Random Meanderings at Middle Age

cape cod paddles.

Honestly, I'd love to write a nice long entry about how much I love Cape Cod-the beaches, the ponds, the wildlife, the food and more. I'd tell you about the osprey we saw fly by overhead, fish in hand (as it were), about the joy of sitting on the Brewster flats at low tide-book in my hands, about watching the tiny fish dart about as the tide comes back in, about hundreds of turtles on the edges of the kettle ponds and hundreds of fiddler crabs in the tidal marshes waving at us. I would but I took some pictures and will post them and simply say that it was good to be back.

“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.”

a thursday in the spring

Oh, where to start? I have lovely garden pictures and lovelier Junior Prom pictures and thoughts on socio-economics, my current state of mind and also an actual finished knitted object. There is no common thread, some inherent contradictions and the new Charlaine Harris novel, Deadlocked, is shaking it's dead tree booty at me. Meh. When has that ever stopped me before...rambling is my specialty! I absolutely can not believe that Em is not a baby anymore (one of the enduring themes of this blog) and yet, last week end she went to her Junior Prom. She was lovely, everyone was lovely (or handsome) and all week as various FB friends and acquaintances post their own pictures, I've reflected on how I've known many of these kids since they were all in Kindergarten together (some earlier than that). It reaffirms the difficult decision I made in 1995 to leave Cambridge and find a house with a yard and streets you could safely ride a bike on and open spaces, good schools and the opportunity to grow up with the same kids-not that all that is impossible in Cambridge, but it would have been prohibitively expensive. (I still remember one of my first and nearly last Families with Children from China meetings. I came with my new baby and at the end there was a request for people to sign up on various sheets to help out the organization. I started to fill out my name on the sheet for helping with fundraising-the woman in charge sort of looked me up and done and said in a very snotty voice, "we're looking for professional fundraisers". I looked more closely at the people there and realized they were all way, way above my paygrade and very cliquey to boot. I eventually found and made friends with some wonderful people through FCC, but I don't think any of them were in that room.) Anyway...prom. Here's a few pictures:


There are over 100 of these but you get the idea! John Scalzi wrote an excellent blog entry on privilege, which isn't what he called it (go and read it, it's not long) and received 800 comments, most of which I dod not read. Steven Brust then wrote a response on his blog which I also really found useful ( go read that) and so I found myself waking up this morning and commenting that while anyone, even SWM can find themselves in bad circumstances, the reality is certain socio-economic, racial, national, gender etc starting points help us. It's just a fact, one that people get hugely defensive about, thus (forgive me DDA) derailing the actual conversation at hand, which right now, for me, is the huge gap between what we used to call the "haves" and "have nots". I have all sorts of stuff financial and otherwise, I struggle with, but I never lose sight of how blessed my life is. I have no solutions, I try to give back as best I can within my community and into the greater global community but it's a drop in the bucket and I get that. I personally believe that a species that worships profit above all is likely to be it's own "extinction level threat" at some point, but again I have no answers. Today,Scalzi wrote a great follow-up. What I can never understand is how defensive people get when you point out that we are not, in fact, all equal. I honeslty believe that Scalzi is pointing this out not to make SWM or other groups with "lower difficulty settings" feel bad, but simply to say "Hey! A lot of you started life out and live life with a lower bar to hurdle, it doesn't mean you can't fail or that bad shit can't happen to you, its just there. In comments I made this analogy: "I acknowledge that I live in a country and community that has clean, running, always accessible tap water. It doesn’t mean I am inherently a bad person because of this. It might mean that I am blind to the fact that in other communities and countries others don’t have the same access, something that I find so easily obtained might not have value to me and so I won’t see it’s lack elsewhere. Having been made aware of it, I can be more mindful of my own water use, work in ways that I can to see that others have access to clean water as well and try and figure out how to create a society where no one ever has to worry about access to clean water." I dunno. I expect at least one person I know to yell at me! So, speaking of privilege, let me show you some garden pictures. My roses are starting to bloom and all of them, the fancy ones, the wild ones, the hybrids are covered in buds about to burst open, as are my peonies and other flowers. I derive a huge amount of pleasure from smelling my roses, taking flowers inside for the table and using my herbs and greens in meals. I made cheddar-sage biscuits on Sunday that were even yummier because I walked out to the herb garden and snipped the sage I needed to make them.




