The light at the end of the tunnel has red and green lights on it

I am entering a new season.


My husband left for Tennessee yesterday and will be there until spring, with one week off a month during which he will come here or I will go there. He is astute enough to have integrated some fabric shopping and family visiting into this arrangement so I will be OK.


On the way down he stopped and visited his cousins in Boston on  layover:

As photographed by a young member of the family.


Like nearly every Acadian (French) Nova Scotian family a bunch of them moved to New England at various stages for work, and even a generation or two later all come back to Nova Scotia frequently. The group you see here must come back to Isle Madame off the coast in Cape Breton four or five times a year at least and they were all born in the States. The same is true of my son-in-law's family and every Acadian family I know.


My dogs marked the first night we were batching it by being up every 1 and 1/2 hours to see if anything was new happening in the yard. We have a lot of wet snow and they didn't get a lot of exercise yesterday. I will be running their little paws off today - although they are now exhausted and passed out in the living room.


I have one more week of classes and then a term off where I do nothing by my own thing and work on building some online courses which I can do from my dining room table.


I figure this will be the first time in 24 years that I won't be dragging myself off to work somewhere in the winter. I am really looking forward to having some time to collect my thoughts and remember what I do when I don't have to do for anybody else.


This weekend I am free to sew, mostly finishing up Christmas presents, and having a friend over for dinner tonight where I am going to be serving her the easiest thing I can think of as possible.


BTW on Vogue 1137. I decided to make my mom a version for a housecoat - big pockets and separating zipper up the front, and I hope it works out. The thing with that pattern is that the sleeves are cut quite narrow below the biceps ( you might want to be careful about this and cut them wider for yourself.) I have tried it on about a fifty times and tried to recall how wide her arms are.


Off I go for a third coffee and to do some dog glaring.