'Tis a New Year: Welcome, 2015

What will this year bring? As always, we have no idea, but whatever it is, it will be interesting.

Some of our activities from the last few weeks:

Welcoming the New Year

Enjoying Debbie and Randy's most-excellent hospitality on New Year's Eve.

Reminiscing with Susan
Years ago, when we lived in our dream house on our seven-acre spread in Fannett, we frequently boated or drove over to LaBelle Road and Pine Tree Lodge, where we'd grab a hamburger and a beer, maybe play shuffleboard, try to stay out of the way of any wayward local drunks, and admire the dogs-playing-poker tapestry over the bar. (Each dog was labeled, by the way, with a local patron; we were nowhere near frequent or redneck or local enough to qualify for a label.) And for the last year or so, Susan, who had attended high school in Hamshire and accompanied us to the fine establishment more than once back then, had encouraged us to meet her at the newly-refurbished, relatively-upscale restaurant for a meal and a trip down memory lane.

And so we did, though it was hard to make the new PTL jibe with our memories of a dive.  (Dive-y enough that, when, 30+ years ago, we took my parents for a meal there, my mother, before we could order, stalked out carrying her new infant granddaughter, Elizabeth, stating unequivocally that it was no place for a baby.) Now it's perfectly respectable, more's the pity, but it was fun seeing it and seeing Susan and Beau, our almost-21-year-old grandson.

 Susan is rightly proud.

 Before this nice new outside area was built, we used to dock here in our Boston Whaler and clamber ashore for our PTL fix. This was also where Elizabeth, as a child, stepped out of the boat onto a lily pad and got totally soaked, a memory she recently reminded us of. Dear child, she laughs about such indignities now, for which we are grateful. Apparently, we took her right in to the place anyway. Yes, I am appropriately chagrined.

Tom always claimed that it was Sam Gwynn's Texas Monthly restaurant review that ruined the place,  by the way.

Other Doings
1. We visited Marian, Katy, and Heather on Christmas Day, exchanging gifts, admiring Marian's new apartment and her paintings, and enjoying one another. Sorry to say that I didn't get any pictures.

2. Tom and I finally* tried our hand at a pork osso bucco, with garlic mashed potatoes and julienned zucchini and yellow squash, and were pleased with the result. It's a good thing, since it is not easy to find pork shanks; we finally found some at Joe V's Grocery, a rather low-rent grocery store in Baytown. We've also started, under Elizabeth's guidance, using the microplaner and fresh spices that Tom gave to me at Christmas. Fresh grated nutmeg in coffee: sweet.

3. But we are generally trying to ease out our Christmas-season cravings and get back to reasonably-healthy eating and living in general. It ain't easy.

4.. Tom has started physical therapy again, going three times a week, working on strength and stretching out muscles.

5. We are enduring Texas's version of a cold winter. Our heater has died, but help is on the way this very afternoon. As on the boat, a good space heater helps, and we are tough and know how to wear heavy clothes and sleep on flannel sheets. Nonetheless, it will be good to have central heating again. And since I wrote that, the help has come, helped, and gone. We have heat, and life is good. It will be a good year!

*We'd been talking about doing so since our last year's Valentine's Day dinner in Little River, South Carolina. A week-earlier attempt ended when I realized, having finally hunted down pork shanks at Mi Tienda Grocery, an establishment as close to one in Mexico as any I've seen in this area, that I had left my billfold at home. I had checks but no ID and no cash, and so couldn't pay the $9.00 bill after having consulted with a butcher and stood in a long line. Annoying, yes. Embarrassing, yes. Funny, yes.