Also Known As "Noodles" and A Call for "Keeper" Blogs

I'm showing my age, talking of "noodles." Actually, why did I even type that? I don't care that I'm no longer young. Others sometimes seem to have a problem with it, but I just don't care. I feel lucky to be alive. I don't like that my health is so poor and my arthritis is so bad, but as for aging, it's part of the circle of life. Satchel Paige said, "How old would you be, if you didn't know how old you is?" Sometimes you'll see that quote "cleaned up" grammatically, which is totally insulting, if you ask me. Satchel Paige knew what he wanted to say, and the droll way he wanted to say it. 

I saw on another blog a good recipe for pasta. Of course I cannot find it again, but maybe someone will have posted it or seen it, too. I am always on the lookout for good recipes. I never heard of pasta until I was grown, because we called pasta "noodles." Spaghetti, egg, orzo, fettuccini, whatever shape or ingredient, they were all "noodles." A dish I served often as a young bride was boiled spaghetti noodles with canned Chicken a la King over them, and "toast points" balancing on the side of each bowl to make it more filling. Ah, those old days. A "green salad" would accompany the meal, if it was near a paycheck. The "salad" was torn up iceberg lettuce doused with an oil-and-vinegar/salt-and-pepper mix.

I was amazed when grown when I found some people used the noodles we knew as "sliders" in their "chicken and dumplings." Our dumplings were a steamed biscuit-like dough "settin' on top the chicken stew part." These strange dishes called for SLIDER NOODLES in place of the dumplings. They had to be FISHED OUT of the chicken stew part. I marvelled at it, but I could not deny the sliders were great in that dish.

I often eat noodles as shown above: Boiled, and then with anything "to hand" mixed in them. Usually, that means margarine, and then some protein (usually peanuts or pecans), and spices like lemon pepper or salt-and-pepper. When I am in luck, it means cherry tomatoes and an avocado in there, too, or boiled yellow squash. For awhile there at the beginning and middle of the pandemic, cherry tomatoes completely disappeared from our area. Gone! So I'm making up for lost time with them.

If you get a chance, visit the blogs over on my Blog Roll. I just LOVE those blogs. And, if you know of any other "keeper" blogs, please comment and tell me! Blogs are my "window on the world" lately, and such day-brighteners. Long Live Blogging!

    Kind regards,

    Holly, The Merry Olde Dame

Get Ready for Valentine's Day with These Free Tags to Embellish

It's not too early to begin the Valentine's Day crafts. Not with how time flies by so quickly! It seems I barely get in gear and the holiday -- any holiday -- is upon me. 

Here are some little tags to embellish. Each sheet prints out on a regular letter-sized piece of cardstock or paper.

One set is just plain, waiting to be cut out and embellished by your scraps, buttons, and bits. Punch a hole and add some twine or ribbon. LINK!

One set is already "decorated," but certainly it could be fun to add on some lace, rhinestones, string, flowers, G L I T T E R (or mica, I have a jar of it somewhere around here), or what have you. Now I am second-guessing the glitter idea, although I have so many pretty glitters. I just recalled that some scientists think it very bad for the environment. I do hate to think of some earthworm biting down on a piece. I don't think they can spit it out. Or a plankton swallowing some. Maybe I'll just use mica from now on. LINK!

One page is old Victorian images, to be cut out and glued on with whatever you have on hand, too. I enjoy fussy-cuts but not everyone does. I found I liked them very much once I had the right scissors (slim, small ones, very sharp). Does anyone remember the awful elementary school scissors of yesteryear? Impossible! Those rounded tips, and such poor machining, with the blades wallowing around a loose rivet. They chewed the paper, not cut it. Yet we managed to create many a pretty thing with them. In fifth grade were were allowed to have the "pointed" version. Not much better, but we felt very grown up. LINK!

Use the links, please, so that you get the uncompressed files. Blogger compresses large files, and sometimes they won't print the right size. The links are stored on Google Drive, safe. Get them while they're hot, because I might pull the blank ones down after a week or so.

Thank'ee for stopping by.

    Kind regards,

    Holly, The Merry Olde Dame - Not Always Merry, but Always Olde

It's Good to Be Cross Stitching Again!