Finally, I have a finished picture of Wingspan to post. This was a fun, easy and useful knit. It's more of a shawlette (although one could adjust the pattern).

Oh right..my state of mind....le heavy sigh. It's mostly ok, with occasional bursts of self doubt and self pity..so you know...nothing new there.

paddling.

Paddling seems to sum up pretty much what I literally did today, as well as how life is feeling at the moment.

John and I put the kayak in the water for the first time this year. We chose a nice safe paddle-Rocky Pond in Boylston,MA. It's a very pleasant little pond with a very large floating bog. We saw hawks,geese,ducks and sunning turtles. The bog was healthy and still had the large beaver lodge we remembered from last summer. We remembered to get sunblock and bug spray before we went in and a good thing we did. This summer is going to be brutal for insects. Typically I don't start seeing waterlilies until at least late May but they are already starting to bloom here. In any event, with our anniversary coming up tomorrow (17 years) and an exhausting week of college visits behind us it was a nice way to spend some time together in a natural environment-which we both love.

The other paddling I've been doing is through some changes in my life and specifically my work life. I've worked as a secretary/assistant to educational director in our religious school for almost 8 years now. It's a part time job, about 20 hours a week and has been just about the most perfect job you can imagine for a mom with two (then) young kids in school. Life changes though and come next year I will not be continuing in that role as the job I was doing is morphing into something different, with hours that I am not available for. I will miss the hustle and bustle of religious school-I have truly loved watching not only my own kids, but many of our congregants kids grow up over the years, but it's not like I am really going anywhere-I'll still be an active volunteer and will have a role there (or 2 or 3) as always. Still-change is always a combination of the emotions and it really has felt like I was paddling through them all!

Continuing with this whole paddling analogy is simply the fact that we spent 4 days this week looking at 8 potential colleges for Emily. It's interesting and fun, as well as tiring and as one might imagine has brought up all sorts of emotions along the lines of "when did my baby get old enough for college isn't she still just learning to walk?". I feel that parenting is the ultimate whitewater ride, with some calm periods and then these blindingly fast bursts that leave you a little breathless. I mean, 8 years ago, when I started my current job, Em was 9 and Noah was 5 or 6. College, dating, driving? Those were things other parents and I joked about and saw in terms of that vaguely scary "when they leave the nest" future and now?-Poof!-it's here. Em has driven the car, gone on a date for movies and ice cream and looked at colleges-all in the past week. No one asked to go on a train ride at the Ecotarium or to a playground or to the Aquarium. It's wonderful but like above, change brings a combination of emotions.

17 years of marriage.
17 years of parenting.

Honestly? On any given day I am still just making it up as I paddle on.

Think I'll let Levon (may he rest easy and at peace) say it better than I can:

snapshot of where I seem to be now...

We are nearly two weeks into April 2012 and I suddenly realized I have been on a crazy roller coaster for a long while now. I expect some version of the ride will continue indefinitely, if for no other reason than life is truly a carnival ride anyway, but it would be nice to maybe slip off the crazy and maybe ride the carousel or something a little less wild (ok, I've beaten that analogy into the ground now. It's a shame because I was going to continue on and add in bits about carnival games of chance being like the choices we make in life because in either case you rarely win the giant stuffed bear). In any event, yeah, life's been kind of weirdly chaotic, overwhelming, scary and crazy stress-inducing-even for life (which is, as the metaphor above bludgeoned you with repeatedly-a game anyway). If I were a stellar writer I'd be seguing into some meaningful bits of wisdom for you now, maybe about how the challenges of life are balanced by random kindness and beauty (which it absolutely is. I mean, just yesterday, Noah and I were meandering about Harvard Square after we finished with his appointments at Children's and stumbled on this vacant storefront window. It apparently started out as a single yellow post-it with the words "What inspires you?" and now is covered with post-its and words of hope, inspiration, humor, and more. It's a delight and seeing it kind of made an already pretty great day a little bit of awesome:

