A Christmas bike ride

I had 6 egg whites left over from the tiramisu. Three flavors of meringues

Christmas tiramisu. Mascarpone was on sale at the Italian store . Where are my glass pans? Long fruitless search for them.

Lakes on my walk

Embroidered thriftstore pillows purchased a few hours before the tornado hit half mile away.

Not a thrift pillow (probably the opposite) from Steve as part of X-mas

Such strange weather we've been having! On Wednesday, it was 60 degrees meaning I could ride my bike in shorts. The problem: very thick fog and only an hour of rain free weather. So I strapped on a series of blinkers so not to be road kill. There have been a spate of after dark bicycling deaths so the city will be giving out lights. Maybe Naomi can get some for me as she is officially a city resident. Due to my recovery, I haven't exercised at a very high level. It is really hard to walk fast. I walk longer and longer but it really is a time killer. But rain was coming soon so I peddled as fast as I could for 15 miles. Yep the rain did catch up to me for the last 3 miles but it was warm and relatively calm. The fog dissipated after about a half hour. But it felt good to finally have a good work-out after 3 weeks.

 

On to have my nails painted a festive orangish gold after a sweep of the Thriftstore. Senior Day, woo-hoo!. My tiny Vietnamese nail person has hands the size of Maya's only with adult nailbeds, so strange. I feel so huge there with my massive feet and hands. For Xmas, her mom, the owner, made Vietnamese egg rolls, two kinds, for the customers. Yum. A brief visit to Shanna's and back home. The winds started to pick up. No longer do I rush to check the DTE outage map to see what chaos may be happening at the Albatross (during one storm last summer, a power outage meant the sump pump wasn't working and we ended up having to replace a wooden landing) But the winds did do damage. A large area around Josh's was out for15 hours. At one point he told us that Xmas would need to be moved to our house but power was restored so we were spared. But the strange thing was the tornado that touched down near the thrift shop at a day landing only airport. First Michigan tornado in December! No humans were hurt. Nobody even saw the tornado but it was officially judged that from its aftermath of twisted sheet metal.

 

So Christmas has come and gone. I think we overdid it on the presents trying to equalize things and then constantly re-adjusting. I baked a few things like a broccoli cheese braid full of red pepper strips for color. Roasted red peppers are the best. On Christmas eve, we had one of the Moms and her husband come over for drinks and Chrstmas pot-stickers (and lots of desserts). What makes them Xmassy? Red and green wonton wrappers . They were stuffed with crab and shrimp and liberally doused in sriracha  sauce.

 

Maya was dropped off bright and early by her dad. I had a Xmas outfit on hand in case she showed up all ratty but she had a cute outfit on so I saved it. She was very excited to see her cousins (she has so many cousins on her dad's side that I have lost count).  It took Steve a long while to load all the many presents into the car (I have a five pound weight limit)Julie had both of her parents at their house. Usually only one is on hand. And her sister was in town. The 5 kids excitedly tore into their presents while we had bellinis and mimosas. Fun to see them all happy.

 

It was early afternoon still when we drove Maya back to her Dad's and plenty of time to have a bike ride. No need to rush as there was no impending rain. It felt so good to be moving though it would have been easier f I had not pre-dosed on Bellinis. How often can I ride a bicycle on Christmas?