I needn't have worried about going back to work after weeks of lazing around.  It's not that it wasn't cold out today--it was plenty cold out!--but there was so much ice everywhere that the kidlets were kept indoors for recess.  This was most fortunate because I underestimated how warmly I should dress and knew by the time I walked from the parking lot to the building that the wind was going to manage to drive the cold through my clothes and probably through my skin right to my bones, too.

But we were indoors with the kidlets squirrelly after being off of school for so long and loud in the cafeteria and just barely able to control themselves in the hall.  They like indoor recess as long as they don't have to miss their playground time too often.  The classrooms are equipped with games, puzzles, and building sets and they get a chance to play differently than they do outdoors. 

Being indoors takes a lot less work than supervising kids outdoors, so I had plenty of energy after work and Stella and I used it up on one more shopping outing before she goes back to school on Thursday.  We achieved our goal of finding her winter boots, then lucked into finding blue and black jeans for her and children's gloves on sale so that I could buy some for the collection maintained for kidlets who forget to bring theirs on cold days when we do go outside.

Tonight I finished one painting that I began at my last class and started two more using the technique of tossing powdered dye onto watercolor paper that is wet.  One will be used as the background for a gel transfer of those icicles I posted the other week and the other is a view of the backyard next door when the snow had partially melted, leaving patches of spotless snow and streaks of exposed ground.  Will these paintings be any good?  Not likely, I think, but I loved working on them.

Tomorrow the real world will push its way into my life again.  Tomorrow the alarm clock bleat will be for me and I'll have to get up and get going before I will probably feel like it.  Tomorrow I'll have to wear clothes that can pass for job-wear instead of lounge around the house wear.  Tomorrow I'll spend at least an hour out in the cold, even if I'd rather be in where it's warm.  Tomorrow people besides the ones I am happy to talk with have the opportunity to talk to me and I will respond very agreeably.

When I think of all the implications of going back to work after this long holiday break, I am a little sobered by the demands of even the modest commitment I have to employment for pay.  School has been out since December 19th and I've adapted very well to a life of staying up too  late, waking up too late, and having lots of time to do anything I want to do in.  If the weather was too cold, I stayed home, at least once the Christmas errands and visits were finished.  I've read, I've knit and completed several projects, I've had time to sit around with Stella and Eliot and get to know them again, and if I'd gotten any painting done, I'd feel I had a lot to show for my indolence.  The watercolor paper is stretched and drying so that I can do some painting before I go to work tomorrow and that goal will be met, too.

Next Christmas will be different from this one for good reasons.  One should be realistic, after all.

I'm getting a head start on being realistic.  I've got a warm hat to find as well as warm gloves, warm socks, and some enthusiasm for the cold.  It's back to the kidlets I go.

This is the second year that I've chosen a word to guide me rather than making resolutions that would result in my becoming perfect, if only I would keep them instead of failing to keep them.

"Acceptance" was a very useful word for 2008. I had some difficult to acknowledge truths to recognize and  to admit to myself. Some of them were a particularly deeply affecting disappointment, people making bad choices that I could neither approve of nor prevent, and facing facts including that I am neither young nor dead, so while I may not have the resiliancy of youth, I am not yet ready or willing to stop living -- and growing.

2008 was a year to let go of old dreams and illusions; delusions perhaps. 2008 was a year to open my emotional hand and let go of perfectionism, too.

As 2009 starts, I feel the need to build. I want to make the place where I am a place I want to be. I want to learn, to master, to see what I'm capable of and to put some excitement into my life.

The word for 2009 is "cultivate". I'm going to focus on doing work to grow myself a beautiful life to live in.  It's going to be hard work and probably very messy, I'm sure, but I am eager to use this year for it.

Family is starting to drift back to non-Christmas life.  For the first time since December 20th there are enough beds for the people who will sleep here tonight with one left empty and tomorrow night Eliot will be off to visit brother Eric in the Big City to the south and an entire room will be empty. 

I'll write about this Christmas in a day or so;  the story of this Christmas is not a simple one, so few stories are simple ones these days.  Thoughts now are concerned with the change of the year from the Old to the New.  Last year the program I set for myself was not framed in New Year's Resolutions, but in a Word for the Year.  The word found me rather than my going to look for it and taking it up on the challenge it presented to me took grit I had to feign having at the time.   Now the year is nearly over and it's time to pick the word for 2009. 

I'm not writing this with the word to present.  I haven't found it yet. I think perhaps I need to spend another year with last year's word.    How much a habit does a habit have to be?  When does it stop being something you have to remember to use or do?

No wisdom here tonight. 

Christmas morning, yes, morning, not yet noon.

Here is the gift I just finished for Neph, whose fate has once again been cast upon our shore.  He told me he'd be here less than two weeks ago and I very much wanted to include something very heart-full in his Christmas presents.  I finished knitting this about fifteen minutes ago and Stella the Elf wove in the ends.  I zipped outdoors, popped the scarf on a snowpile for the photo and the scarf is wrapped with gloves and hat, the scarf just a bit damp from its adventure in the drifts.

