Dear Family, Friends, and Diary,
Christmas 2024 has started. I suppose the stores have been decorated for a month or more, but the Fresno Trotters are finally getting into the spirit, at least a little.
I broke out my seasonal puzzle: 1,000 tiny multi-color pieces of Christmas Trees. A week after starting, I gave up. However, that too is traditional, with the same results every time.
Fresno weather has become winter-traditional, foggy mornings and cool, sunny afternoons. The fog is a product of the few days of rain we had last week. Soaked soil gives up its moisture slowly, soaking the valley air early in the morning. In old days, this happened all the time because the flatlands were seasonal wetlands, called the Tule Swamp. Later, after the swamps were drained for farm land, crops were watered by flooding fields. Nowadays, with drip irrigation, "tule fog" only happens after heavy rains.
Despite the fog, we still get sunny afternoons, good for neighborhood strolls. Neighbor Vern just celebrated his 96th birthday and little Wilson his first, but both were out for a stroll with the help of family and wheels. Why would anyone live with snow and ice?
Speaking of REAL winter, my YouTube diet continues to include stories of the volcano eruption in the cold of Iceland. Isak continues to fly his drone and workers are busy reconstructing highways over the top of fresh lava. These are tough people!
Back at home, we are Christmas decorating as best we can, without climbing up in the garage to retrieve years' worth of seasonal stuff. Marianne has forbidden me from climbing ladders, so we need to be limited. Our tree, from Skookum Trees as usual, was smaller than in any previous years and the lights and decorations are new. A creche or two and a candle pyramid from Germany had been stored in accessible closets. Traditional enough.
We have included a Christmas wreath this year. Two candles down already! The other Christmas duty has been cards, real paper-in-the-mail cards. Here again, we are limited this year. No new art-from-Marianne production, just leftovers. And I doubt we will make it down our list beyond folks overseas.
Here is the picture from the annual newsletter, documenting any changes for the year. Marianne looks good, but I am getting the jowls I remember from my own dad. (Heredity is not always nice.)
Plans until Christmas proper include a gift this week from Kaiser Medical. A new pacemaker will get "delivered" to Marianne on Wednesday, up in Roseville, so we will have a bit of medical tourism. After that, it's over to Los Gatos for a few days with Gabby, Mamal, Ava, and Sam before they head up for Christmas skiing. Our last seasonal event will be dinner with Marianne's sister Katinka and her family, celebrated on the 23rd in honor of Mamo's birthday. Another tradition.
Stay tuned,
John and Marianne