New Year 2021

My Goals for the new year are simple, straightforward, and poorly defined.

Become more physically active
Successfully garden
Eat more fresh veggies
Gain more competence at my job

I could add a million more. After the disaster that was 2020 there is virtually no area of my life that couldn’t stand to see some improvement. I think I might try to get my feet under me on 3 of the goals I’ve listed (gardening needing to wait for spring and all) and then add other goals like my perpetual decluttering, reading more, reinstituting date night, etc. Seriously, there are so many, there is no end to things I need to be doing.

With my goals in mind I have naturally been focusing on watching videos on Youtube and crocheting mittens. I just gotta be me… I guess. The more mittens I make the more I consider reopening my Etsy shop. I started out this kick just making a couple of pairs for my daughters and kept going with the idea of just busting my yarn stash. (using up fairly small amounts of random colors and such) I’ve made 6+ pairs since Xmas and now I’m looking at the possibility that, if I can keep crafting at some sort of steady pace, it might be worth it to open my little shop again. I don’t know, maybe.

Xmas Post

The day is almost over. My youngest woke us at 6AM… this is the lad who frequently sleeps through his 8:30 check in at school even though we try and rouse them repeatedly. What a beastie. I made our traditional Xmas breakfast of pumpkin pasties our stockings were filled with practical items and snacky foods. Our limited presents were well received and I got a few lovely things I’m very happy about.

I hurt all over because I spent the past 2 days on my feet cooking. The food was great. I wish we could have shared it with friends and family. The spotted dick, that my kid requested, wasn’t horrible. It’s a kind of steamed bread pudding full of raisins and such. The trifle was good too.

Happy Holidays to anyone who reads this goofy little blog. I am ridiculously tired and going to go lie down.

6 Days till Xmas

I am off until the 28th and our leisurely countdown is on. I still have many small projects to get to, all of the presents to wrap, and a feast to prepare, but I am well past the halfway mark for getting stuff done. I did, like an idiot, add 2 high effort projects to my list the day before yesterday but I think I can manage.

I am loving the gorgeous snow. I want it to stay and maybe get a fresh topcoat for xmas. We shovelled out all the cars and were most grateful for how light and fluffy the snow was. Praise Thor! I can no longer shovel wet, slushy, heavy snow, I literally get sick. This snow is perfect and lovely. I need to remember to top off all the feeders today. They are getting low.

At work last night I gave out/left presents for all my coworkers. Just tins of home made cookies and a couple of cloth napkins each. Nothing major. I think last year I gave them just cloth napkins but sets of 4 or something. I love cloth napkins. They are a tiny, everyday way to love the planet. They last for years and are super easy to make and care for. I used to sell them in my Etsy shop. It I get into making them again maybe I’ll reopen after Covid19 dies down. I’m currently trying to avoid the post office and, well, leaving the house much at all.

In deference to the headache I am currently suffering that is all for now. Be safe! XXOO

A Few of my Favorite Things

2020 has been a tough year. We’re not quite to the end of it yet but it’ll be wrapping up shortly. While I have a moment, before my last, desperate dash to get projects done before Xmas, here is a list of some of the things that brought a little light to a dark and terrible year.

BOOKS:

Mexican Gothic; by Silvia Moreno Garcia
In the Shadow of Spindrift House; by Mira Grant (audiobook)
The Year of Less; How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away my Belongings and Discovered that Life is Worth More than Anything You Can Buy in a Store; by Cait Flanders
Girls of Paper and Fire; by Natasha Ngan
The Hunger; by Alma Katsu

They were a delightful distraction.

GAMES:

Pathfinder 2ed. (We have 3 weekly games and a few others that meet sporadically.)
Minecraft. (Many hours, with the monsters turned off, building farms, fortresses, mazes etc.)
Red Flags. (Hilarious, uncomfortable, and hilariously uncomfortable. So much laughter.)
Dragon Age Origins. Still delightful as it ages.
Skyrim. I will never not want to build my houses and fight monsters to get money so I can build my houses.
Harry Potter Wizards Unite! It got me to go outside and walk, masked and distant, around my neighborhood.

HOBBIES:

Knitting
Crocheting
Sewing
Painting
Writing
Drawing
Bird Watching/Feeding

TV SHOWS:

Community. Light, funny, excellent.
Sherlock. Diverting and Distracting, completely delightful.
The Rookie. I keep rewatching the ones that are available.
The Mandalorion. Baby Yoda is a gift to all of us.
The West Wing. Here’s hoping President Biden will be a compassionate and decent leader to us all.
Vera. Freaking Awesome. Love this show.
Shetland. Same as above. Top notch.

