Ramblings from the Byrd Nest for 2011

Hello, my friends. Miss me? Well, like the proverbial bad penny, I'm back.

We woke up here in Mississippi on Christmas morning to the first actual Christmas snowfall we'd had in some 50 years or something. I thought some of you might like to see a view from the porch. I know it's a mere pittance to those of you up north, but here it was the best kind, pretty and gone in one day.

I've decided that it's no wonder we've become a country of overweight people. For some reason, it seems everywhere I go, two or more people can't gather together without eating. Why is that? If family and friends get together to visit, there's usually a massive spread prepared. If you have the buds over to watch the ballgame, there has to be food. Shoot, even wandering around the Walmart doing all that heavy-duty Christmas shopping, there's people with trays full of bite-size food screaming at you, "Try this! You're going to love it."

I think the biggest problem is that with all the electronic gizmos out there now, we've forgotten how to carry on simple one-on-one conversations. Everyone realizes that knowing how to spell is becoming a lost art, and maybe vocabulary is going the same way. I guess the easiest way out is to stuff our mouths with food, so we don't have to talk. It's not like people listen to each other anymore anyway.

Well, the hubby and I spent our New Year's Eve out partying with the VFW crowd. You haven't lived until you've seen a bunch of senior citizens on the dance floor doing a combination of polka steps amidst the Cotton-Eyed Joe. And trust me, it's even better with those goofy party hats slipping and sliding around trying not to fall off the bald heads. I even got ambitious and started a conga line one time. At first, I thought I was in trouble because to be honest, I don't know how to conga, but it didn't matter, at that age most of us are just shuffling our feet trying not to fall over.

My mother's much better and able to stay at her house again. Thank goodness! I didn't know which one of us would wind up in a home, me or her. Not that we don't get alone, understand, but if you've ever tried to mix oil with water, we show a great similarity. I'm not really sure which one of us is the oil and which is the water, but there was a couple of times I thought about dousing her with water. Just kidding, people. I'm sure there were times she was thinking the same thing.

This year I didn't get any re-gifting presents, which is going to make my Christmas shopping next year more difficult. Usually, every year some gifts I get are useless to me, but I'm sure priceless to someone else. For that reason, it seems a shame not to pass them on to a more appropriate person I care so deeply about. You know the type of present I mean. That five-foot tall hanging thing made out of spoons or something that someone thought was the perfect gift for you. I figure if I open the present and someone doesn't exclaim, "Oh, look, it's a _________," and I have no clue what it is, it immediately goes in the gift for others box for next year. I'd never thought of it, but maybe that's why I got it in the first place.

Have a great week, stay warm, and thanks for reading.