Good-bye '07, Hello '08

I’m a list maker. I like to list things. What to get at the grocery store, what I need to do around the house before company arrives, what flowers to plant in the spring, what I’d like in a dream house, places to which I’d like to travel, favorite movies, books, etc. Lists, lists, lists. I wish I could say making lists is a sign of an organized mind, but I think it’s much more likely this is a sign of a mind that wishes it were organized. Or maybe it’s even a call for help. All I know is I like to make lists, but even more than making them, I like to cross things off my lists.

Things I crossed off in 2007

Realized that the chocolate truffles Em and I made on almost a whim could take us places and we began our business, having fun with it and getting closer to Em
Entertain more often
Finish the two year house remodeling
Begin planting the flower garden
Enjoy the outdoor fireplace


Things I hope to cross off in 2008

Get the commercial kitchen inspected and approved.
Settle on “the look” for our truffle business, boxes, bags, tags, business cards, website
Our state’s governor serving our truffles
Take a hands-on chocolate creating class in Paris
Advertise the truffle business and grow and grow and grow
Send my writing to contests, magazines and bring new writing to my writers’ group
Diet and exercise (I really, really want to cross this one off)
Creating whimsies, hooked rugs, feather trees, mohair teddy bears, etc.
Find an original piece of artwork, signed by the artist for the dining room wall
Read more
Enjoy the flower garden more
Entertain more

I know there are more things I crossed off my 2007 list just as there are more things I hope to cross off 2008's, but some things fade away in memory once they’ve been achieved while others don’t poke their noses in until the last minute. The lists truly are a work in progress. My 2008 wish for everyone is that they progress in the coming new year.

Twas the weekend before Christmas

Since the shopping is done and I won’t be in full cookie baking mode until Sunday, tonight and tomorrow I will have some time to read. I’ve been busier than normal lately, or maybe this is the new normal, and haven’t had my usual time to read. I miss it. I start recalling favorite books when I’m not reading new ones and my favorite book of all time is Watership Down. I read it when I was about sixteen and I didn’t know before I read the book that adults wrote books aimed at other adults like this one. Talking rabbits with their own fables and myths. Every few years I reread the story of their exodus and adventures, crying every time I get to the part of Bigwig defending the run in the big battle when, for the first time, he acknowledges Hazel as his chief rabbit and, in doing so, wins the day.

There are a couple of books from my childhood that are especially dear to me besides the usual Nancy Drew mysteries and what girl didn’t covet that convertible of Nancy’s, Gone-Away Lake and Magic Elizabeth, but far and away my favorite childhood books were an English mystery series by Enid Blyton about the Famous Five. George, a girl who refused to be called Georgina, her dog, Timmy, and her cousins, Anne, Julian and Dick. Why and how my elementary school library in a rural town in Michigan ended up with what became my favorite book in the series, Five Run Away Together, about English children and their dog who traipse about having the best adventures ever without any adult supervision is a mystery in itself. I feel certain no grown-up realized the book was there. There was another book in the high school library that no adult had read called The Great Time Machine Hoax, too, but that’s a blog for another day. Thanks to Alibris.com and eBay, I’ve been able to gather together the rest of the Famous Five books. As for the copy of my original foray into the series, Five Run Away Together, I bet I owe a whopping fine to the elementary school library.

So, tonight and tomorrow I’m going to have time to read and maybe I’ll find another book that will hold a special place in my heart. I think this may be one of the best reasons I have for reading. There are high standards for admittance to that place in my heart, but the company is worth the try.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

It occurred to me a few days ago that I have never in my life wished for warmer weather. I have sometimes wished I were warmer when I didn’t dress for cold weather, but never that the outside temps were warmer. I like the cold. I like snow.

I love snow.

Sunday we got the first real snow of the season, 6". Enough to finally cover the grass and put white icing on all the trees. Heaven. I love the way the snow muffled the noise while I was outside. There seemed to be more quiet. Monday, on my way home, I went farther out of my way than necessary in order to get to my favorite back road and see it completely snow-covered as I drove along enjoying the view.

I love the way no two snowfalls are the same. The landscape is different as each snowflake is different and as each of us are different. Snow is a reason for me to celebrate and look at my world in a new way.

Fa-la-la-la-la

I’m beginning to feel in full on Christmas mode.

I’ve begun amassing the various ingredients for the Christmas fudge I make every year and for those cookies that only show up for a few days during this season before they are devoured. They last about as long as snowflakes caught on our tongues. I’m giving boxes of truffles to my co-workers so those ingredients are stacked on the kitchen counters, too, waiting to be turned into rich, decadent chocolate truffles rolled in cocoa or micro-shredded chocolate pieces.

The very small towns through which I drive to and from work have brought out their party clothes. Store doorways are decorated with evergreen roping and large angels, candy canes, candles and tin soldiers all made from different colored weather-resistant illuminated garlands hang from the light poles. I can’t say I’m enamored of the blow up plastic figures which seem to be in vogue now and which are tethered in every third yard, but they are eye-catching if nothing else. What I like are the lights. Colored lights or white wrapping trees, edging rooflines, surrounding yards and bringing soft luminescence to the dark.

