on this last day of 2012...

I will...

• take down the Christmas tree.
• wash bed sheets.
• dust.
• go to the country store for chicken feed.
• go to the grocery store for black eyed peas...pretty sure I already have a ham hock.
• think and pray and decide on my One Word for 2013. I may already have it...but I need to make sure. 

2012 has been...interesting. Both good and bad in so many different ways. And at the risk of sounding pessimistic, I will admit, I'm not sorry to see it go. Even though I don't feel ready for 2013. I can't quite put my finger on why? 

Maybe because I have no idea what to expect. (I know, we never do, but somehow, each new year, I feel like good things will happen. This year? I don't feel as sure.)

Maybe because I know that 2013 is going to require a lot of work and a lot of discipline. 

It's also going to involve change...one BIG change in particular...sending Seth off to college in the fall. And for that, I am not quite ready. 

Either way...it's all going to happen. 2013 is going to be here whether I'm ready or not. Seth is going to go off to college whether I'm ready or not. Life is going to go on whether I'm ready or not. 

So I may as well get ready..I may as well live it - rather than fighting it. 

I think I will add to my list of today's "to-do" list...get ready...it will only make my days easier, don't you think?

I want to live where it snows.

Some of my flickr favorites of snow.

I have been in snow a handful of times. I've driven in it once...maybe twice. I am intrigued by it.

Someday I want to live where it snows.

Not a lot. Just enough to cover everything in a blanket of white.

It seems like a good excuse to cuddle up inside and sit by a fire...reading or creating or watching romantic comedies.

I suppose that means I would need a wood stove when I live where it snows.

That would be nice, too. A tea kettle on top...maybe a loaf of bread cooking in the oven door. It sounds romantic, doesn't it?

Yeah, I think so, too.

and just like that...it's over.

Christmas was so nice. Everyone was happy with their gifts...we spent lots of time with family...ate lots (and lots) of delicious food...unbuttoned our top buttons more than once...and moved our way through the holiday nice and slow. It was a nice change from the days prior.

Isn't that always how it is, though?

I figured something out this year. I have been saying that I "don't like Christmas". But that's not true. I DO like Christmas. I just don't care for the hype and commercialism and stress that leads up to Christmas.

I love celebrating the birth of Jesus. I love giving gifts. I love being with family. I love good food. And that is really what the holiday is about. All good things. And just because society has tried to ruin it and make it a crazed, rushed, selfish season doesn't mean I have to go along with it. From now on...I won't.

And now the days after?

Slow, slow, slow.

The day after Christmas I didn't leave the house.
Yesterday I left for a while with a friend but we took it pretty easy.
And today? Not much more than that. Laundry...oh, the laundry. (I think it's time to go through drawers and put together a donation bag.) And I will clean our room. It became the wrapping station and it shows. Yikes!

I thought about taking the tree down, but honestly, I am still enjoying the lights. I love Christmas lights and will miss them when they're gone. Maybe I will take the tree down Sunday...we'll see.

Oh yeah...and did I mention that I am off for two weeks? Yeah...I love working for the school district.

How was your Christmas? What are you up to today?

Merry Christmas

breathing.

How are you doing? Almost ready? I am. Almost.

It's raining today. I'll be heading up to Folsom for a wrestling tournament all day...I gotta say, wrestling is growing on me.

I will take my list and check it twice (or five times). And then I will make a new list...of everything left to do and buy and make. And then I will fold them ALL up together (why I don't replace the lists, I don't know...but I never do) and rummage through them all each time I pull them out.

I will take a Sudoku book. I don't leave home without one. I do them while waiting in parking lots for practices to end.

And I will take my camera. Trying to get better at taking it with me more often...wherever I go.

So, I was standing in line at a store yesterday, finding myself getting very frustrated, hot, irritated. (Have I ever discussed my anger issues here? Ahem...anyway...)

I was standing in line. My feet hurt. My back hurt. Everyone was moving too slow for my liking. I was huffing and puffing and rolling my eyes. (Mom knows this side of me all too well...shopping with me is FUN. Right mom? Right?)

My temperature continued to rise when I stopped and thought to myself, "What are you getting so worked up about? It's Christmas. The lines will be long. You will have to wait. You will have to be patient with the old man buying lots of $20 gift cards. You will have to be patient with the woman assisting him who couldn't speak very good English but who has a heckuva lot more patience than you do. Why not just enjoy this down time? Why not just enjoy the fact that you don't have to move and run and scuffle and chase?"

I took a deep breath, released the tension in my shoulders and turned to the family behind me, the one with the fussy baby (that wasn't helping with my rise in temperature only moments earlier) and asked, "Are we having fun yet?" And we all laughed...kinda hard.

Enjoy your day...no matter what. xo

And all of a sudden Christmas was 5 days away.

The past few days I have been so busy...working, shopping, baking, cooking, cleaning, washing, cutting, pasting, folding, photographing, gathering, wrapping, feeding, laughing, crying, visiting, missing, robbing (Peter to pay Paul), balancing, juggling, breathing, wondering, hoping, fighting, wishing, trusting, believing.

sometimes I have too much to share and don't know where to start...

When I Am Among the Trees

 

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

 

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

 

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

 

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

morning.

driving on a cold and foggy morning.

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

-Mary Oliver

Sunday...at last.

Whew. What a week. Busy, long, productive, fleeting, good. I feel accomplished, even though my floors are still dirty. That'll get remedied sometime today...hopefully sooner than later.

I attended a training for my job last Tuesday...it was good. So informative. It gave me a lot of information and confidence to do my job well.

The week's seem to fly by, don't they? Between work and kids and commitments and errands and everything in between, next thing you know it's Sunday morning and time to start all over again.

Ian had a wrestling tournament in Concord yesterday...all day. Wrestling tournaments are in a class all by themselves. It's a lot of sit and wait until your wrestler competes. Luckily, the place was nice, it wasn't all hot and steamy like some gyms can be during tournaments and I was with good company all day. Then when it was all said and done and Ian received his medal he and I took a nice drive home as the sun set, stopping for a bite to eat, just the two of us. Good times...I cherish them as I know they, too, are fleeting.

Now here it is Sunday morning...and I slept in until 8! Seeing as how I am usually awake anywhere between 4 and 5am each morning, this was a treat. So far I have shuffled around in my slippers, sipped coffee, watched man shows with my husband and now I'm taking a little time to catch up here.

We are going to rake leaves today...hopefully this wind will let up a bit. And I have floors to mop and laundry to do and meals to plan and make. Not sure if I'll venture out at all...it just might be a stay at home day...which is fine by me.

the call.

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, 

who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, 

and gave to it neither power nor time.” 

- Mary Oliver

born to do this.

Joan of Arc is my hero.