The gift was dish towels so they went straight into the washer and the wrapping into the trash and taken outside. He got the vaccine, she didn't and is still feeling puny. Anything coming out of the house has to be considered a possible source of germs for a while.

My holiday letters have mostly been mailed; this year it is a story of how we got through four days of no power in sub-freezing weather. Entertaining, I hope. It was tough at the time but I knew there would be some good stories out of it. Millions of us lived through it, not everyone wrote it down while it was happening. I sent excerpts of my notes in my holiday letter. (After all of my talking about using my asparagus steamer to keep the kitchen a little warm and heat water, a friend of mine had that on her list for an Xmas list this year. They're so versatile!)

Packages are going in reverse order now, back in from the SUV and to be arranged on a decorative table, out of the reach of dogs. I took the big step yesterday of bringing my good fabric shears and cutting the upholstery "skirt" off of the back of the sofa. The legs are finished, the fabric showing now is the same type as what was in that fringe, but now there isn't a big 2-foot rip the puppy made when she attacked that part of the sofa last year. I've kept something against it since then, but I'm tired of that. It was never going to be repaired and look good. It does make sweeping easier. I didn't remove from around the rest of the sofa, but I may, we'll see. I'm going to be arranging furniture for guests, hence the adjustment to how the sofa looks (and this is in the back - I can turn it around and no one at the front would be the wiser).

Time for a nap.