Energy, time, and inspiration all in one place -- rare for me! I too often let myself be weighed down by, well, weighty matters. The concerns are real, but sometimes I can break out of the Worry Dome and feel free enough to breathe, to create, without guilt. 

I have been having a wonderful time the past few nights, stitching away to please myself, creating a little series I call "Strawberry Bunnies." I probably will put the charts up on Etsy, but frankly I don't care if they sell or not. Maybe that's why I'm having such a great time with them! 

I had years and years of having to produce saleable stories and designs when I was a writer and a graphic designer, before I tried my hand at teaching. It took all the joy out of art for me, and I'm only just now recovering the fun of creating without an anxious eye out as to what others will think. My husband tells me there is a saying in Spanish, "Los que derán." It means, "What will they say? What will they THINK?" but the saying is to rebuke those kinds of thoughts. It's to give confidence and take away the power of that worry. 

So, I'm having a ball with my bunnies that have somehow crossed with strawberries! I hope your day is filled with fun and whimsy, too. Hope you like the Sneak Peek. I hold my cloth scrunched up and don't use a hoop, usually. So, wrinkles! I am adding much more to this design, whatever catches my fancy. Fun!

Kind regards,

Holly, The Merry Olde Dame

Two Little Words: Remember Me

I have a small collection of autograph books from long ago, five in all, and that includes one from my childhood, a gift from a kind aunt. I have an early Scholastic paperback with verses to copy, too. In the 1960s, autograph books were having their last hurrah. These weren't books for collecting signatures of the famous; they were sweet little books signed by neighbors, school friends, teachers, and others who were part of a child's world. 

Sometimes someone would just sign their name, but usually, there was a sentiment or brief poem penned onto the page. In viewing some of the thoughts, it strikes me how very rigorous the upper primary grades and junior high grades were. Mixed in with the humorous verses are lofty, elegant thoughts with elevated vocabulary. 

It also reminds me how popular puns were, and how poems in general were more a part of life. 

The lovely "Forget-me-not" plant is featured on many pages, and in many forms. I love the blue of that little harbinger of spring! A hand-drawn bloom graces a page in 1943 that also includes a jesting insult ("You have a shape like the B-19" - a particularly rotund bomber).

One issue of the old "Reminisce" magazine had an article about autograph books. There was a haunting verse written by a young man before he left for World War II, not to return alive. It read:

"You ask me to write;

What shall it be?

Two little words:

Remember Me."

I do my best to remember those I love who have passed. And of course, God remembers us always!

Washing Tinfoil, Using Margarine Tubs as "Tupperware," and Sewing Pretty Cardboard

I still do many of the make-do type of things my grandmother did. If "tinfoil," which I guess we now know as aluminum foil, is not very soiled after use -- for example, if it was just used to shield some baked squash from getting too brown -- I wash it and put it into the warm oven to finish drying. 

If you peek in my fridge, you'll think I eat an awful lot of margarine and am afraid of running out. There are little tubs of "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" sitting on every shelf. The real tub of margarine is always kept in the little butter area on the door! Everything else is holding bacon grease, leftover black olives, baby carrots floating in chicken broth (for the plump doggies to snack on) and so on. 

Maybe this was common in the 1960s only where I grew up, but we had wallets, coasters, collapsing coin holders, and recipe-holders sewn from pretty cardboard. Many department stores placed blouses, shirts, and so forth in lightweight cardboard boxes, usually printed with the store name or initials. Others had fancier boxes with all-over patterns, and the five-and-dime had stationery boxes that were just divine. I remember some gorgeous shoe-boxes as well, back when all shoes were expensive. 

My grandmother would desconstruct the printed cardboard boxes and cut out pieces for useful items, then sew them. Many times, she would sew through a double-thickness of cardboard, with two different patterns, so that the item was "lined." But for some items, it was just a single thickness with the pretty side of the cardboard "out." Sometimes she'd rub beeswax onto the cardboard to "seal" it and make it more durable. Sometimes she used crochet to connect the pieces. Until it fell to dust, I had a sweet basket she had crocheted from the fronts of Christmas cards.

In keeping with that tradition, I have been making both flat and stuffed hearts to make into a garland for the wall. I used part of a lovely old cardboard gift bag that a friend from India gave me years ago. Coral and blue aren't the usual Valentine colors, but they go very well with my Southwest home, and in my stash of collage materials I had paper flowers in all the right hues. Most of all, I just love make-do's. My mind is so happy and engaged, full of memories of my grandmother, when I'm doing the same handiwork she did so long ago. 

