You may have noticed the return address on the Christmas card, if you weren't so eager to see it that you ripped the envelope in a million pieces, of Curwood Manor and Gallifrey Gardens. So what’s Curwood Manor? Everyone here who can read and drive a car is asking the same thing. I’ve always wanted to name the house, but a name is such a permanent thing and it takes a while to come up with the right moniker. But after seeing Downton Abbey and having a sister who lives in British homes that all have names, I began to give it more thought. We have a back yard now filled with trees (I’m trying to shade out the backyard to make mowing completely unnecessary in the near future) and I happened to see an ad for an exhibit at Cheekwood in Nashville and then there’s Collinwood of Dark Shadows fame. Curwood was an easy choice. I guess I could have stopped with that but Manor seemed like a good fit.
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| When I told the sign painter we were thinking of something with Gallifrey in it, he said, "Why? Is your house bigger on the inside than it is on the outside?" These people are everywhere. |
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| Naked Ladies in the garden. |
So, let’s see what else we found to do when we weren’t trying to figure out what to call the house and grounds.
Last year at this time, I had just begun my life as a librarian and what a year at the library it’s been. The director who hired me quit to take a job closer to her home. She lived in Winchester, TN, and we struggled along without a boss for about a month until our new director, Tina, showed up from Minnesota. She and her family had been looking for a warmer place to live for some time and when this job opened up, they jumped on it. Tina had just finished working on her Masters in Library Science. If I had known how much I would like library work when I was in college, I might have gone the same route she did. However, it's too late for a Masters now. I'm not in the college mood. But I so enjoy my two days a week at the library. It's such quiet, stress free work and brings in just the amount of money I need. I'm still looking around for more CPA work, but until that presents itself, I'm quite content at the library.
As you might remember we had finally run out of money and credit last year. We sold the farm, except for 9 acres, and the investment house in Auburntown. I hated to see most of the farm go, but I doubt any of us would have ever improved it and lived out there. We are all too much city girls. It’s great to be able to walk to the bank, the post office, the library, the courthouse and pretty much any where we want to go. Living outside of town would require driving everywhere. If one of us does get the money and the desire for farm living, I bet those 9 acres will fit the bill. We don’t have any extra money at all, but we have enough to pay the bills and have a little fun. So what more do we need?
Mama and Savannah took a field trip to a farm that makes molasses with the Church of Christ while I worked at the library. They are getting around and having a good time. Mama tries to stay close to home while I’m down at the library, but the other days we have no idea where she is. She has a round of shops she likes to check out and recently went to play Christmas Bingo at the church. I don't know which is more surprising, that the church had a bingo game or that Mama played and won some movie passes to the local drive in. It's off to the movies for us this summer.
Mama and I put in a garden while Savannah watched -- next year she’ll do more of the work -- but we failed to dig up our ground well enough and our carrots were stunted. The ground is so hard the poor things couldn't push down and grow. But we had a bumper crop of tomatoes and beans. I cleaned out my asparagus bed and since the plants will be three years old this spring, I’m expecting to have my own fresh asparagus to grill in 2015. I hope the bed will spread and grow. Mama planted some winter greens and so far, even with all the cold weather, they are growing well. Fresh spinach for us.
We all remain healthy as can be expected with our ages and on going health problems. We had a low key Thanksgiving complete with frozen pizza and pecan pie from Kroger. Christmas was the same except Mama ate the pecan pie all by herself and we shared an apple pie (yes, from Kroger) and a Key Lime Pie from Edwards (frozen from Kroger). Savannah and I streamed Bones on Netflix,one of our favorite shows, and watched HGTV. These frozen pizza holidays are the way to go. No prep and very little clean up.
