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READER DEAR, it appears my life is so full of encores!

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SPEAKING OF SHOWS! WE (Pennsylvanians) are now in that week of January when every year the state puts on a show about farm animals and farm equipment and farm tools and food and crops produced on farms.  You may be surprised, Reader Dear,  to hear that we call it The Farm Show!                                                                     

I went to see it today with The Yard Man and my Little Actor.

It would be hard to say which of the three of us enjoyed the show more.  I was so fascinated by the creatures acting in this show.  (It featured a few with frightening features!)

The Little Actor, on the other hand, was enthralled by the large stage equipment!

                                                                                                          

And that Yard Man, he wanted to head straight for the refreshment area, where vendors were serving up edible cousins of the grunting* and crowing and bleating and lowing actors we'd just seen performing!

*Oh, oinking, for sure oinking!
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I SELDOM WATCH TV.

I know that statement could be taken with a raised eyebrow,
Reader Dear, since I just finished rhapsodizing about a TV show.  But it's true  (That concert I watched a few days ago is held only once a year, after all.)
And if I hadn't gotten so much nudging from others--one daughter, one sister, three sisters-in-law, two very good friends, one stranger at the bank-- I might not have chalked up the two hours of watching tonight.  If the media hadn't waxed so eloquent over this new season; if I hadn't been invited to watch it on a wide-screen TV with five other women; if the WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD FOR GOODNESS SAKE weren't watching it, I may have missed Downton Abbey!*

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*OMG, what's going to happen to the place?!
What will the new husband do with his new windfall?!
Will that chap get out of jail?!
Will Edith get married?!**
** Er, it used to be that I seldom watched TV, Reader Dear.


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I NEARLY FORGOT about that Austrian man who shows up for me every New Year's Day, waves his baton through the air, and whisks me off to other realms!  When I remembered him with a start,  I rushed into the living room and frantically turned on the TV!  I was ten minutes late to the concert!





 

 The next eighty minutes were the most marvelous highlight of my young new year!
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AFTER WHAT SEEMED TO BE a long stretch of one holiday hoopla after another, I've tumbled rather suddenly straight into the New Year! (Sincerely hoping I'll find you here, too, Reader Dear!)   When I took a photo of today's Pork and Sauerkraut 2013 Celebratory Dinner, it struck me that this meal would be the final one of the holiday season!





Desserts at today's meal consisted of:
Freshly-homemade, lavishly-iced coconut cake
Freshly-homemade gingerbread cake with whipped cream accompaniment
Chocolates
Cookies
Fruit salad
(And that, Dear Reader, was only the sweets.  It was as if everyone in The Yard Man's extended family knocked themselves out in a desperate attempt to trump the Christmas spread!  The sauerkraut was made from scratch! The pork melted in one's mouth!  The freshly baked baguettes made me vow I would set about getting myself a baguette pan of my own, and a baking stone, and ha-ha set aside four hours to bake some of this heavenly bread myself!  [And I haven't even stuffed your fancy with the stuffed mushrooms!])
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In the last hours of the old year, The Yard Man and I attended a party where the sweetest sweet was the fellowship of long-standing friends (long-suffering, too! All that groaning and laughing at the oft-told jokes).  But of course, the hummus, and chili, and Hoppin' John*, and veggies, and shrimp, and fruit, and chocolates, and being on the winning dominoes team were all pretty swell as well!


*Something new to eat this new year! The culinary marvel who made this dish claims it's got to be eaten on New Year's eve if one wishes to have even the slightest amount of good luck in the brand new year!  (Dear Reader, how unlucky for you! [She only passed along the recipe today])
**A guy went to jail and discovered that when his fellow cons were whiling away the time together, someone would inevitably call out a number and everybody would laugh.  This happened again and again.  In private he asked his cell mate, who'd been there for years, "What's going on?" 
"Oh," said his cell mate, "we've all been here for  so long, we've heard all the jokes so often, we know 'em by heart!  We assigned a number to each joke, and now we just use the numbers."  The new guy thought about this for a while, and decided he'd give it a try.  The next time all the prisoners were together, he called out, "Number Five!"  ......There was not a snicker.  The guy was embarrassed, but he tried again, "Number Seven!" 
Once again, not a soul laughed.  
As soon as they had returned to their cell, the new guy turned to his cell mate, "What the #&%," he exclaimed. "How come nobody laughed?"
"Well...." replied the older guy, in an apologetic way,  "you know how it is with  jokes.  Some folks can tell 'em, and some can't!"***
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*** "Number 4"