What I Wish For You All

Last year my friend Janet enclosed the following in her card. I keep it where I can see it during the year - but it is especially meaningful perhaps, on Christmas Eve. For all of my friends; near or far, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Pagan, or agnostic .......

May You Have:
Friends for your days,
remembering the lonely.
Food for your body,
remembering the hungry.
Freedom in your life,
remembering the enslaved.
Peace in your heart,
remembering the troubled.

Stay warm, if you travel ,do it safely , share the warmth of family and friends and just a little bit of magic in your holiday. Thank you all for spending some of your valuable time with me here on the blog and for sharing, thereby, a part of your lives with me too. Namaste.

How I Managed To Recover My Merry HoHoHo!

I doodled a bit - always good to let my mind wander

After yesterday's post I realized that I was letting the discomfort of Fibro & CFS get to me. I hate it when I do that, but sometimes the pain level is just too much! These are the things I did yesterday to snap out of it! After I posted I decided that I had to unstick myself. For me, there is only one way to do that - take the first step. I began by wrapping some of DH's gifts, wondering all the while what he would like, what he would use & what might not end up being a 'winner'. Wrapping gifts actually made me feel better. It was a start. Next I started some chicken and dumplings for tonight's dinner - it's the perfect weather for this kind of comfort food & I had been having a hankering for this dish all of last week anyway. Next, thanks to DH bringing the stamps home on a break, I actually got the cards in the mail. Another resounding affimation that I was not yet permanently attached to the chair or the bed! Doing something makes doing more so much easier! Today I think I can wrap some gifts that need to get sent out - who knows, maybe they might get to their destinations for the holidays after all !

The deck had some remarkably amusing things on it!
This bird house was called "Bunk's House in honor
of our oldest cat our passed away at 19 several years ago.

I picked up my lino cutters and did some cutting - this is one that I had started & then stopped -
it was good to finish it & also made me feel good to be moving along some part of the 'creative trail'!

I marveled, as I always do at this time of year at how important warm feet are!
These are knitted with wonderful, warm, Perendale Wool & they are then fulled.

I will always be grateful to Sarah for making me realize that I simply HAD to learn to knit these booties. I have not suffered from cold feet since I learned to make them. They are, simply the cure for cold feet. Kat Bordhi does such a great job of explaingin things clearly in her book called "Socks That Soar". I was below being a neophyte knitter when I began making these. I told this story last year I think - so those of you who have read the blog for that long can just glaze over for this part. Sarah made me my first pair of these as a Christmas gift and, when we traveled to the mainland together, she would use the time to try to teach me how to make them.At that point I did not know a knit from purl or a circular needle from a crochet hook so it was like Sarah was trying to teach me Greek in an hour. It didn't work. When she moved to Maine though I knew that I was in trouble and that I simply had to buckle down and learn to make these 'cold busters' myself. The rest, as they say, is history. I ended up making about 10 pairs of them for myself and for gifts. I would not want to face a winter without them! Thanks to Sarah for her patience with me and to Cat Bordhi for her wonderful book! Next I am going to go for two socks at a time !

Thanks to all of you who write. I so appreciated your notes. I guess I was in a bit of funk - and you helped make me want to climb out of the 'garbage pail' - as Frederick Perls would have said. I know most of you are too young to remember his type of gestalt therapy ! I never liked the idea of it but he wrote a book whose title I just loved : "In and Out The Garbage Pail".

Help! I've Lost My Merry HoHoHo !

A friend chided me just a bit this morning for not posting. I seem to have lost my Merry HoHoHo spirit and don't know where to find it! My cards are not yet mailed - and generally they are off & outta here during the first week of December. The presents remain unwrapped & un-mailed - New Year's gift's this year perhaps? Will my friends ever forgive me? The cookies are unbaked - though about perhaps but not in the oven! I am feeling thoroughly un-enthused, unmotivated & stupefied. It should be the complete opposite this year. We have snow on the ground, frigid temperatures & a generous wind chill component - & yet I sit, eyes slightly glazed, thinking, only thinking, of all of the things I should be doing. What I want to do is crawl into my warm bed & and have a sweet dream. What's with this? Where did my Merry HoHoHo spirit go? I simply can't find it anywhere. Not in the songs, or in the beauty of the snow, or in the cards, or in the icicles hanging from the roof. It's gone & I am fearful that I won't find it until after the holidays are over. Anyone else feel mired in Grinch-land too?