This morning, it’s cold and rainy, a fitting time to bring out my new winter hat, strange and wonderful. Maria bought it for me at the Wool and Fiber Festival, I plan on wearing it at our Open House, now just a week away.

Today, the hat is going to Brattleboro, Vt. We are meeting an old friend there for lunch. I plan on doing some shopping at  the only clothing store I ever shop at, Sam’s in Brattleboro. I get all my blue work shirts there and my underwear and jeans. I always wear a blue shirt and jeans, and have for decades.

Today, I’m going to get a new pair of red suspenders, maybe some new boots for walking. The suspenders will probably be the extent of my shopping, I have what i need. Lunch will be fun too, I’m looking forward to it. I think my new hat will work out well in Brattleboro.

We are heading to New Mexico in two weeks, I need to be ready. Today, I am also trying out a new backpack camera bag I got with some B & H Photo credits I didn’t know I had.

Our new house-sitter, Shelby Blanchette,  is coming to keep and eye on the farm and exercise the dogs. We’ve only known her for a month or so, but she already feels like family. She is funny, conscientious and great with the animals, she grew up on a farm  herself.

She works very hard, and is impressive. We trust her completely.

It’s an interesting thing about house and pet sitters, everybody has their own criterion. Mine is that they love the animals, but not love the animals.

A good pet sitter in my mind isn’t there just to cuddle animals, but to get to know them, and their human’s understanding of them. I see Shelby is paying attention to that. She knows how to calm Fate down, coax Red out – he hides in my study when I am gone – and help us train Gus.

We both have a real good feeling about her, and she’s coming over frequently to get to know the dogs and the farm and the routines here, so she will be up to speed when we head for New Mexico a week after the Open House.

We are both very excited about this trip. We did have a short vacation to Disney World five years ago, but it didn’t turn out to be too restful, for various reasons I don’t need to regurgitate. We both see that we really need a real vacation, we will be gone a week.

I am getting older, but have never worked harder or been as engaged in life. I saw Sheila, the other day, the nurse-practitioner who oversees my diabetes. “You have a great life force,” she said, “you will live a long time.” I told her about the wicked low sugar attack I had the other night when I mistakenly took a double dose of my night-time Insulin.

My sugar plunged and I broke out into an awful sweat and my blood count dropped 100 points. I was confused and disoriented and thought I was having a heart attack. Maria saw what was happening and gave me some life savers and dark chocolate. Still, I won’t make that mistake again.

This was only the second low sugar episode I’ve ever had, and I had to laugh. The upside of an incident like that is you get to eat all the sweet stuff you want, at least for a few minutes. It worked out fine.

I plan to take the new back pack camera bag (LowePro) to New Mexico and take some photos.

I’ll be blogging from New Mexico, perhaps not as frequently, but regularly. And using my new backpack camera case, I’ll have a better feel for it today.

We’ll be back this afternoon. See you later, and thanks for following my life and supporting it. I love you back.