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Coming out from My Dark Place. . .

Not a house belonging to anyone I know, but it reminds me of my maternal grandparents' house in SE Pennsylvania whenever there was snow, which we had many Decembers and Christmases in the 1970s and 1980s.

Closing on the new house tomorrow afternoon with moving day a week later when we'll take up residence.  Lots to do in that time, of course, but we'll manage.  I cannot wait to bid goodbye to the movers, shut the front door that first evening at home, have some kind of supper with the Grand Duchess and Young Master, tuck the latter into bed in his new room at 8 o'clock, and then poor a glass of something medicinal to celebrate with the Grand Duchess in front of the working fireplace in the library.  While the style of our new house is more modern that the one pictured above, it does nestle down much like it in a bunch of trees at the edge of a large wood, hence my borrowing unashamedly from Mr. Wodehouse.  Totleigh-in-the-Wold, which my sister finds riotously funny.

--Heinz-Ulrich

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