Wanderung 28

Christmas day was rather muted as Martin was still slowly recovering, Tanya was in the middle of the flu, and Ondina was really suffering with the flu also. We munched on the contents of our Christmas stockings in the morning, but postponed opening presents and instead drove over to the local Walgreen pharmacy after breakfast for some flu medication for Ondina and cortisone cream for Monika's no-see-um bites. The big screened cover over the pool in the back of the house kept out any mosquitoes, thankfully, but the no-see-ums were small enough to get through the screen mesh. I actually saw one crawling on my arm, and it was a black dot no bigger than the tip of a needle.

Curiously, the no-see-ums liked to bite Martin and Monika, but for some reason seemed to skip Tanya and me. The bites don't swell up quite like mosquito bites, but they do itch and when you scratch the bite, it can get infected. So the trick is to not scratch, and fortunately the cortisone cream helped and Monika slept better that night.

People felt better that afternoon, so we all opened presents and enjoyed what our Secret Santa had provided. I got a coffee mug in the shape of a big SLR camera lens, which was such a good reproduction that at first I thought it WAS a camera lens. Monika got a small tool set for household tasks in a petite tool bag that was just her size.

After opening presents, we started working on one of the jigsaw puzzles Monika had brought along. It was a picture of a fancy old German castle as viewed from across the moat. The castle was complete with high stone towers, narrow windows guarded by brightly painted shutters, and a foreground of beautiful red and white roses growing alongside the moat. The puzzle was only 500 pieces, but completing it took us all two days of spare time. It was curiously exciting when you found exactly the right piece, and very satisfying to slowly and gradually complete the puzzle to match the picture on the box. I kind of got drawn into that process and just could not stop working on it even after sundown when it got darker and the pieces were harder to see, which finally caused an eyestrain headache (stupid!).

For dinner that evening, Martin had the bright idea of just buying some frozen pizzas and heating them up for dinner. The Di Giorno pizzas he selected were really quite good and Tanya and Ericka made a salad so it was a fairly complete and very tasty meal.