Busy Buzzy Bee

Fiorella es fabulosa! Yesterday she picked up bread at the Panera drive-thru and ordered more for the next day, bought a ledger at Office Depot for herself and adhesive patches at Hobby Lobby for Husband's leathert recliner, stopped by the vacuum cleaner place for more bags and filters, grabbed a potted flower at H-E-B to present to her favorite Mazda guy when she asked him to let her retrieve her car before it was healed because Husband needed the Mercedes (hereafter referred to as The Blimp or The Queen Mary) for his multiple medical appointments this week, drove over to Mazda with said flower pot in hand and learned the car was ready but needed washing,  went back to H-E-B to fill the grocery list, headed home to put up the groceries and recruit Husband to take her back to Mazda to pick up her car, stopped at Walgreens on the way to pick up a prescription, then stopped in the driveway at home to pick up the mail and move the empty trash can back into the woods.

After a brief recovery period, Husband drove Fio back to Mazda and she was thrilled to have her baby car back bright and shiny. But when she got home, she had to call her Mazda guy back and leave a message--the key was still stuck in the ignition. Yes, Fiorella fabulosa, the nutcracker doll is still broken.

Pre-Christmas

It's that time of year when 5:30 isn't daytime any more. Fiorella had grabbed her pruners and journeyed up the south driveway to check on the tinsel garlands she had hung on trees along the way  and to move her bag of supplies further on down the row. She'd been out maybe half an hour when she suddenly realized that the woods had fallen silent, the air was still, and night was coming on fast. Looking around, she hefted her pruners and beat a quick tattoo back to the house.
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H-E-B is really cleaning up on firewood this year. A puny stack of short, shaven, anemic-looking sticks costs almost six bucks.  Good thing Fio and Husband harvest their own fireplace fodder--not that they've had much of a chance to use it this "winter."
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Fio's Christmas shopping is done because all she does at this point in her life is write checks. However her decorating has just begun because she was born art through-and-through and always will be. Yes, you will soon be seeing photos of her creative endeavers.

Cedars, Shopping, Royals

It made Fio feel warm and fuzzy when she saw that even more cedars along DB Woods Road had been hung with colorful Christmas decorations. Dressing trees is a sweet thing for people to do--and to make it even sweeter, she's noticed that the decorations are gone by New Year.
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Fiorella visited a dollar store yesterday and filled up on felt stockings, Russell Stover chocolate bars, and some silver-sheathed pipe wire things that she's hoping can hold her tinsel ropes to the trees along the driveway. Today, she'll visit with friends in Austin, pick up earrings from the jeweler that she'll be giving to her senior daughter-in-law for Christmas, and stop by Walmart to restock el estantes de la despensa con Shredded Wheat (the shelves of her pantry with Shredded Wheat), which Target is out of and H-E-B doesn't carry anymore.
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A special Christmas gift to Fio is the news that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are engaged. Fiorella likes happy endings, which she hopes they will have.  

Nature Notes

Fio had decided not to deal with las rocas yet, but as she walked up the driveway, they called out to her, so what choice did she have?
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After a brief late-summer break, the cardinal is hammering away at the dining room window again. Maybe he's hungry. Sorry, Red, the armadillo has eaten all the grubs and worms.
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As Fiorella got out of the car at H-E-B, she noticed that not only was the parking area littered with acorns, but the front of the store was piled high with pumpkins. Despite the temperatures being in the 90s, it looks like October is waiting in the wings.
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Speaking of wings, will the mosquitoes ever depart? Trying to plant a new bush out front, Fio was kissed up and down her left arm, and the stings still hurt. Her only consolation is that obviously she's the belle of the ball. .

Fiorella Wants Her Card Case Back!

Fiorella is very upset, screaming upset, crying upset, cursing upset, throwing things upset, questioning God upset. Her card case, the one she got at the New York RWA conference in 2015, the one that has her two credit cards in it as well as her business cards, is gone, gone, gone. She and Husband had bought a few groceries at H-E-B yesterday evening, and apparently when they took them to the car, she put her precious card case in the tray of the small cart they had used, then did not retrieve the case when she parked the cart back at the store. She realized what had happened fifteen minutes later and drove back to the store, but no one had turned in her card case. She is now offering a $100 reward for its return.

Why is this happening to Fiorella? She is a good person, a nice person, someone who works hard, who gives and gives an gives, who pushes herself to do better every day in every way, a person who prays for others, who tries to help others, who puts up with a lot of crap, who has the patience of Job. But every now and then she cracks, and this is one of those times.

And she asks again--why, God?  Doesn't Fio have enough on her back right now?

Language Addiction

Kifallah! 

That's how you say "hello" in Egyptian Arabic, which adds yet another greeting to Fiorella's ever-growing repertoire.  She learned it from the golden-haired  clerk who checked her out in H-E-B a couple of days ago, then solidified it in her brain by repeating it to the woman yesterday when Fio realized she'd wound up in the same register line.

Where did Fio's fascination with languages come from? Maybe from the early exposure Fio has previously described--her great aunts and uncles teaching her a "soft Russian" phrase ("God, give health") to use when she sneezed, maybe from a Louisiana-born neighbor teaching her to say "I love you" in French, another neighbor teaching her hose to count to ten in Spanish, her mother teaching her how to count and recite the alphabet in German. Maybe from moving from Ohio to Texas and having to learn a whole new version of English. Maybe from her desire to communicate with everyone she meets, or from her own weird brain, which seems to be attracted to unraveling intricacies.

Whatever, Fiorella is hooked. The next time she goes through Goldie's line, she'll ask her how to  say "thank you."

Pioneer Woman

The temps are down to the forties, and the roar of chainsaws echoes in the land as our rural neighborhood prepares for winter. Fio took an hour break from working on her novel yesterday to help Husband cut some firewood, then filled a trash can with rotting wood from out in what the yardman calls "el  parke" to use as punk. As usual, she is determined to be as self-sufficient fire-wise as possible--no store-bought wood, no H-E-B starters.

Weighing It All

Nothing beats laughter and random kindness to pull Fio out of a depression.  She had a great time at Mazda yesterday while she was picking up her baby car--Jason and Richard are lots of fun--and then, when she stopped by H-E-B to pick up a few things for supper, an employee who was outside gathering baskets noticed she was looking for a small one and ran across the roadway to fetch one for her.  And inside the store, she was able to snag a bigger package of hamburger (for Husband, Son, and Fio) than the butcher usually cuts, and a checker invited her to a new line she was opening up.

Fate balances out.

Nip in the Air

'Tis the season to be scary. Fiorella hung a plastic skeleton to her mailbox yesterday, then hauled out her cut-out pumpkins and cardboard bats and taped them to the windows.  Next week she and Husband will select their perfect pumpkins from the displays of identically perfect pumpkins in front of H-E-B--don't tell Fio those things aren't genetically engineered!  Then, last week of the month, they'll buy bags and bags of mini Milky Ways to sate the appetite of every trick-or-treater in the neighborhood and leave a generous  helping for themselves.

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