I wonder if anyone else has unusual and extremely thrifty little ways that were handed down to them or that they discovered?

Saluting Homemakers of Yesteryear and Today

Oh, I know that those rose-colored glasses we sometimes wear when viewing the world in hindsight do not give us 20-20 vision, but I think there were some beautiful and worthy aspects of the past that have been lost. I'd like to see some features of olden days return. Not all! 

I am not very interested in Facebook, but the small amount I was on during the past two political dust-ups cemented my determination to never bring politics into my blogging! So this is just a peek at the past, not a hidden message as to political leanings. 

Maybe I will retype the creed and add "I Believe...homemaking should include cross-stitch, embroidery, crocheting, or other needlework each day." Ha!

2021: A Blogging Renaissance

I don't know about others, but I have been hoping for a resurgence of blogging and the blog world. I blogged during The Golden Age of blogging, way back in 2004 until the Rise of Facebook and the later platforms such as Instagram. 

I followed many interesting blogs, and attempted to follow my favorite "original" bloggers as they transferred their attention to Facebook and abandoned their blogs. It was a bittersweet experience; of the former bloggers I "kept up with" on Facebook, only two people seemed to post anything authentic. One of them, luckily, also generously keeps up her blog. And some of my favorite blogs morphed into commercial ventures so heavy with ads that I couldn't find the posts sometimes, and some former favorite bloggers began posting nothing but memes and sales (with no real content, ever). 

I fared a bit better with Facebook "groups." But I have seen so much bullying, and so much of it seems to be "Look at this, but look quickly, because this is going to disappear into oblivion very quickly" due to the speed of "feeds." Hundreds of posts and thousands of comments in the space of a day is too rapid and too shallow for me.

Now, I'm not judging. No one owes me anything, least of all heartfelt posts, interesting information, a slower pace, or real glimpses into their real lives. But I missed it.

When I decided to begin blogging again, I encountered a bit of pushback from some of the people I know. It was as if I had declared I wanted to go back in time or go join some Luddite commune. One person told me, "Blogging isn't even a thing anymore." I got warned not to mention blogging during any job interviews (ageism and COVID ate my job): "It makes you seem old." Well, I am old. So what? 

I think blogging is indeed a "thing," an important thing. A chance to share, to capture moments in time, to build a community, to keep crafting alive, to serve the idea of inclusion in a fragmented world, and to offer encouragement. It doesn't have to be any of those things, but it can be. And it can also just be anything a blogger wants it to be.

I didn't get (or need) gifts this Christmas. But I gave myself a gift -- permission to enjoy and value blogs, to take the time for old-timey hopping from blog to blog, and I'm already discovering little gems of beauty or humor or knowledge that brighten my days. In The Time of COVID, I think blogging is MORE important than ever! 

May 2021 prove to be a revival of blogs and blogging. The world is brighter because of simple blogs!

Simple Gifts: Dried Satsuma Peel

Heigh Ho Ho Ho, Christmas is nearly here. I finally finished up with surgical procedure after procedure last week, and am feeling like myself a bit again. 

The holidays seem to go by in a flash the older I get. And the older I get, the more old memories seem to pop into my mind.

When I was young, the winter holidays meant plenty of citrus where I grew up in the Deep South. My mother grew many different types in our yard, and we would also go buy them from the local groves. Satsumas and kumquats were always my favorites, while my mother loved the huge sweet green lemons that I have not seen since.

Bowls and baskets filled with citrus were on our table and counters during the Christmas season, often nestled in a bed of Loblolly pine boughs. The scent was wonderful and branches of kumquats looked glorious!

Nowadays, bags of "mandarins" are in most groceries. We called them satsumas. I buy them and eat them by the dozens during the holidays. 

Don't let the peels go to waste! Save the peels to dry and put in pretty jars to use during the year and give as gifts.

Wash any mandarin or satsuma you plan to eat with dish soap, and rinse and dry thoroughly. Wash hands as well, and peel as usual, saving the peels. Using a small paring knife, scrape/cut away as much of the white pith as you can, just leaving the orange part of the peel. 