I need to return to the Square later this week and plan on bringing a post-it with me. I'm not sure what to write though-so much inspires me. I'll probably wing-it and go with whatever strikes my fancy that morning ("wing'it" being my basic m.o. on any given day)). So, yeah, I should be doing that-I have a friend (yes, you N.J.) who is constantly berating me for my writing style which he rightfully points out is less a style and more a random collection of thoughts,fragments, snippets and chaos. Ooh! Which would pretty much describe me perfectly as a person! Anyway, back to life's current dramas...there have been quite a few, one on top of the other, overlapping craziness (like a collage right? I'm starting a new art journal and trying to paint more, as well as use the mixed media I am already comfortable with..oh I'm digressing again) and I keep having to pull myself back to center. I start getting resentful of people and things I love because I feel a lack of control and then I sort of do a mental count-to-10 and remind myself of why I love them all in the first place-then the next tsunami of drama crashes over us and we do it all over again.
(So-every Passover since 2006, I put a plain (not so plain now) muslin "tablecloth" on our table and leave fabric pens everywhere so that we and our guests can draw, write or whatever. I thought John's contribution this year was pretty awesome.) Except... ... ... is it really that much drama? Or rather, is it really that much more than any other human's drama? I think likely not. I think that life is really just always a mixture of sorrows and joys and pain and pleasure and a lot of tedium-often on the same day. So, in the best tradition of random meanderings I present more random bullet points:

• I will never be a fashionable person. As I clean my drawers and closets this spring, I am reminded of this. Basically, if given my druthers I would spend every day in jeans (long or capris), a t-shirt, and a bandana on my head. In summer on Cape Cod, this is often amended to tankini, sarong and bandana on my head, but you get the idea. I own very few shoes and wear either sneakers or sandals one can walk and kayak in. I can get gussied up if I have to, but I never feel comfortable and at 50 I think we can say that its jeans and ts from here on out.
• Spring is so delightful in the garden that I almost can't stand it. Looking at all that hopefullness and potential (my peonies! windflowers!iris!daffodills and tulips!) sprouting up through the ground, the cherry trees covered in blossoms and more I just keep sighing happily and can almost smell the mixed scents of lavender and rosa rugosa (even though that's more of a July thing).  I'm thinking about what to fill the containers on the Cape with and wether or not to plant tomatoes this year.  Indoors my orchids think it's fall, while my lemon tree is covered in blossoms (I've tried to help pollination along) and the bedroom smells heavenly.
• On the list of things I probably need to accept is that while our home will not be a destination for the team from Hoarder's it will also not be featured in any shelter magazine anytime soon. We don't live the kind of lives where everything is pristine, perfectly clutter-free and sparse. There are always projects and board games in process, clean clothes in bins waiting to be put away (but often just being grabbed from said bins as needed), notes and homework and knitting and well, yeah, it's presentable and not horrible but not fancy.
• I have been reading so much crazy, good things lately that it feels like a form of gluttony. I purposely did not approach the Harvard Bookstore yesterday because I knew I'd find something(s) and need to get through more of what's already waiting to be read. Anne Lamott's new non-fiction book about her grandson's first year, Some Assembley Required, was perfect and every word felt like I needed to hear it at exactly that moment. One of my  favorite quotes: “And what do you do in the face of this powerlessness? As a parent?" 
  
