I always intend to post here more often, and things come up, so I forget.

We are having a dry winter so far - only a few snow storms, no more than 3 inches each.

The foxes visit us almost every day, sometimes they drink the water we put out for them. It would be very boring without them.



After being here two years due to some elective foot surgery and then more urgent gallbladder surgery, Mr. TBend is looking forward to resuming his bowling leagues in Las Vegas in January. Two leagues. He will be back for the summer at the end of May.

We always joke that the second his taillights fade in the distance things will start to go wrong here. There's always a hope that all our efforts to do preventative maintenance will pay off. We'll see.

One of my proudest accomplishments this year is we rearranged the garage so both cars fit in it, and there's some room to get around them with the doors closed.

Other projects include finishing some quilts, and I'm looking forward to getting done with a couple more of them. Then I'll be done with quilts and can give away all the quilt books. Or most of them.

I have been corresponding some with Jeri's daughter Linda, but she is not a substitute for Jeri. Also, Jeri's best friend Phyllis, who comes closer in terms of being more fun to gossip with, but not ideal. Phyllis had a daughter, Renee, who was also a good friend of Jeri's and she was diagnosed with metastatic cancer in August and died in December. It sounded like up until then they didn't realize she had cancer - it started from a melanoma. Of course it's sad, but my opinion is that it's better to find out and go fast instead of suffering through years of treatments. Jeri's son Bobby was diagnosed in 2011 and died at the end of 2015 - so many years of suffering. It was so hard on Jeri, and I was glad she wasn't around to see Renee's end because it would have been such a reminder of Bobby.

Remember Jeri's granddaughter who moved to New York City for a career in fashion? The latest news is she has a job at a Production Assistant in the costume department at the Metropolitan Opera. Jeri would be so excited.