Holiday Invitations (Christmas 2014) article on janice142

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Christmas Gifts 101

Recently a few friends and I were chatting about the invites we had received to join folks for Christmas day. Some were from virtual strangers and others from people best described as *nodding acquaintances. We laughed about the interesting gifts received from folks ashore...

*Nodding acquaintance: Someone you nod 'hello' to in passing. Usually this is an individual with whom you ave never had a penetrating conversation and could not name if your life depended upon it.

This is a list of gifts received by sea gals:

Perfume or scented lotions (most of us have our favorites)
Bath bubbles and soaps (we don't have tubs on our boats)
Candles (not every one has flames aboard their boat)
My aunt gave us a set of 8 breakable glasses with the Canadian maple leaf in gold on the sides. They were large, did not stack, and, well, we remembered our manners. I had to write the thank you note for those gosh-awful things.

Of course men are not spared. Boat guys can expect to find items such as:

Neck ties with a nautical motif, especially prevalent when the boater wears primarily tee shirts without a collar
Shaving cream and brush (usually gifted full-bearded men)
and/or
Baseball caps

While we appreciate the thought, the reality is for some of us a bit different. We are simply not interested in gift exchanges with anyone we do not particularly know well. What I would most like is a phone call and invitation to ride along when you are headed to a distant store.

I still treasured the time to think back to earlier years. Many happy memories were shared, especially with my friend Irene. Irene is a great listener who has lead an interesting life.

It was such fun to tell stories about when the children were young, and so were we. Where did the years go? It seemed to me not so very long ago that I had my duo.

Here are Son and Kidlet on the tow boat my dad ran for a while down in the Florida Keys:


Christmas aboard Seaweed was quiet. It was quite pleasant too. I rearranging a couple of shelves in my canned goods locker.

	← 18 one cup canning jars fit to the left of my pressure cooker. Stacked two high, they will not topple. But it was the stuffed green pepper (bottom left jar) that caught my attention. It became dinner aboard Seaweed on Christmas 2014. It was delicious too.

I enjoy making treats for myself and was particularly happy to have made these last year. The recipe can be found in the Canning Stuffed Green Peppers article. The best time of the year to make them is when the babies are in season -- the little ones fit into the one cup wide mouth jars. If you have bigger jars, disregard the previous sentence.

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