No Miracles on the 95th Exit.....

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Bells will rbe inging the sad, sad news,

Oh what a Christmas to have the blues...

("Please Come Home for Christmas", Gary Allan

I definitely have the blues.

We had planned to go down to Texas and see my family, as usually.  We were going to go to Dallas, where my sister and her family is, the town my mother lives in, and the swamp where my Cajun uncle lives with his niece and the brother of his late wife.  I was so excited. about the trip, like I always am.  The trip always puts me in the Christmasy mood.

But we can't go.  

My upcoming surgery is nearly $9,000 and so we're having to count our pennies.  And a trip to Texas would be expensive, like it always is.  Too expensive to go.  My mother feels sorry for me because she knows I'm such a Mama's Girl and wanted to go see her.

One thing is that my Mumsy and sister said for us to NOT send presents.  They said they understand about our money problems.  That makes me so sad.

Blaine and I are so despondent that we are literally not celebrating the holiday---we haven't put up a tree or anything.

So what I'm going to do is put a link here to another Christmas we had where we spent it with all our relatives, in Dallas, my mom's town, and my uncle's swamp abode.  I also have a picture there of the aran sweater I knitted for the brother of my uncle's late wife.  I knitted it blind, guessing at its size.  And I worried as I measured what a "medium" (his size) was.  I used measurements of medium size men's sweaters in patterns in my knitting books.  And lo and behold, it fit him perfectly---I couldn't believe it.  He wore it to work the next day---he loved it.

Anyway, here's the link to that happy Christmas.  I can only hope that next Christmas will be as nice as that one was.

Link here.

(You can click on the pictures to enlarge them.)

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