VIDEOS:

Liziqi. A capable young woman in rural China growing, foraging and cooking food as well as making all manner of useful or beautiful things. This is my drug of choice to soothe my anxiety. Also my life goals. I have probably spent more hours watching this than anything else.
Tier Zoo. Real life treated as a video game. Weirdly calming and very entertaining.
Julie Nolke. Her future self talking to her past self during 2020 is comedy GOLD.
Ozzy Man Reviews. I like his animal videos the best particularly the Otter vs. Orca and Honey Badger vs. Python. His Destination F*cked videos are hilarious too. Great stuff.
Your Daily Dose of Internet. Amusing, amazing, weird and funny clips put together for our amusement.
Binging with Babish. Cooking show, very cool, entertaining and educational.
Bardcore. Modern songs played on medieval instruments with words altered like this: “Thee and me could write a bad romance….” Awesome.

FOOD & DRINK:

Local Beer. Brewery about a 10 minute walk from the house. Not my favorite beer in the world but good AND they do pay online curbside pick up… and they now recognize our car.
Local Bakery. Way too close to my house. Apple Galettes, donuts, bread, all manner of delicious carbs + Soup!
Local Pizza. Quite close to the house. I am in constant danger of deciding not to cook dinner and just order pizza for everyone.
Yorkshire Gold Tea. Every morning a sweet cup of comfort.
Cookies, home made, all of them.
Birthday cake. 2 in the Spring, 8 days apart, 3 in the Fall within about 2- 2 1/2 weeks. Ideally they’d be more spread out but I will take birthday cake whenever I can get it.

About all the local businesses: I live in a town of 1200 people and I have 2 excellent pizza places, a decent brewery, a fantastic bakery, a seasonal ice cream stand, and a fancy restaurant all within easy walking distance. We also have a little market with groceries, wine and beer and a deli, another okay restaurant, a coffee and donut chain store, and a few other businesses besides. It’s a quiet little town that could use a few more businesses to cover some basic needs but crime sprees around here consist of mailbox baseball, kids stealing change out of unlocked cars, occasional packages stolen off porches and speeding. I mean, you know, mostly. Sometimes someone the police pull over will have like a pound of cocaine in their car or whatever but we are between a few places where there is a fair bit of illicit drug use.

PLACES:

Home. The vast bulk of the year has been spent here and it really is a cute little house. It keeps us cozy and safe and has enough places to store food so we can withstand short periods of not being able to get all the food we need.
The Hippie Fort/Shed/Studio. Our own little getaway several yards from the house. Seasonal but excellent. Could use insulation, heat and plumbing. A great place for date night with music and candle light, a lovely place to read, write, paint etc.
The Library where I work. A terrific little library that has provided us with a wide array of reading materials as well as access to movies and TV shows on DVD. Also, the only place I hang out with anyone other than my immediate family for any length of time at all.
The Park down the street. Just a green space with some trees and a couple of benches but also a little hub for the Wizards Unite! game. Lovely trees.
My yard. I now have 3 little garden spots set up and ready to be planted in the Spring. The place is loaded with ticks but it’s really cute. I need to find a way to kill all the ticks. (I hate them more than almost anything.)

MVPs of 2020:

The Pantry. Excellent work holding lots of pasta, canned goods, tea, cocoa, cereal, crackers, snacks, peanut butter and so on.
Chest Freezer. Ours may be small but it has worked it’s butt off all year storing meat, veg, & breads ready to tide us over when such became hard to find during parts of the pandemic.
Wood Stove. Keeping us warm is a piece of cake for this little beauty. It also assists in the drying of foods and can be used as a stove top for cooking if the power goes out in winter.
XBox 360. Still working like a champ keeping my Skyrim and Dragon Age games ready for me to go hide in.
Playstation 4. My Minecraft machine that also has a Pirate Game, Witcher games, etc that everyone else uses. Also has a little game of Fallout Vault in there that I occasionally like to mess around with. Many, many hours of entertainment for the entire family.
CD Player. Currently providing Xmas music, often used to play audiobooks as well as music of all types. Makes life better for all of us.
Book Shelves. Loaded up with something under 5,000 books, 50-100 board, card, and dice games, as well as RPGs and an abundance of DVDs, they provide storage for many things that keep us entertained and distracted through this long, long crisis.