Be assured that Nephew has a pile of gifts and I don't expect a 19 year old to become rabid with appreciation over such a simple, yet meaningful (to me, anyway) gift.

Stella's scarf isn't finished, but she understands and I'll finish it as quickly as I can.  She's a good Elf, that Stella;  she's made it a merry Christmas for me this year.

Christmas scarf in snow, sans Nephew.

Whatever might be trying to tamp down your holiday spirit, just think. There's trouble all around, it's true; war, economic disaster, and if it doesn't stop snowing here and if the temperature doesn't get to the other side of 0 degrees F, natural disaster as well. Some people don't have to go off the path of genetic connections to wander into nightmares and horrors. Pour some brandy into Uncle George and he turns into a monster. Get Auntie BA going on the subject of Sarah Palin, nearly former presidents, and how the snowplow took out the mailbox on Thursday and she can't get a new one in until the snow stops. You'll wish you were related to Ms. Frankenstein instead of Auntie.

We can do something to save the holidays though.  We can invite being realistic into our lives.  So we can't produce Perfect.  We can no more make the holiday perfect than we can make Life perfect than we can make ourselves perfect.  Let's forget perfect and bask in the good we can find even in all of the Real Imperfection in life.

Troubles aren't the sole property of life today.  The Bible tells that the Birthday Boy whose birth gave much of the world something to hang this holiday on said something about the poor always being with us, but enjoining his friends to not let that prevent them from observing and celebrating blessings in their lives.  Okay, the blessing was Himself, but that doesn't diminish this as evidence that troubles are nothing new in the world.    You can't have spent much time with anyone who lived through the Great Depression to know that economic disasters have come and gone before this one.  People--political and just related to us--have never been perfect and never will be.  Some people find comfort in all of this imperfection;  maybe they think it excuses them from trying to be perfect themselves.

Let's think of the world in the early 1940's, war weary and with people who loved each other separated and worrying, and dying.  In 1943 this song came out, words penned by Ralph Blane and the music composed by Hugh Martin.

Merry Little Christmas.

There's not much to report, but writing is its own reward, so I'm going to write about the little there is.

I couldn't make it to my experimental technique class on Wednesday so went to the Friday session instead.  The Friday group is a very nice group of people and I wonder if they are friendlier than the Wednesday group because they don't know each other as well.  The atmosphere of goodwill is more genuine in the Friday group and people are generous with sharing equipment, encouragement, and suggestions based on experience. 

As the teacher swathed her table in a huge sheet of plastic and set up today's demonstration, I fully expected her to put on a biohazard suit as well.  I definitely got the idea that today's technique was a messy one, especially when we were asked not to get the tables and floors any messier than we had to.  It reminded me of being scoutleader to twenty careless brownie scouts.  I knew this one would be fun!

And it was.  Some students had come prepared with the subject of their piece masked with frisket, but most of us just showed up with paper, paint, and the will to invite something just to happen. 

Today we brushed water onto our paper and then put dry dye directly onto the paper where it blossomed into colors.  Brown, usually thought of as being on the drab side of color gave the most flamboyant show as the blue, red, and yellow grains that make up the dry dye burst into their individual colors.  Powdered charcoal was also strewn, but with far more care than the dye.  Powdered charcoal never even tries to kid you into believing that it's not a mess.  One woman did her entire piece in powdered charcoal and water, making black evergreens on a white sheet.  She let it dry, well satisfied with her black and white composition and the rest of the class who were themselves producing brilliant colors by adding paint to the dye job admired the strength of her black and white work.  When she knocked the extra charcoal powder off the piece she ended up with a wide gray band through her trees.  She was not happy about it, but it did add depth to the piece and it remained a strong piece even with the accidental gray.  Seeing what happened to her piece I was extra careful with mine, but I too have gray where I wanted white.  Luckily I could blow most of it off and plan to perhaps use a can of compressed air to clear a bit more off, but even without that I have another plan.  I can turn the shadow into a path and it will suit the piece very well.  My piece was of the land around a farmhouse I noticed on my way to class today, a line of leafless trees defining a curved edge and a post and wire fence running along the level edge and that is what I chose to do today.  I like how it turned out, but will try it again and change a few things.

After class I went to a coffeeshop across the road from the civic building and planned and then headed towards home, stopping at a center midway between class and home to start Christmas shopping.   I expected the place to be crowded on a Friday night this close to Christmas, but there were very few shoppers out.    There were vacant stores in the center and a couple more were having end-of-business sales.   Several of the stores I went into were very poorly stocked and while the places were decorated in holiday colors, there wasn't much cheer anywhere. 

Life is definitely looking run down at the heels and people aren't looking or acting as if they are feeling any joy at all.  Shopping at a store where the employees are facing imminent unemployment makes one feel like a vampire hanging around an emergency room, hoping that a patient will die so the blood ordered for his transfusion can serve as a cocktail.  At the same time, not spending money makes one feel as if she is contributing to the failure of businesses all around her.   It's a new kind of Christmas guilt, not that the world needed it.