  "You get to be obsessed and angry," Tom said. "And they get to be the age they are, and act like teenagers if they want to. There is a zero-percent chance you will change them. So we breathe in, and out, talk to friends, as needed. We show up, wear clean underwear, say hello to strangers. We plant bulbs, and pick up litter, knowing there will be more in twenty minutes. We pray that we might cooperate with any flicker of light we can find in the world.”  , although I really need to hear this: “It is a violation of trust to use your kids as caulking for the cracks in you.”. As with any of her non-fiction, I could probably just quote the entire thing and find it relevent to where I am now. This is especially true of her essay collection Bird by Bird, which I have read and reread many times and always, always, it speaks to where I am right now.
• My daughter (gulp) is a student driver. I am still wrapping my head around this. I am still, still, still working through the "but only yesterday" moments that come and go all day.  She is becoming such a wonderful woman-caring,smart, hard-working and funny. Still-I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the two days our pneumonia illness had us home sick together and sitting or napping in my bed all day, often giggling about this or that, was not just the most wonderful little taste of days gone by ever.  If only she'd handed me a picture book or 10 to read her it would have been perfect!
• Noah is now almost my height, despite being only 13. He wastes no opportunity to show me this.  He also amazes me. It's easy to get bogged down in his challenges but really, since 2010 he has been hit with one thing after another and most days manages to face the day with humor and acceptance (although he will never ever be a morning person-I think we're clear on this now.)
• My mom really, really needs to give me her chicken wing recipe, except that my mom doesn't have recipes-she wings it (get it! Oh I crack myself up!). I think that I just need to watch her make them and write down what she does one day because they remain the best things ever and the one food item my kids will drop anything they are doing to eat. 
• Draw Something!  Oh my gosh, I just don't do these games as a rule because they annoy me and take up time I could be tweeting but a friend got me to try this and now it's like a sickness.  Yesterday at lunch in the square, Noah and I were playing and amused by how many of our fellow Draw Something players were, we assumed, at work. There have been moments when I have been playing with 3 out of 4 members of one family. I think it's appeal is in part because of the interactivity-you can see your friends thought processes which is hilarious. John is especially good at this:
  
  
  
  

Whew! That's a lot of random babbling even for me. I love you all (well, those of you I know) and hope spring is treating you kindly. I'm off to watch the Flicker at my window feeder, start a wash on my art journal pages and eventually head off to work. Yes, if you play Draw Something with me I'll check before then and at lunch. Life has been crazy and sad but also beautiful and hopeful and full of love and cuddles so I really can't complain. go play in the dirt-I did Saturday and it helped my mood a great deal. I didn't spell check or edit this so forgive me. I am lazy.

stuff.

I'm a big girl. I've written about this countless times. I own my size. I'm not happy with what it implies about my general health, but pretending I am not a large woman would be silly. I know, and have written before, that this makes many people uncomfortable. They feel it's impolite to agree with me or that by acknowledging my size they are somehow insulting me.

I think the problem is this really isn't about size. At least not now, not at my age and general physical condition. Size is merely one indicator of some (but not all) of my health issues as I age. One could argue that my weight and diet and lack of consistent exercise is at fault for many conditions although one could also argue that some of my health issues led to a reduced ability to exercise and hence an increase in weight. It honestly doesn't matter. Today, the facts are simple, my increased weight makes it hard to meet the goals I wish and truly need to reach for better health and general well-being.

I have friends, relatives and acquaintances who have done amazing things when faced with similar issues. Some chose to use a combination of diet and exercise with surgery, some made changes in their physical activity levels or their diets or both. Some folks have lasting improvement, others, as I have, find themselves on a roller coaster. Nothing is new or different here. My situation is mirrored across the country and most of us struggle with balancing everything in our lives, including the need to regain some additional control over our bodies.

I just want to be able to live a little longer, enjoy the activities I love without drama (hiking in the woods or on the beach, kayaking, biking on rail trails, gardening etc.). I don't want household tasks to exhaust me, nor do I want to easily be injured by relatively mundane tasks and activities.

A few years ago I got to that place with some big changes and then let life kind of get in the way and over time much of what I gained I lost again. Yeah. I've written about this often. The problem is that instead of focusing on what I can do now, doing a little more, making small incremental changes-yes, those baby steps one always hears about-I jump in and try to make it all happen fast and I either run out of steam or get hurt.

Going forward, my goals are simple:

Diet: I'm just going to do my best to follow Michael Pollan's advice: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." It really makes the most sense and is inclusive and non shaming. It's a philosophy that is sustainable from a personal perspective as well as an environmental one. By filling a bowl with mixed greens, raw veggies and half a serving of protein and carb I can eat food I enjoy but in proportions that promote health.

