a walk down memory lane can be good fun.