Then there is the soundtrack to this time of year. Stores, malls, radio stations, television commercials all piping Christmas carols into the ether. Twice on my way through the grocery store yesterday I heard people who were stocking the shelves singing aloud and along with the carols. I left them to it since they could sing and I, alas, cannot, but it made me smile and I turned up the volume on my own internal singing. Life would be greatly improved if we had our own soundtrack and since I’m not of the ipod generation, this is the only time of year when I get that wish.

Bring it on.

Office supplies

A set of folders I’d almost forgotten I’d ordered arrived yesterday. They have drawings and watercolors of birds on them and they’ll be shown off on my desk in a white metal file holder labeled ‘Etc’ on the front. My lamp is almost useless if I actually need to see by its light, but it is lovely to me and the lamp shade is of some sort of waxed parchment so the glow is soft and warm. My favorite mottled blue coffee mug is almost always on my desk filled with our own house brew. I have two chairs in my office, not the comfortable padded ones with the levers to raise the heights or swirl around, but two Hitchcock Christmas chairs with old pillows as cushions. I sit in one and my cat claims the other one. He sleeps beside me while I work, company during those times when it seems like I have so much to do. A pair of candles in clear glass holders that some magician formed with clear vines and leaves on the surface illuminate the pages when I’m writing in my journal on dark, quiet mornings. The television is usually on TCM with an old black and white movie playing or if one of the old radio programs on XM radio is what I want instead, that is on so I can hear Suspense or Jack Benny or whether or not ‘only the Shadow knows for sure.’ My clock is a small silver and garnet affair that I could not resist and my calendar a birthday gift from a friend, a perpetual calendar like our friendship. On the warm sage green walls, I have framed and matted photographs of an Irish castle and an Irish gate from an extremely talented photographer I know along with a framed and matted set of four illustrations from my favorite childhood book, Five Run Away Together by the English author, Enid Blyton. I also have a set of stamps issued in England to honor Sherlock Holmes and a framed poster advertising William Gillette in the play, Sherlock Holmes. I’m a wannabe Brit and I can claim one sixth on my mother’s side. There are many more supplies in here, leather and fabric covered journals, books, small framed photographs, an ibis paperweight, rattan blinds on the windows and a Persian wool rug on the floor. Not to mention the flotsam and jetsam of my work.

Not to mention that at all.

The twelve days of Christmas

Is Christmas a time of remembering? Or is it that in nearing the end of a year, we tend to think back? Whatever the reason, this time of year brings back memories. Right now I’m remembering the Twelve Days of Christmas. This is what we called the twelve days leading up to Christmas when we were kids. I know, I know, the twelve days really start on Christmas and end on January 6, but that didn’t work for us. In order to make the wait until Christmas Day more exciting, if possible, my family did our own version. No partridge in a pear tree or lords a leaping for us. The twelve days were for cookie baking and caroling.

We took a lot of care in designing our twelve days every year. My brother, sister and I each picked one day when we planned dinner and helped make it, whatever we wanted. One night we set aside for buying and decorating the tree, a live one back then because the only artificial ones readily available where those silver ones people set up with a four color wheel that turned before a spot light and made the tree look different colors. I’d like to think these trees would eventually dim in the collective memory, but now they're ‘retro’ and are coming back. I shudder as I digress. One night we picked out to drive around town looking at decorations. One night we’d ‘treat’ our relations to the off-key sound of our caroling. We weren’t good, but we were enthusiastic. The rest of the nights were set aside for cookie baking, fudge and popcorn ball making. Christmas Eve, the eleventh night, we each opened one present, always new pajamas, and ate cookies and fudge. We nearly fell into sugar comas before going to bed.

Overall, my memories of our twelve days of Christmas are stronger than the memory of any gift I received the morning of the twelfth day. I'm sure at the time whatever it was I wanted to see under the tree on Christmas morning was terribly important, but now I’m happy to say my best memories are of the things we did instead of the things we got.

I'm day dreaming of a white Christmas

I’m driving down to Coldwater today, back roads, of course. We had a little snow over the weekend, snow, then freezing rain, then snow again. I absolutely love winter and I don’t mind driving in the mess. I usually drive a bit above the speed limit, but not when the white stuff is around. I slow down, not only because the roads are more treacherous, but because I love to look around at everything covered in snow. It is an entirely new world, new landscape, even a new point of view.

I find myself day dreaming.

I remember a Christmas about twenty years ago when the temperatures were higher than they’d been on Easter that year and I know that there have been many years when we did not have snow on Christmas Day. None of that reality matters when I’m thinking of the holiday season because I can only dream of Christmas as covered in snow. The first Christmas at the house we live in now when all day long enormous flakes fell and we could hardly see across the street. The Christmas when the roads were so snow-covered and slippery that my husband got the four-wheel drive truck out to fetch Em back to the house for the festivities. White, snow covered, snow falling Christmas Days.

All my Christmas’s are white.