Savannah wanted a new cat this year but I kept putting her off because pets are expensive and I didn’t want to add a new line item to the budget. George, the dog, is expensive enough. He has delicate skin which requires some attention to keep him from scratching himself raw. But cats come out of the walls around here, it seems. We kept hearing this cat yelling in the walls and under the house. It sounded like a grown cat with a set of monster lungs and I figured it would find its way out of the house, eventually, or die. Either way the problem would come to some sort of end. Then one evening while I was in the office running a payroll, I thought I heard it in the attic. And there it was. A kitten desperately trying to pull down the blinds and claw through the window to the outside. The fact that she was on the second floor meant nothing to her. Mama and Savannah came up with a chicken wing and a box to trap her and the next day Dr. Tate certified her healthy, except for starvation and dehydration, so we kept her. Since she was a completely feral cat, we had to keep her in a dog crate until she became used to being in the house enough not to immediately run under the bed and hide when she was allowed out. But being feral, she had no problem with George and gives him a good smack when he gets out of line. She’s already killed a mouse, although Lizzie, the other cat, has killed four. And this is after we’ve had the exterminator out, so I suggested to Mama we fire the exterminator since he obviously was not doing as good a job as the cats. She killed two more mice last night.
So what did we name the cat? We name our cats with a last name based upon where they were found. We’ve had Michael Banks, Jaclyn Church, Calvin Barnes, well, you see the thread. So we now have Steve Lofts, since Steve was found in the attic. But Steve is a girl. The vet assistant asked if we wanted to change her name now that we knew Steve was female. “No,” I said, “we have a male cat named Lizzie.” Savannah said, “Cats have sex not gender.” So Steve it is. Steve and George and Lizzie.
Savannah has joined the youth group at the Methodist church across the street and found some local friends. They went to a corn maze this year for Halloween and in January they are going to Gatlinburg for a youth rally. This church also gives away free food to the community almost every month and opened a thrift store to raise money for battered women and to buy food for backpacks that are given to hungry school kids who have nothing to eat over the weekend until school starts again on Monday. Savannah and I helped pack one evening and it is quite an assembly line. There are more hungry kinds in Cannon County than I realized. Of all the churches we've been to in the last few years, this one has a great community out reach which we really enjoy.
Working at the library doesn’t allow me much time for travel and we didn’t have money to support the Class C camper, so I sold that in May. I thought that would be the end of camping but Savannah wanted to keep on going. I bought a large cabin tent that’s called automatic but really isn’t. It seems to take 2 hours to set up camp no matter what we are camping in. Even longer to break camp. All the Tennessee State Parks were closed most of the year while they were updated with WiFi but we had a great time at Edgar Evins once it reopened. I love their camping platforms, so the tent wasn’t actually on the ground. In 2015 we plan to try Henry Horton which has a restaurant as well as WiFi. I can never can get a campfire going, much to Savannah's dismay. She always wants to crash another camper's fire as if they wouldn't notice if two strangers showed up with marshmallows. Camping in the tent was great fun and I can’t wait for warmer days.
View from the back of the tent.
View from the front. The walls around the deck sort of ruin the view but it did give us a good place to tie down the tent for the 15 mph hour winds we experienced the first night camping. |
| A different view of our campsite. Since the platforms are made of wood the grill is on the side there as you can see. |
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| Our view of the lake, not as good as at Defeated Creek but better than nothing. |
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| More lake view and our trash can. Tent in the back. |
We all enjoyed our week in the Gatlinburg time share and Savannah and I went back in July for her birthday and Dollywood’s Splash Country. In between we had our weekend in Chattanooga with the Liberty Con group.
Savannah at the Nashville Symphony. Don't tell her I put this photo here because she doesn't like it, but I do. This is before she dyed her hair blue. The dress from Goodwill. The booties might be as well. The symphony gives free tickets to students so we go a few times a year.Savannah decided to begin having her hair cut and cut and cut and cut and then colored. A friend of mine who bleaches and colors her hair came over to help her the first time and now she changes color a lot.