Exercise: I should probably call this "activity" and make it sound less like drudgery. The sad fact is I hate formal exercise. I love walking in nature. I love kayaking (in season!). I love, when healthy enough to do it, biking on rail trails. I don't like gyms and formal exercise regimes-they typically bore me and I can't read or otherwise occupy my mind during them. I can tolerate water exercise and right now that is the healthiest and safest activity for me. My goal then is to start doing that at least 2X a week, along with some time exercising in the home (I have a recumbent exercise bike, Wii Fit etc.) and walks as the weather permits.

Health: I plan to partner with my doctors more over the year and be honest about my goals and really listen to their suggestions and make a plan we all can agree on.

Mental Health: This is probably the hardest thing to do, but I need to stop judging myself as harshly as I imagine the rest of the planet is judging me. I also need to accept that the small changes are beneficial even if they are not easily detected by obsessive weigh-ins or measuring.

It's not all melancholy gloom over my physical challenges here at Random Central. I feel pretty blessed to be able to work through this stuff and plan for improvement with relative simplicity. I've been reading absolutely stunning books, both fiction and non-fiction lately (Beyond the Beautiful Forevers:Life,Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity being the best. It is heartbreaking and lovely and mesmerizing and brings alive a world we don't think about but which exists for countless numbers of people on our planet. Reading it is not as sad as one might think, although of course the realities of such poverty are never easy to hear about, still Katherine Boo manages to find so many moments of grace and beauty that you can't stop reading.) and even finishing a lot of previously unfinished knitting projects. My daughter has turned 17, my son is healthier and back in school and John and I still haven't found a pocket of time to get away for a day or three, but we have been able to go out in the evening once in awhile. I've returned to work after a leave of absence to care for my youngest.

I remain grateful for the grace that grants me an indulgent family, time to heal, time for endless games of Dominion with my family, cutthroat games of Risk:Legacy, gardening, talks with the Em and Noah, walks in the woods and more. I have a pretty lovely life, even if I do get a little stressed about some of it's challenges.

In the past month we've been to a lot of museums, taken many walks and long drives. I'll end with a few pictures and my love.

random thoughts on slippery slopes and censorship

 

I wanted to write a long and ranty post about how I really wish people would stop adovcating censorship on my behalf to protect me from whatever. I didn't like it when the public library told me I needed my parents permission to read James Joyce when I was 12. I don't like it when the religious right tries to tell school libraries what my kids can read and I don't like others deciding what poorly worded tshirts (from a taste point of view) can or cannot be sold within my presence lest my history of past trauma be triggered.  Censorship is just not a good idea. Censorship on behalf of others is usually an even worse idea.

     Really. I wanted to explain all this in great detail, explain what made me think about it now and all that stuff and I even wrote half of a long post doing so and then I just figured wtf? Who really cares  that I personally have an issue with censorship and a paternalistic (or I suppose maternalistic) need to protect me from harm. I'm a big girl (in so many ways) I can protect myself and if need be speak up for my own damn self. If I honestly believe someone is trying to endorse an unsafe environment around me I will and have called them on it.

     Anyway. I am more angry about the continued attack on women by many on the Conservative Right. I'm tired of legal options for women's health like contraception and abortion being slowly destroyed by groups that would "save" us from ourselves. I am enraged that a woman, with low income, who has been raped and is now pregnant can't even get a morning after pill from many pharmacies in this country, let alone an abortion. I'm tired that recent attacks on PP have focussed once again on abortion and ignored that most of their work involves so much more and saves womens lives and by extension their children's lives for years to come. I'm angry and I'm frustrated and that's what I need to focus on in an election year.  That the values I care about aren't thrown away in the interest of political expediency.

     As for local gatherings that want to travel down the road of censorship while protecting their right to offend you in other ways with the offensive stuff they deem ok? Whatever. Do as you like and I'll continue to stay away. 