A Dusting of Snow

I’m doing a little better now. I made Christmas cookies round 2, hung up some indoor decorations, and hung multi-colored lights up around the porch. It’s all Xmas up in here now! I keep playing Christmas music and keeping the fire going. Starting to get over the stupid cold we’ve had, it is NOT Covid-19, test was negative. YAY! Annnnnnd… it’s snowing! ^_^

Those are some of the good things in my life. I have so much to be grateful for. I can only assume it is human nature to sort of focus on the bad, on what’s missing or inadequate or whatever. I think I just need to fight that and try to focus on the good while working on solutions to any issues that crop up. I was just reading that happiness is something you can have welling up from within. It was put forward as something you could keep going, I’m assuming to varying degrees, through all the trials that life brings.

Here are a few pics of things adding to my happiness right now:

Peppermint thumbprint & Chocolate crinkle cookies, one nearly perfect Moroccan pancake, and my goof advent calendar.

My wonderful husband also put lights on the tree so we can decorate it soon. They are new lights and weirdly bright. The camera in my phone had an interesting time trying to focus on the tree.

These pics are in order showing the struggle to focus. I kind of love all of them. It’s okay, Tree, you’re beautiful even when you’re blurry.

Today will be dedicated to cleaning, laundry, getting organized in general and specifically getting ready to launch myself into the new year with shiny good intentions to change my life for the better. I have my free-form bullet journal and a free wall calendar from the grocery store and I’m ready to start building some more structure into my life. I will also be working on an experimental craft today. It goes along with many crafts I’ve done in the past, and I have a pattern for the structure of the item, but I’m winging it on the design. I can’t tell you more because it’s a present for someone who has been known to read this blog but I will post pics as soon as I can. ^_^

I hope you will all have a good, stress-free day today, the kind of day that makes you feel a little happier.

I’m trying

It’s December 7th and it just doesn’t feel like it. I’m trying to get into a jolly holiday mood but it’s tough this year. There are over 280,000 people dead of Covid 19 in the U.S. so far and that is a whole lot of grieving families. There are 20,000 people with cases severe enough to be in the ICU right now and many more infected. In many places around the country our healthcare system is close to collapse and we still haven’t even gotten to the post Thanksgiving spike. Cases are on a massive upswing while at the same time my library is continuing to open back up. This scares the hell out of me. I love my job, and I need my job, but if I bring Covid 19 home to my husband it is likely to kill him. Every time I see my mother, from 10 feet away, outdoors, masked, and brief, she cries and says she can’t take it anymore. She 74 with a heart condition and this whole thing has worn her down. So fa la la la la and stuff.

Still, I’ve been trying. We went and picked out a tree and set it in the stand… like a week ago… and it still has no lights. I set up our advent calendar and we keep forgetting to open the drawers and read the little slips. I got the kids involved in a bit of holiday baking, that went pretty well, everyone loves cookies. I played Christmas CDs and tried to keep things light and happy for a while. This was the most successful I have been at getting into the holiday mood lately. I’ll keep at it.

Cookie making festivities… (to be continued soon, I like to bake.)

There are many cookies still to bake, there are some presents to be wrapped, we are all here together and as safe as we can be in these mad times. So well, bake, we’ll game, we’ll wrap up the presents, we’ll keep the wood stove going and we’ll get around to decorating the tree real soon. I can’t believe all the protections put in place to help people weather the pandemic will probably be allowed to expire soon. I just cannot fathom the heartlessness that would see a massive wave of evictions during this time of crisis and in winter. I can only hope the incoming administration will leap to the rescue of the American people and do everything they can to get help and relief to folks, and PPE and other critical support to our frontline healthcare workers. Too many people already struggle to get enough to eat, too many have already been evicted, too many are stuck in a whirlpool of tragic events, grief and despair. It’s all too much and I’m not personally facing these issues, yet.

Into December…

Thanksgiving has come and gone. It was exhausting but wonderful. The kids slept half the day away while I cooked and my sweet husband acted as my assistant. The meal was pretty freaking awesome even if I do say so myself. I was back at work the two days following but we’re closed on Sundays so yesterday was spent relaxing and recovering for the most part. We went over to Silverymoon just before dinner to get our tree and a wreath for our front door. We did well, I think. The tree is full and lovely. Last year we made wreaths at a library workshop this year that is unthinkable. Thirty people in a room all breathing the air and exchanging germs? So much is so different this year. I was running in-person programming for the teens, serving them snacks and butterbeer, free raffling off Hogwarts house scarves. I miss those kids.

