I hope you had a wonderful Christmas with your loved ones, and a restful time during the (generally) quiet week between Christmas and New Year’s. My Christmas vacation, like many things in life, was a mixed bag. While I wasn’t sharing online, I still spent a lot of time working – planning for 2026, working at my easel for the next original art sale, reading, and writing. That was balanced with rest, though. We watched movies and TV series, ate leftovers, and lingered a little longer in bed most days. I recently learned the Scottish people call that time of lingering “hurkle-durkle,” and it’s my new favorite phrase. The kitties and I love hurkle-durkling.
Our Christmas Day was quiet and slow, thanks to a lot of prep work I did in advance and lessons learned from previous years of leaving too much for the day of. I also made some small changes to make Christmas brunch easier, like buying frozen yeast rolls instead of making them from scratch. The only hiccup was that I had to make the tart dough twice: the first batch was too crumbly and didn’t come together, but the second batch was a success.
I made two tarts – cherry and apple.
The cherry was the day’s overall winner. It was heavenly served with vanilla ice cream.
I’ll share some of the gifts I received in a separate post, but I was finally able to give my a painting I made of Rosa Jo for her gift. I’ve had to keep that off of social media and keep her out of my studio, so the surprise wasn’t ruined.
So, Christmas and the days leading up to it were about as good as they could be. We all commented how it was our favorite food year that we could remember, and, even though we scaled back a bit on the gifts (having two teenage boy drivers is really expensive), we were all delighted with our gifts.
Two days after Christmas, though, I received a text from my dad that my mom had slipped and fallen on the ice while walking Rosa Jo. She extended her arm to catch herself, and the result was a broken right wrist. Having broken my foot a few years ago when I walked out to the garage without paying attention, I knew how it felt to alter the course of the next few months with just one miscalculation. You wish life had a rewind button so you could watch that ill-fated step again.
So, we drove over to pick up Rosa Jo to take that responsibility off their hands. The positive thing is that we have been slowly introducing Rosa Jo to our home, family members, and cats. Christmas Day was the best Rosa Jo day yet! Violet, who is notoriously wary of strangers, hid whenever she came to visit, but she was brave on Christmas Day. It seems like the animals had decided to co-exist, and there was no growling, hissing, batting, or bloodshed. There was only curious sniffing and some sideways glances.
Having Rosa Jo was an adjustment, though. She is timid and skittish around men (we are pretty sure a man abused her), so we had to offer lots of treats and reassurance to get her comfortable around Jeff. She needed regular walks, trips outside to play in the yard, and attention, so that took up quite a bit of time. Also, Rosa Jo does not like hurkle-durkling. Not a fan. She wants to get up and greet the day the second she wakes up at 6:30 or 7:00. So, that meant I had to get up, too. We walked in the cold and ate breakfast when it was still dark, and I mourned the lost hurkle-durkle time.
We found our rhythm, though. She settled into being a good studio dog while I painted.
We also drove over to help my parents with various chores and tasks around the house, like taking down Christmas decorations and grocery shopping. Once things settled down a bit, my parents took Rosa Jo back home. Friends and neighbors have been walking her, and they put up a fence around their yard so my parents can easily let her out throughout the day. She brings them a lot of joy, so it’s been a bright spot having her back.
My mom is having surgery on her wrist this week, so I’ll go over to stay with my parents to help out.
Beyond all of the personal happenings and painting, I’ve been planning. Sometimes that looked like me sitting in my studio, feet propped up on the counter, just staring. Letting thoughts mingle and swirl. Capturing an idea and following it for a little bit until I either wrote something down or abandoned it. I’ll be sharing a lot more about my ponderings and plans over the next few weeks, but I will say this – times, they are a-changin’.