Something different caught my eye in the seafood section when we were shopping on Tuesday. Greenshell mussels from New Zealand. I thought they would make an interesting addition to fish chowder. But yesterday, musing about the evening menu I thought why not paella? I hadn't made it in ages and yesterday was as good a time as any. I had all the necessary ingredients; rice, saffron, onions, garlic, chicken, fish, tomatoes, bell peppers...so why not?

The first time I ever had paella was when Irving took me to a restaurant, I think in Shinjuku district, called Almond. Downstairs it was a cafe, upstairs a restaurant. And there we ordered paella. Irving had eaten paella before, in Vancouver, but I wasn't with him then, it was a business affair. I thought the meal in Tokyo was superb; imagine in Japan a classic Spanish dish. But in Tokyo cuisine reflects special dishes from all over the world; we ate Indian food there, too along with Japanese classics while living there and I cooked a lot of Japanese-type meals.

And last night's paella satisfied us immensely. Don't eat too much Irving cautioned me. He rarely tends to, but I often do. And last night I did, though suffered no ill effects afterward. All that nutritious goodness and sensational taste, how could I?! 

And though it doesn't seem quite right when everyone around us is celebrating Christmas, eating fruitcake and fruit pudding which I've often made in the past, we decided something else would do this year. I offered mincemeat pie or pumpkin pie? Irving chose the latter. As it happened, I had frozen the contents of half a can of pure pumpkin back in October when I'd used the first half for a pumpkin pie. I took it out of the freezer last night, and out of the refrigerator this morning. And later on set about baking a pumpkin pie.

 In the afternoon Jackie and Jillie informed us in no uncertain terms that they were fed up with our carousing, and it was time to leave the house for a leisurely tramp through the woods. We agreed and off we went on a quiet day, Christmas Eve, in fact with no one around on the street but us heading up to the ravine entrance under a silvery sky, snow crunching underfoot. Our street now boasts a winter-permanent layer of snow-on-ice that will disappear in spring.

It's only three days since the shortest day of the year, and though the forest interior is always shy of exterior light it was obvious that dusk was intent on arriving surprisingly early. We came across a friend of whom we asked how his grandmother was faring. He had last told us that his 99-year-old grandmother, living in an old-age home for the past several years had been feeling poorly and that COVID had been identified in several of the residents. She since died. A long, busy and fruitful life.

At one junction Jackie began loping along on three legs, keeping one of his back legs hoisted. Soon afterward he asked to be picked up, quite unusual for him. Jillie had done the same thing yesterday. We had been standing around talking to people we know, and assumed she had a bit of a chill.  Then it occurred to us that the two incidents could be linked, that Jackie could be wearing the bootie that Jillie had worn yesterday and it had a puncture. That's just what happened, we discovered on our return home, so that boot won't be used again.

By the time we exited the ravine, people's Christmas lights had come on, and the street was beginning to blaze with all the colours of the rainbow.