 

 

random musings on a january night..

In no particular order:

• More and more I feel as though we are on the brink of living every dystopia I have ever read. The whole SOPA issue is just one example. Once again we seem close to giving away our rights to not be censored and to have a free exchange of information because of private, profit-making, companies who are too lazy, too cheap and not interested in finding solutions to their copyright issues that don't have a chilling effect on the rest of us.  

• A number of interesting videos, blogs and websites have recently shown how sick the transformation of womens bodies , as portrayed in the media, has become. Through photoshopping and other techniques actresses and models who are already unhealthy and too thin are presented as being even thinner-creating an ideal for girls that is not attainable.  Boys and men are coniditoned to expect these unrealistic body types as their due and I have heard otherwise reasonable and caring men of my aquaintance point to young actresses and claim that they are "cows" or worse after they have had a child or otherwise gone from a size 0 to say 4.  "Plus-size" models are now rarely larger than a size 12. In the last season of Project Runway, a male designer complained that his model had breasts and they were icky and he just wanted her to be a hangar for his clothes. That's what our daughters have to contend with-they are expected to have bodies that weigh nothing, have no shape, no curves, no bumps that will intefere with a designers "vision".   
• In less ranty news, I've recently become delighted with the website, The Rumpus. I belong to their book club (the first book, a collection of stories by Diane Williams titled, Vicky Swanky is a Beauty, arrived today and is completely engrossing, thought provoking and magical with a little bit of disturbing thrown in. There is an online group that discusses the books each month which I know I'll enjoy. They also started a new "club", one where you get a letter from a writer in your mail box each week. I am thrilled. I love getting personal mail (yes, I know this will be one letter reproduced and sent to all members, but still it is not a bill or junk mail) and expect to be intrigued. I believe this weeks letter will be from Margaret Cho.
• I have already read 8 books, most of them novels, this month and expect that number will double by the end of the month. I still find myself torn between the ease of e-books and my delight in holding an actual book in my hand.  There honestly isn't a rythme or reason to it. Often I will download a book I'm too impatient to wait or look for. I wish I had downloaded IQ84 because at 900+ pages it's not a fall asleep with it in your hands kind of book.
• 
  
  

I felt this post was going downhill so inserted a picture of Rosie because hedgehogs make everything better!

I'm also abandoning my whole bullet point idea...it wasn't working for me.  Really, life has just been kind of crazy. My youngest continues to struggle with health issues and has been out of school (with some tutoring provided) for nearly two months now. He tried to go back today, but the nurse called and he was so exhasuted after less than 2 hours that he slept from 11a-5p. My oldest is well but it's mid-terms. John and I never really have time to do much more than update each other on things or when the drama is really high nit-pick at each other (I am being so diplomatic here that I deserve a medal). We did escape for a few hours to the ICA on Sunday, just the two of us and even caught a play there I had wanted to see. The play was truly wonderful and had all the elements I had hoped, it used Warhol's movies as a launching pad for  developing ideas and themes around identify and it's use of audience members really worked well and didn't feel forced or hoky. 

Here is a recent version of the Gob Squad's Kitchen:

It was great to see some thought provoking art (some more thought provoking than others) and theater, have a nice lunch and a little time for the two of us that wasn't in constant crisis intervention mode. With any luck we will be able to repeat the experience Saturday when the Decordova open it's 2012 Biennial show. This show includes work by a yarnbombing group, the South End Knitters !

No. I haven't started the exercise regime I really wanted to although I've got the occasional walk in as weather permits. I feel pretty guilty and self-hating about all this but am also trying to cut myself some slack. I'm fat. I don't pretend otherwise because that would be silly (as I've said here before, I find it funny that whenever I declare that I am large someone quickly chimes in "no you're not! Don't be so hard on yourself!" as though I am a size 0 and pretending to be overweight. Trust me, at 50 years of age, 5 feet 9 inches and 275+lbs I am not petite.). I have no need to become skinny, but know that if I don't exercise daily and get myself back into better shape and for me that means dropping the weight I've gained, my long-term health scenarios get scarier-hell, the short term ones as well.  So. Something I need to do and need to work through the various things blocking me from doing so.  

