this year walks out the door, we hope it slams!

Oh lordy, I said I would never do this.  This is our end-of-the-year portrait, sitting outside after dinner the other night.  Love the backdrop of a parking lot.  I'm the one with the forehead.  Oh well, it shows we actually do sit together once in awhile.  Looks like TY was, shall we say, 'in his cups'.  Looks like I had my pissy attitude on.  But my dear reader (one day there were two or three of you and it gave me a warm heart), this is me saying buh-buy to the ass of this year as it saunters out the door.  But I don't like much to think of a kid in a diaper as my new year ahead, unless of course there is one along the way.  I'm talking about the cartoon death and birth that someone always drags out in the newspaper.  Oh.  That would be me.  Never mind.

You make a living by what you earn; you make a life by what you give.   Winston Churchill. 

Here in FlaFlaLaLa things are lovely, it's been cool enough to have to wear a sweater, the northern folks have trickled back and it's party-central this week.  Everyone wants to reconnect with their pals, and it has the faint aura of returning to college after a summer working elsewhere.  Bocce starts this week after a kick-off party (oh, save me from these parties!) and the annual Trivial Pursuit game commences next Friday.  Good thing they still make enough Pinot Noir to keep me in a glass a night.  So, we are invited to two, count 'em, TWO New Years parties tonight and I have to make some sort of appetizer for one because I am a 70's housewife and we do that offer-thing.  I have a package of phyllo dough ready to go, and some feta ready to go with it, so my morning is prescribed.  Hope the damn dough isn't all dried out like it does sometimes-  you never know until it's open.  I have time for a ride to the store but am having trouble getting started on this last day of the year.

 Done!  Spinach and Feta wrapped in phyllo.  Had some leftover dough so wrapped some sundried tomatoes and olives and red peppers in a few more.  I'm sure there will be other things because there will be lots of people!


So, I'm sitting here googling phyllo to see how long to cook the triangles and I look up and someone is looking back at me!  Meet my new puppy, another foundling apparently.

 He is living in the sea grape tree right outside my window and today I had a camera ready.  Unfortunately the indoor puppies saw him about the same time I did so there was one hell of a ruckus over having to perhaps share their food.  I'm gonna find him a friend- a guy with a big Hav-a-Hart trap and the ability to take a long ride into the country in the back of a pick-up.  This is the critter who has been pooping in my pool, I'll wager.  Brazen, I tell ya.  Southern raccoons live out in the daylight, unlike their northern cousins.  And they are not at all afraid of humans or dogs.  Gotta get him out of here before somebody gets hurt.

I have one thing to show you before I go knit for an hour-  

Cake you think?  Look again!  These are made out of vintage chenille bedspreads!  Doesn't it look just like fancy frosting?  In the minute it took me to post these photos, I lost the URL to the flickr set.  Sigh.  Enjoy your cake, I have to get off this computer!  (Will hunt it down for you if you want, leave a request!)  They were very cute.  I do remember the gal's name was Carma. 

What I REALLY want to do is put on a warm sweater and sit and knit till my fingers fall off.  And I might be able to do that.

Happy New Year to all of you, and thanks so much for hanging in there with me.