In the desert, we can just place the peel outside in the sun a few days, and have it dry. I usually do a combination of air drying during the day, and then placing in the oven at the very lowest setting, and baking with the door cracked open a bit until completely dry but not browned.

When dry, I place them in a clean jar along with an anti-oxidation packet of silica gel that I've saved from other food packages, such as come in beef jerky packages. You can also buy them. Sometimes I use a bit of coffee filter and wrap up a teaspoon of salt in it, then tuck it down in the bottom of the jar. Another small folded bit of filter goes on top, so that no peel rests on the salt directly.

Cap the jars tightly, tie on a simple ribbon, and they make a lovely gift. They keep their color well and their fresh flavor. I use them year 'round to mince and use in salad dressings and a citrus-oatmeal cookie we like.

Does anyone save peels to use later or dehydrate their own herbs or vegetables? My sister-in-law made lovely soup seasoning mixes with vegetables she dried and blended with spices, long long ago.

Beauty All Around, in Unexpected Places

My location near the border with Mexico means things are done differently here. Our governor locked our state down tight, but our visitors from Mexico do not care and probably don't even know this. Their lives in Juarez are very difficult, in the best of times. And now, some are very desperate. Today when I stopped by the grocery store to pick up some things, I heard glorious music. I was surprised, because the piped out music is usually awful. But it wasn't coming from the store; it was a mother and daughter musical duo. The mother was dressed beautifully with a silver lamé overlay to her flowing pants, and played song after song on her violin. The daughter handled the amplifier and a sign telling of their plight. The sign was in English, but the pair had no English, so I used my awful Spanish to convey how lovely the music was. 

There is so little cash in our society now! The homeless, the Salvation Army kettle crew, and the wait staff are all feeling it. I try to carry some but it all can be distributed just within a single trip.  Today I had great luck, in that the violin player was still there after my trip into the store to get some cash. There was a bit of a wait to get into the store, as it was limited to 75 people inside at any given time.

I'm moving slow this week due to a series of surgeries I'm having. In the old days, such surgeries meant resting in bed. Now it means out you go from the surgical center, walk every hour, and don't use any sedation or pain killers if you want to keep up with your errands! 

I got a bit of a snippet of the violin music from inside the car on my way out. I'll try to post it here. I haven't posted videos before, so it's iffy whether it will work. I'll post a still picture, too. I was too shy to get closer, felt it might be intrusive. Here's hoping the video will play!

CLICK THE SECOND PHOTO and the video will play!

Thank'ee for stopping by.

    Kind regards,

    The Merry Olde Dame, Holly

Mini Wreaths in Action

Oh, today got away from me. I was trotting all day, so to speak, doing this, doing that. As all of you know, it takes a million small tasks to run a home.

Last year, after Christmas and on sale, I found a little set of mini wreaths at Target. I think they were intended to use as placecards, but I have used them otherwise. In the "guest bathroom," I have two soap pumps at the sinks, and each wears a little wreath. The others are tucked here and there into mole glasses in the old Mexican "china cabinet." 

Just a simple touch to tuck them into glasses, but I see them in there. If you are wondering, mole glasses are the little drinking glasses that "mole" comes in. Mole (pronounced MOE-lay) is a rich Mexican cooking sauce usually thinned with broth and added to cooked, shredded turkey and served with rice or posole (what I call hominy). It is a deep, dark chocolate brown, and indeed, it does contain cocoa. It looks awful, and tastes divine!

Do you have little special touches around the home, too? Sweet little touches that might not even be noticed at first, but gladden your heart?

"The Christianas, and the Stemming, and the Potsing, and the Schussing" in the SNOW! With Tom and Jerry Batter!

A movie I love to watch every year is White Christmas, with Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Vera Ellen, and Danny Kaye. It's corny and a bit sappy, but I just love several scenes, especially when they are traveling via train, and a scene of a smorgasbord in the middle of the night in a ski lodge. I actually stayed at such as lodge 40 years ago. I think there are quite a few Hallmark movies out that attempt to recreate that cozy, wonderful feeling of being able to get up at 2 a.m. to wander down to the great room with its roaring fire and snack spread, snug in your flannel granny gown.

In the train scene, Bing's character is talking about skiing, before they launch into a lively song about "Snow." He speaks of  "The christianas, and the stemming, and the potsing, and the schussing" and "hot buttered rum, light on the butter." The "christianas" et al are all skiing moves, and who doesn't recall at least the Lifesaver flavor of Buttered Rum? 

