New Year's Eve

Church in the morning. A young man actually spoke to Grace afterwards.(Most people avoid her as she is so hard to talk to.) He asked her how her Christmas was. She smiled and answered but did not ask a reciprocal question. She never does. Afterwards, I reminded her yet again, that the way to keep conversations going is to ask the other person a question about themselves.
"You could have said, 'And how was *yours*?'"
"Oh, yes, I forgot about that part."
We have these chats about almost every day.{sigh}

We had vegetable curry for lunch and then drifted off to various places. Jack went to Band Practice at his friend's house. Have I mentioned he is learning to play electric guitar? He is and is making excellent progress already! He and two friends decided they wanted to be in a band. None of them played instruments. They just wanted to be in a band. Well, Dad did it, so how hard can it be?

All are now learning. Together, often. In the same room. Thankfully, not at my house. One is the drummer, two of them plan on being the lead guitarist. Not sure how that will work.{g} I think I can forsee 'musical differences' leading to a split. We need to get Jack into the church's youth band asap to harness all that playing energy.

Grace chilled in her room all afternoon, knowing we were going to be out in the evening, which was going to be torture for her. Jamie got in a nap, knowing we were going to be out. What did I do? Emails and blogging. Tried to fix various things around the house.

We went out to 'tea' at freinds, the High Tea type with lots of yummy food. The other guests were a very elderly couple. The older couple seem to have known almost every baptist minister since the war. Our host was a baptist minister and now works for the regional baptist organisation too. It was a pleasant evening but Grace had had enough of the strain of trying to be sociable, so I went home with her. Jamie and Jack went on for some more festivities in another friend's home. They have boys Jack's age also into music. They stayed a couple of hours and then came back home to usfor the annual 'staying up late to see in the New Year.'

We all made camp on the living room floor with duvets and pillows and watched the traditional Jools Holland's Hootenanny on tv. Plenty of music, some good, some bad, some very bad. I usually doze off at about 11.15 and wake up to the shock of fireworks outside. I actually made it through without dozing this time, so the fireworks were not a shock!{g}

This morning we are all very tired, except Jamie, who just went to lie under the car to change the oil. He doesn't go back to work until tomorrow, though he's on call and has to keep checking his computer at work, remotely, to make sure nothing has melted,blown up or otherwise gone astray anywhere in the world. (Well, his company's products anywhere in the world...it's not like he's God or anything!)

And I lifted something heavy this morning without bending my knees, so my back injury has reappeared. When will I ever learn?

HAPPY NEW YEAR!