Savannah's hair and the hole on the Woodbury square from the buildings that burned down last year. Still no new buildings and I sort of like being able to see the courthouse from the back street.
Right after I sold the class c camper, Eva came for a visit and treated us all to a trip to Nashville. We had only a quick weekend before she had to return to England and take up her duties there. We had a great weekend that passed all too quickly. Maybe she will be able to visit more in 2015.
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What’s happening around Woodbury? A Taco Bell is being built and on opening night the family and I, and just about everyone else in town, went down there for supper. Mama and Savannah don't like Mexican type food and it does tend to kick up my heart burn, so I don't see us spending much time there. We don't eat our much anyway since I've tried to start cooking a bit more. And, yes, it's more than heating up pizza. In August liquor by the drink was voted in. We may actually be able to drink Margaritas at our local Mexican restaurant (not Taco Bell). But there are rules about how close the restaurant can be to a church and still serve liquor and with so many churches in town, liquor by the drink may remain limited. There is hope a chain restaurant might come in as well. But that's probably far in the future.
Playing trivia games as fund raisers is popular around here and we get a team together several times a year to prove that knowledge is fleeting and memory is non-existent. But we laugh all the way through and never come in last, so far.
Eva and Chris spent the entire year in England doing whatever it is they do there. They haven’t sold their place in Denver and may come back there to retire. It's been a year for surgery. I had hernia repair in August and Eva had another knee surgery in November.
I’m still working on winning big in the lottery as much as I can but some weeks I forget to buy a ticket. I have great plans for that money which I will implement as soon as I have winnings to collect. My writing also continues. Tina and I write the library weekly column for the paper and although my fiction has taken a back seat to raising a teenager, it's still getting attention several times a week. I write for enjoyment now and for profit later.
One of our best days this year was in August when the power went out just after dark. I’d started to cook supper but with no power that plan had to be abandoned. So the three of us went out on the front porch to eat salsa and chips and watch the cars creep through the darkness. I’d never seen so many cars on the road. Everyone was out to get the scoop on what was going on when they could have stayed home, eaten chips and salsa and looked at the stars, which are normally obscured by the city lights.
We still live a low key life, not stressing ourselves out too much. To decorate for Christmas we just pull the tree out of the corner and plug it in. When we decide Christmas is over, we unplug it and push it back in the corner. It has become such a usual sight, no guest to the house ever mentions it any more.
I'm sure a lot more that is worthy of note happened, but since I fail to take notes during the year and have to rely on memory, I'm going to stop here.
Have a great year everyone. Stay in touch and I’ll try to do the same. We only lose touch if we stop reaching out. I know I don’t keep up as regularly as I should, so help me out and send me a note now and then. I'm sure great things are going on in your lives and I want to know about them.
I try to update the blog now and then so you can check back here or add me to your circle, what ever that means.
Below are some photos from Christmas.
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| We don't remember how we got this dog, but when you push his paw he sings a Christmas song. So now he's a part of the tradition and has to sing before opening presents. |
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| Christmas present wine dressed in Christmas present chef's clothes. |
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| More presents from the Dr. Who experience and Big Bang Theory. That's how I knock on Savannah's door, knock, knock, knock, "Savannah", knock, knock. . . . . |
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| Thad made Savannah this shelf and mounted it high on the wall. Steve thinks it was made just for her. |
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| Rose I was sent from the library when I was out sick. Very sweet of them. And some Christmas cards. |
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| Mama opening a gift. We opened at midnight on Christmas Day. |
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| Savannah enjoying a gift. |
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| Tree all lit up with the tree skirt Grandmother knitted at the base. |
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| Savannah wearing her TARDIS dress received from aunt and uncle in England. Yes, I know it's out of focus. |
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| Here is a photo of things to come in 2015. As soon as I get well, I'm going to finish this deck made of pallets in the back yard. I will blog about it when it's finished. |
Love to all. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.
Lu Ann
of
Curwood Manor
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