On occasion we are quite silly around here. This particular vein of silliness branched from a not-so-silly event: my old kitty’s death. I’d had Deli for 19 years, and was devastated when she died. With everything else that had been going on that year, it was a bit of the straw and the camel, and to help ease my pain I started carrying around one of my old stuffed animals, Le Mutt. Le Mutt is wonderful at giving love and comfort. In fact, he’s so wonderful at it, that he didn’t want to go back on the shelf when my immediate need was met, and I was past the worst of the hurt. Actually, he still doesn’t want to get put back on the shelf, to the extent that he’s still carried around from room to room, and he joyfully brings encouragement and moral support to both of us on a daily basis—as well as more than a few chuckles…

Last February, Dave bought me a cute Hallmark bear with a red ribbon around her neck and a red heart on one foot. She was holding a box of chocolates at the time, so her name became Coco. Coco never has wanted to sit on a shelf, and insisted from the get go that she was Le Mutt’s long lost sister. Here’s Coco helping me to read a book one evening before Christmas.

We went to a charity event before Christmas at the local pub. Everyone attending was to bring a toy for a small child to donate to the local sheriff’s office for their toys for tots program. We found this adorable little bear, Kodiak. Kodiak visited us for less than a week, but he got along great with Le Mutt and Coco. Here are Kodiak and Le Mutt peaking out from the folds of an afghan.

There seem to be no bounds to the extent of the silliness that goes on here… It is most silly, but so fun, and occasionally has both of us rolling with laughter. Here Mutt and Coco are psyched and ready to share our Christmas dinner. They even have their own glasses of wine! Dave had set the table expecting us to put all the dishes in serving bowls, but then we got lazy and just dished up in the kitchen. No sense washing all that stuff when it’s just the four of us for dinner. The wine was a nice dry Alsacian Gewurtztraminer from Trimbach. Yum.