October chitchat

[jingle]

Yes, agate, I work to make certain I have plenty of essentials. I am too fanatical about it and worry too much about not being able to get to the store. We have steady rain - just rain, no storms - forecast for tomorrow so I'll make certain I have enough. And now I worry about church - I can't get there if it snows or has icy rain. I worry about driving if it rains!

[Prot]

So far I've avoided putting the heating on. I've been wearing sweaters. I also have thermal vests I can wear. When I was more mobile it was the icy ground I struggled with, not the snowy.

[jingle]

Prot - so far I haven't worn a sweater or needed to turn on the heat. I think that might happen this weekend. Oh, I dread that. Our weather has been so strange. Today it's an all time record heat and will be cold in a couple days. But I need to remember that I lived in North Dakota so many years ....in the winter that's COLD. But I loved North Dakota and did just fine in that extreme cold. I hope you stay warm all winter.

[Prot]

agate & jingle,I hope you stay warm too. My daughter has given me a couple of helpings of stew. She quite often brings me meals. How do you both do your Christmas grocery shopping? I spread mine over several weeks.

[agate]

Is it time for Christmas shopping already??? I've been doing all shopping online for years. i usually get groceries through a phone-ordering system in which I place the order by phone on Monday and it gets delivered on Wednesday, weather permitting (and not during 4 holiday weeks each year). But everything else is ordered online. Before there was the Internet I used mail-order catalogs for most shopping, including clothes and even shoes. It just wasn't easy to use the paratransit van to go anywhere to shop though a few times I ventured out to a mall to get something.

All holiday shopping this year will be done online and there will be less of it this year. In the past 10-15 years I've always tried to send a small gift to a couple of people but they rarely even acknowledge it, and last year I really wondered if either addressee ever received the gifts I sent. They're nice people and I'm sure aren't just blowing me away but I also think I'm old enough now for them to understand that I just can't do that much any more.

Wrapping gifts for mailing and then setting up arrangements with the post office so that the mail carrier will pick up those packages in a timely way is fairly tricky, particularly since the US post office keeps making its Website more complicated, and I need to prepay the postage and print up the labels beforehand.

These people will get a card with a note, and I might apologize for not sending a gift this year.

Two falls in one month (September) have been a wake-up call for me. Time to slow down wherever I can.

[Prot]

Anything offline my daughter gets for me. Like you,agate,my Christmas shopping is done online. I've sent gifts before that never got acknowledged .

[agate]

And then do you continue sending gifts to people who don't acknowledge them? I did that for years, for special people and for grandnieces and nephews when they were still children. But this time around I'm bowing out even though these two parties are probably very much in the habit of expecting a small gift from me.

Or maybe they never got the gifts last year. They're often away from home, and I keep hearing stories about how delivered packages are being stolen from people's front porches or wherever the packages are left.