"Snow" in White Christmas

There is another Yuletide drink that has almost disappeared, except in a few select areas, and that is the Tom and Jerry, basically a hot version of eggnog. No wonder it fell out of favor: There are a lot of steps to making it. If you go "junking" or antiquing, you might have run across a bowl and cup Tom and Jerry set, usually in Christmas colors and motifs. It's actually a BATTER/glop that contains raw eggs, used to flavor brandy and rum (or bourbon if you prefer), and here is an old recipe for it. Teetotalers such as myself can use hot milk in place of the water and alcohol:

Tom and Jerry Cocktail

Ingredients:

6 eggs, room temperature, separated
1/2 teaspoon cream tartar
1 cup superfine sugar
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup whipping cream
hot water
rum
nutmeg for garnish

To Make:

• Separate the eggs.
• Beat the whites along with the cream of tartar until they are a soft meringue.
• Gradually add the superfine sugar (can use regular granulated, too)
• Continue beating until stiff meringue forms (but not totally "dry").
• Place the meringue into a large mixing bowl.
• Using the same mixing bowl that you mixed the meringue in, add the yolks and 1 cup of the powdered sugar.
• Beat until light yellow and the consistency of frosting.
• Add the spices. Mix for another 1 minute.
• Fold the yolk mixture into the egg white mixture; don't stir, just fold
• Using a clean mixing bowl to whip the cream with the remaining 1/4 cup powdered sugar until stiff peaks form.
• Fold into the egg mixture.
• Fill a cup with hot water and 1 ounce of rum (or heated milk to fill the mug)
• Top with a scoop of Tom and Jerry.
• Garnish with a little nutmeg.
• Serve (refrigerate leftovers).
• Enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving and On to St. Nicholas Day!

I hope everyone had a wonderful, peaceful Thanksgiving. Mine was very quiet. A bright spot was that the sickly little cat my son and daughter-in-law found a year-and-a-half ago, and promptly brought to me, ate mushed-up white turkey meat very, very well. I have to coax him to eat, and something he will eat willingly one day, he will refuse the next. Over seven vets now have not determined why he is so thin. We've tried so many tests and x-rays and ultrasounds. He is very happy and energetic, but I worry about his weight, even though he is a dastardly creature! 

Now our thoughts turn towards St. Nicholas Day! December 6th is his day, and the eve, December 5th, is when the children put out their shoes  (or a special "St. Nicholas boot") and leave food for his reindeer or donkey, in many olde countries. 

We don't have St. Nicholas in that form in the U.S., but we do harken to him in songs and poems where we hear about "Good St. Nick." He was evidently such a good man that he was later recognized as a veritable saint.

We also don't have Belsnickel, a very olde and strange gent. Many have heard of him because of the television show "The Office," where a character with a dour Pennsylvania Dutch background introduces the Old World precursor of St. Nick/Santa. The following is a summation from Wikipedia:

"Belsnickel is a man wearing furs and sometimes a mask with a long tongue. He is typically very ragged and disheveled. He wears torn, tattered, and dirty clothes, and he carries a switch in his hand with which to beat naughty children, but also pocketsful of cakes, candies, and nuts for good children.

"A first-hand 19th-century account of the "Beltznickle" tradition in Allegany County, Maryland, can be found in Brown's Miscellaneous Writings, a collection of essays by Jacob Brown (born 1824). Writing of a period around 1830, Brown says, "we did not hear of" Santa Claus. Instead, the tradition called for a visit by a different character altogether:

He was known as Kriskinkle, Beltznickle and sometimes as the Christmas Woman. Children then not only saw the mysterious person, but felt him or rather his stripes upon their backs with his switch. The annual visitor would make his appearance some hours after dark, thoroughly disguised, especially the face, which would sometimes be covered with a hideously ugly phiz [mask] - generally wore a female garb - hence the name Christmas Woman - sometimes it would be a veritable woman but with masculine force and action. He or she would be equipped with an ample sack about the shoulders filled with cakes, nuts, and fruits, and a long hazel switch which was supposed to have some kind of a charm in it as well as a sting. One would scatter the goodies upon the floor, and then the scramble would begin by the delighted children, and the other hand would ply the switch upon the backs of the excited youngsters - who would not show a wince, but had it been parental discipline there would have been screams to reach a long distance."

