Saturday, January 3, 2015

January 3, 2015

Good Day to Pack Away 
the Christmas Decorations
January 3, 2015


This is a gift I got for Ron for Christmas
I was up early, unsure if the housekeeper would be here or not.  I had heard she was not feeling well yesterday; but she arrived on time and worked hard all morning.  I spent time working in the yard and in the house. 

Shortly after the housekeeper left, I went to the grocery store to get a few things for us and one thing for Mom.  Then I went to pick up Mom and her helper.  We picked up some perfect Bar-B-Que at Rudy's and brought it our house for lunch.  The four of us: Mom, her helper Carmen, Ron, and I enjoyed the lunch and then we three ladies started working on un-decorating the Christmas tree. 
Mom and Carmen working on the decorations
We got all the decorations off the tree and many of them boxed up for storage.  It helped me so much to have their help on such a big project.  We had a good time talking about many of the ornaments and doing our best to pack them safely away. 

Mid afternoon we took an ice cream break before returning to the work.  Carmen is much more comfortable speaking in Spanish.  Her English is limited.  My Spanish is very limited.  She tried several times to teach me the Spanish words for different things.  I have found that I just really can't understand things like that with the hearing loss and Cochlear Implant.  As I have said before I play a lot of "fill in the blank".  I expect the way a conversation is going to go and that helps me understand what is being said.  When the conversation is totally unexpected, it is hard to keep up.  Learning a foreign language is that way - it is unexpected sounds and words and I don't hear the intricacies of the language to be able to repeat them.  Maybe if I were reading and listening at the same time, I might do better.

We returned to our project and worked until I was ready to quit and then I took Mom and Carmen back to Mom's house.  After leaving there I couldn't stand to not take a few bird photos with the new camera, so I went by a resaca and took a few.  It was a very gray day, so they aren't perfect, but it was a good start.

There was a good variety of birds where I stopped.  Most of them were expecting a handout.

 American White Pelican

A pair of Mallards

Sea Gulls
Common Moorhen
American Coot

On the way to the house, I saw Wal-Mart had gas for under $2.00 a gallon, so I filled up.  At home I spent the evening baking cookies and catching up on some Facebook friends.

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