(Actually, I'm not overweight-it's the Doctor Who scarf, it adds a lot of pounds. No really, it literally does!)

I'm happy we had a little snow last night. I need my winters to have some snow or the landscape is far to bleak. I'll get to work on my health issues, I'll keep trying to put the stresses in perspective and make time for my relationships as we deal with them, I'll be reading and writing and knitting and creating things. I'll be thinking, hoping and wishing for more health and strength and grace for  those in my life that are struggling with truly devastating challenges and changes. I'll still be making inappropriate jokes that make my kids and everyone else cringe. I'll try and be happy more than I am sad but I'll still let sad happen when it needs to.

And. When all that stuff gets to be a bit much I'll just think about Cape Cod and how in a few months we'll be back there. Kayaking, exploring the tidal flats, walking, biking, farmer's markets, board games and lunch on the deck, fireflies, crazy birds, hermit crabs and roses.

in which i ramble on about knitting...

I'm staring at a New Year and trying to make sense of my knitting, both the stash and the works in progress (wips).

I've decided to be really honest about unfinished projects and to rip the ones I clearly gave up on for one reason or another. Sometimes it's just boredom, sometimes the yarn chosen wasn't working right, sometimes it just got away from me and I lost interest or can not figure out where I was in the pattern. In any event, those are all being frogged and headed back into the stash.

The stash is in pretty good shape. I recently went through most of it and got rid of stuff I will never use. One of these days I'll need to adjust my Ravelry stash data to reflect reality, but most of what's in my stash is stuff I would use. honestly, much of my stash is swanky, high-end, hand-dyed sock yarn. Sometimes I think I like looking at and fondling this stuff more than I like knitting with it.

In any event, projects I would like to finish and/or start this winter include:

The second sock from January 2011's BMFA sock club.

Buttonwillow>/a>

Another Clockwork, this one for my son. He wanted one in black and grey and I've got some yummy STR coming from BMFA for this.

I've ripped the Colorful Kids I started for Noah a long time ago. He'd rather have a vest, so I am repurposing this wonderful chocolate colored Brown Sheep Bulky and plan to make a daughter sized OWl with it.

I do need to get some grey worsted wight , ideally a tweed, to make Green Mountain's for Noah.

If all of the above happens (it is to laugh) then I am also hoping to restart myMelponeme shawl and any other Romi Muse that might come along.

What is so amusing about all of the above is I am the slowest knitter ever, but we'll see. I didn't even mention the second Kilim Glove or the long awaited second

I live and dream.

be here now.

I no longer look at old years and think " oh good riddance, that year really sucked, I hope the new one is better" . It's silly. Years are just arbitrary collections of days we've corralled into a system of time keeping. There will be joy and sorrow and likely a whole lot of tedium in any one of those blocks of time. I'm ok with that.

I'm not going to burden 2012 with having to keep me happy every step of the way. I know with certainty that isn't going to happen. There will be good and bad days and how I deal with that will be entirely up to me. I expect I will be stellar sometimes and an absolute whiny child at others. It hardly matters.

On any given day, I treasure the joys and challenges of time spent with family and friends and those moments collect and became hours and days and months and years and good or bad or indifferent I am simply present for all of them.

Now, I'm going to snuggle back under the covers with a book. I can hear my family breathing quietly and sleeping in their beds. The birds are waking up and chattering at each other. Mostly, it's a blissfully quiet morning.

Happy New Year.

small things

I know that I've somehow come to use this blog to mostly dwell on sad or stressful things and really my life is pretty wonderful. So, while Noah may be under the weather and there may be other bumps in the road, it's been a pretty good winter holiday season over all.

There's been games of Dominion, battles of various kinds via the Wii or PS3, walks in the woods, visits with family and friends, rock climbing, movies (a lot of movies!), sleeping in, reading, knitting,baking, loving and being generally silly.

I can't think of much to say so here's some pictures in no particular order-as always-click to enbiggen.