My family certainly kept the switch tradition alive. I often got switches (small flexible branches/long twigs) for Christmas, and I was often "switched" with them.

This is a modified representation of Belsnickel, straddling the fence between him and St. Nicholas. Note he still has his bundle of switches and a rather aggressive stance. For myself, I prefer the genial and gentle St. Nicholas!

Remembering the Christmas Tree Lots of Yesteryear

I was very surprised to see in a friend's blog post that Christmas tree lots still exist in some big cities. With just one photograph, memories began flooding back. Why, it's been years and years since I remembered getting a Christmas tree from a lot. Some of that is because it's hard to remember, from a heart standpoint, when my family was full and living. There are so few of us left in my family of origin. And we had been a huge family, twelve around the table for supper. Now there are four and they are scattered over the globe. 

The tree lots had those hanging swags of lights, like a county fair. The bright smell of pine and fir was in the air. Sometimes, just like in the Peanuts show, there would be searchlights crisscrossing the low clouds that usually hung over New Orleans as the lots vied for customers. It seemed so strange and festive. And the sellers of the trees, hailing from Minnesota, were as interesting as the trees they sold. They were as astounded by our green and warm Christmastide as we were by their presence, their accents, and their talk of snow "back home." 

My last fresh-cut tree was bought almost 30 years ago, when I lived in New Mexico the first time. The area where the lot was set up is now unrecognizable, with a Walmart Supercenter sprawled over it. It had been raining, which is always exciting in the desert, and the lot was churned mud. I had a pair of knee-high wading boots on from my previous home, and I headed out to a cluster of Noble Firs when I bogged down completely. I could not pull my feet up, stuck fast and very surprised. At the time, I was still young and very thin, not even 100 pounds. To my relief but great embarrassment, one of the men at the lot slogged out to me and pulled me out of the mud -- but my boots were left behind. He carried me around, showing me the trees as if it's normal to have customers lose their footwear, and I picked one. Then he took me to the car, got it open, and in I went, socks still clean. But I never saw the boots again.

I wonder who still uses a fresh-cut tree? I'd love to, but even our hardware stores have stopped carrying them, except for potted Norfolk Pines. And they don't seem much like Christmas trees to me, even though we did have one on the porch in New Orleans for many years. At Christmastime, my mother would put a set of those red satin-wrapped 60's ornaments on it.

Thank'ee for stopping by.

    Kind regards,

    The Merry Olde Dame, Holly

Tag Fest During Lockdown

Our state (New Mexico) continues its lockdown, and most stores are closed. There's at least an hour-long wait to get into a grocery store or a Walmart, due to a rush on items, to both a Walmart and an Albertson's Grocery being shut because of COVID-positive staff, and to our location near the border and El Paso. 

Strangely, I was able to upload image files from home and have "contactless" delivery of the printed out tags from our Office Depot store. Hooray! 

So today I have been "fussy-cutting" the tags and now I'm ready to add the twine or ribbon to hang them, and to add extra decorations to some of them (such as fake snow or glitter). I have one up on the mantel already from a White Christmas set, and tomorrow or even maybe later tonight (I am awake during the night, unfortunately) I'll put the rest of that set up.

I found some nice "homespun" black and cream checked fabric at Hobby Lobby a few months back, and that's what I'm using to hang them. I just tear strips of the material and poke it through the hole I punched.

My poor doggie "Champ" was bitten/stung on his rear by SOMETHING. I'm guessing it was either a giant centepide or a scorpion. Ugh! He's "disabled," in that he was a victim of abuse that left him with a ruined back left leg before he was rescued, but he never lets that stop him. He's a mighty hunter, constantly hopping around the backyard and chasing anything he can. He's all heart, being a Chiweenie, and even confronts snakes, hoot owls, and once, a coatamundi. Our yard is walled, but somehow creatures find their way in, right in the city. Anyway, he saw the vet and he's predicted to be able to mend quickly. He's my little cuddlebug shadow; his "sister," a Bichon mix, is loving but much more reserved. 

I hope this Monday finds you well and happily occupied! If your state is in lockdown, or you are avoiding going out, what have you been doing lately to stay engaged and content?