Good morning, everyone. So far we have missed the nasty snow and rain some were predicting for this area over the last couple of days. The skies are cloudy but the temps are supposed to go into the mid 30s so any snow we might get won't last long--especially since we are supposed to get some 40s over the next few days.

We looked over our door wreaths yesterday as we decide what to put up of the Christmas decorations. We aren't going to do our tree this year but we do like something seasonal on the door. We need something for Christmas but want it plain so we can incorporate some of our ornaments in it. Since all of our wreaths are on a grape vine base we decided that we would simply strip the old decorations off and build new wreaths as needed. The winter wreath is still looking nice so we will put it up just after New Years. The next one is the spring wreath which we want to put up the first of April in time for Easter. I have plenty of time to think about what to do with it.

The other major project (besides finding and decorating a Christmas wreath) is to get my craft areas cleaned up and organized over the next month. I have let it get so out of control over the summer. I do hate organizing but feel so good when it is done. Besides the floor needs a good vacuuming and the shelves all need a good dusting. I have said before that we usually don't do any heavy cleaning until the spirit moves us and, thankfully, it doesn't move too often. We have other things we would much rather do.

HuffingtonPost had this hopeful story on the job market this morning. Retailers, it seems, are adding a lot of temporary jobs this season and some are turning into full time positions. That is nice but I am not celebrating for several reasons. First, we still are ignoring the problem of what happens to a consumer driven economy when large numbers of consumers can't consume in the heroic manner we are accustomed to. Second, it would not take much to reverse this trend and all of the gains can disappear as quickly as they are appearing. Neither of these two factors encourage much stability. Third, retail jobs are notoriously low paid and usually without benefits or with only minimal benefits.

I just found this rather interesting New York Times story by way of MSNBC. I just finished reading two books by Joan Dye Gussow (Growing, Older and This Organic Life) in which she described her battles with the Hudson River which borders her property. The town in the NY Times story is building up the roadway that separates the subdivision from the river by some 18 inches but a strong some surge won't prevent that flooding and those strong storms are becoming more frequent. And you can't really blame the long time residents because such flooding was an infrequent problem when they moved into their houses. Now the flooding occurs several times a month.