Scattered Thoughts . . .

I n addition to Sheila's doorstep colony of frogs arriving late, we had a new mantle clock arrive on Christmas Eve.  So, this was sort of a late Christmas gift to both of us from ourselves.   Most people simply use their cable set top box to display the time near the television.  Unfortunately, when Comcast installed their high end, high speed Xfinity set top box at our house, the first thing the technician pointed out was that this box has no display on it at all so there is no clock.  Actually, it is not even a "box"...   it is a big, monstrous tower that just barely fits in our shelves next to the fireplace and under the television.  I figured, "No problem...  our router can display the time" and that is what we used for a short while.   Our high speed router has a big colorful display on it which makes using the router abundantly easy.  It didn't take long before we noticed that the router was beginning to work intermittently.  I pinpointed the problem t

O ne of Sheila's childhood friends passed away a few years ago.  She left Sheila with a porcelain frog because...  well...  Dawn loved frogs and it was something that Sheila had always been very aware of throughout their childhood.  Sheila inherited this frog as a reminder of Dawn always being with us.   Well...  this porcelain frog sat comfortably on the step outside our door for only a month or so before I accidentally bumped it while doing some landscaping.  The frog fell off the step and shattered into too many pieces to repair.  I felt terrible so I immediately brought Sheila out shopping so we could pick a new frog.   We found a frog statue that is a frog sitting next to a Welcome sign.  We placed this replacement frog at our front door on the topmost step to our front deck.  This frog, by now affectionately name Dawn, sat there safely for years.  Unfortunately, the sun has not kind to this little frog and it is deteriorating terribly now.  I figured Christmas would be a good

Note:  Kenzie will not receive this Christmas gift for another week  (New Years Day)  so, if you should happen to be reading this blog before then, please say absolutely nothing to Kenzie about this gift.  We would like this to be a surprise for her! I 've been busy the past few weeks designing and building a new dollhouse addition for Kenzie.  A few years ago, I designed and built a dollhouse townhouse for her and, over the years, we've added to the interior furniture and the number of dolls for the townhouse.  We've even added window boxes, shrubbery and a tree in subsequent Christmases.   This year, Kenzie asked for some food for the dollhouse.  She wanted only food, presumably to put on her kitchen table and countertops.  She circled a number of items in one of my dollhouse catalogs so I purchased these items for her townhouse.  I still felt like her gift should be more than just a bit of food for her dollhouse, so... Since Kenzie enjoys cooking and baking, I decided to