One friend we have lunch with every week or so generally does not use a credit card. When she does, she still leaves the tip in cash. We had the discussion about this and for quite some time, I continued to add it to my credit card. Now, as it happens, some of the places in town have switched to including an automatic service fee. Anyway, I got to thinking about this and like a lot of people, I don’t necessarily carry a lot of different bills with me. On the other hand, due to a couple of different things, I have to make bank runs fairly often. I started swapping out some of my twenties for $5s and $10s and keep those in a separate envelop at home that I then transfer some of the bills every few days into my wallet to use for cash tips now.

Aside from allowing the server to have immediate cash, I am not quite certain how a place handles tips from credit cards. For example, does the server get the entire tip or do they subtract the credit card fee? Do they give the server the tip along with their paycheck? I simply hadn’t really thought of these this until watching my friend. The one thing though is if a tip is automatically included at say 18% and I ordinarily tip 20%, that can be more complicated. Adding the extra in this case might mean I need to have some $1s to augment. That, and if the tip is more than $20 is when I may well keep it on the credit card.

Ah, the holidays and extra to plan for. There’s Christmas Eve meal, dinner with the kids and the neighbor on their second night, then the New Year’s Eve party, New Year’s Day and probably out for lunch on the 2d; the last day the friend is here. This is the only time of the year when I consistently make hot breakfasts. This allows the adult kids to sleep in – granddaughter and I are the early birds. She gets cereal as “early breakfast” although at times she only wants milk, then it’s for real breakfast later. Weather permitting all meals are of course taken on the terrace.

Sushi is generally the first night out and dinner with the neighbor is normally pork chops and lamb chops because daughter-in-law loves lamb, but son and neighbor don’t care for it.The other two nights out will depend on mood. White Lion is a favorite because of the decorations as well as food and setting, but Exit One Taproom has possibility, too. The Hotel could be in the running, as can Capri. We’ll play those by ear.

For the first time ever, I am picking up catered dinner for New Year’s Eve. We’ve done sit-down, then just large quantities of something like sliders, along with shrimp cocktail, salmon, and three-four more heavy appetizers. This year is a brisket meal with limited appetizers – we’ll do those – before the buffet. After the main meal, I’ll put out the charcuterie and sweets just to have something for people to nibble on in the run-up to midnight.

Back to Christmas Eve. It will be the two of us and it’s usually seafood. We’ll probably do carryout from either Krab Kingz in Florida City or Red Crab. Messy, but good in either case. Christmas Day will be late lunch/early dinner – depending on how one views the time – and Hubby and I aren’t actually preparing food for this one. I will go over early to help with prep and keep wine poured for the hostess.

Okay, this year is definitely a bit different. While we frequently travel to Georgia for Thanksgiving, this is a year when we had already planned not to. When we stay here, we usually go over to friends who live in a neighborhood we could walk to if we weren’t carrying a platter of fried turkey. (Our contribution to the feast).

As it turns out, the unexpected loss of a friend added another aspect. The friend had been struggling with health issues, however, the rapid decline last month took us all by surprise. The couple has no children nor family nearby. I’ve been helping a fair amount and for those who have ever suffered a loss right before the holidays, it can be especially difficult. In order to try and bring some semblance of “normal”, we’ll have Thanksgiving lunch at our place for this friend, a neighbor, and another friend who will travel for Christmas, but be alone this week. Nothing elaborate and that will still provide time for Hubby to do the second turkey for the late afternoon at our other friends.

I’ll do a traditional roasted turkey with only the basics for noon – turkey, ham, dressing, kicked-up mashed potatoes, rolls, and apple pie. Friends are bringing cranberry sauce, green beans in some form, and cheesecake. Timing the oven temperature will involve putting the apple pie into the oven between 7:30-8:00 in order to get it done, then turn the temp down to 325 to manage everything else. It will also mean making the herb butter the evening before as Hubby does the chopping and I don’t want him to have to deal with that part on Thanksgiving morning. Oh, I’m not doing the dressing from scratch – am using one of the Publix ones from the deli case. Also not doing potatoes from scratch (never do). Those are again refrigerator ones that I add butter, sour cream, maybe milk, salt and pepper and bake for approximately half an hour.

I will remember to pick up cold slaw and potato salad at Publix today though for Hubby to have to go with turkey sandwiches later.

With everything going on, we haven’t decorated for Halloween this year although some of the neighbors have been creative. I did pick up the usual quantity of multiple bags of candy as we get lots of trick or treaters. Hubby will post a few photos to Facebook no doubt. They do range in age from toddler to teenager and we don’t mind that. Sometimes the older ones are bringing young one around and other times, they may just be hanging on to a last bit of childhood for a few hours.

Hubby teases me some, but I have two candy bowls. The one with the most is the good chocolate/nut stuff and I have a second smaller one with no chocolate and no nuts just in case. Speaking of food, we will have a steady stream of visitors from around 5:30 to 9:00. We usually have dinner at 7:30 while watching Jeopardy and with one of us having to answer the door every few minutes, we will fix tuna etouffee tonight. Since it’s a stew-like meal, it will stay hot between bites.

I do tend to try and err on the side of too much rather than too little candy and we do have a bag or so left over at times. It has been known to last until nearly Christmas. On the other hand, I am supposed to make sure there is a bag – or at least most of a bag – of Butterfingers for Hubby to enjoy for later. That mostly works out. Sometimes he prefers Snickers as leftover, but not this year.

I am also okay with all the places that choose to have some sort of event for kids rather than have them go to houses. Oh, and I do have a few friends whose favorite holiday is Halloween and they go all out whether with decorations, costumes, or party. None happen to be in this neighborhood; I know I’ll be seeing FB posts tomorrow from them.