Today I will pay the bills, it’s that time again. I am 100% grateful that we can still pay our bills. Because supporters of the president have refused to approve payments to help working Americans stay afloat and have refused to cancel rent, prevent utility shut-offs, etc. it is possible millions of Americans will be facing eviction just as we are heading into winter, less than a month before the big winter holidays, probably in the middle of the next big covid spike we’ll have. All those who travelled and gathered for Thanksgiving are currently spreading Covid-19 far and wide. (well, not ALL, but you know what I mean) I am hopeful that the incoming administration will do their best to try and contain the virus, get relief to everyone who needs it, and start the hard work of rebuilding all that has been destroyed these past four years. I hope that the people who have fallen so deeply under the sway of such extreme ideology can be reached, deprogramed, or whatever. I know they don’t get that all the things Liberals or Progressives want to do will lift them up as well as everyone else. As we see the safety net repaired all will benefit. As we fund our schools, fix our roads, ease the burdens on our police departments and retrain officers in de-escalation and so on, all will benefit. Fixing the nightmare of crushing student debt, making college more accessible, fighting climate change, it will all help everyone. I hope the improvements in people’s lives will get through to them, soften their hard hearts and help them realize we are all one human family. I try not to get too political here but have you seen the lines for food banks? Unreal.

I looked at the weather for today and we are supposed to get snow any minute now, that will switch to rain after a bit, add in some fierce winds later and switch to thunderstorms late in the evening. Because, why not? Snow in the morning, thunderstorms at night. Weather is a kooky thing but it wasn’t quite this weird when I was a kid, this is just freaking ODD.

Xmas 2020 Ideas for Everyone!

I’ve been bombing around online reading people’s plans for the 2020 winter holidays. There is a lot of musing about how very different they will be this year, how different the priorities are, and about making peace with all the differences. Folks are foregoing travel to big or small family gatherings and just staying home and making feasts for the people who live there. Lots of people are planning on less shopping, less gift giving, less fuss and more activities. Reading all of it made me realize that our holidays are barely changing compared to most people’s. We always have Thanksgiving and Christmas at home because I love to cook/create the feasts and I absolutely love the leftovers. We do usually have a few guests for Christmas but Thanksgiving has been just my husband and our, now grown, children. This year we have very much hoped to include a dear friend-become-downstairs neighbor but Covid has squashed that idea. We have long tried to make the holidays more about being together and having fun and less about stuff. So I have ideas and thought I’d share.

Since you can’t visit relatives and probably need to pinch pennies:

Make a jigsaw puzzle, seasonal if possible, you might have one hidden in a closet or you could buy one. If having a physical puzzle around doesn’t work out, you can always use free puzzles online. https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=search&q=christmas%20 This one can be fun whether you live alone or with a bunch of people who can all work on it.
Bake some Christmas cookies! (or whatever treats go with your particular winter holidays) This one can be fun to do with kids if you have them. They can decorate cut cookies (like gingerbread people) or help make the cookies.
Make a gingerbread house from a kit of try baking your own gingerbread. Alternatively you can make a whole village with/without kids, by using graham crackers instead of gingerbread. We do this at my library and the kids love it.
Read holiday stories! There are loads of cozy mysteries centered around Christmas you can read while drinking cocoa or you can read children’s holiday stories aloud. (Check your local library for availability and curbside pick up)
Holiday movies! Check TV schedules, search on Hulu or Netflix, or check, again, with your local library!
We may not be able to go out carolling this year but what about carolling from our own yards? Contact a friendly neighbor and see if folks can all plan for a little outside time in their own yards and short list of songs you can all sing across the neighborhood.
Decorate like crazy! Use whatever you’ve already got or make some inexpensive and easy decorations from paper chains with whatever paper you’ve got, to pom poms with spare yarn, salt dough ornaments, or kooky ideas with recyclables. Look what these folks did with a ream of white printer paper: https://thehousethatlarsbuilt.com/2016/12/christmas-paper-office-party-decorations.html/ Search for “DIY ornaments” or holiday crafts there are a million ideas out there to inspire you.
Play some holiday music. You might have some CDs or whatever but you can also go to Youtube and search and find hours and hours of holiday music to help make your home feel a little merrier.
Create your own advent calendar/Christmas countdown. I have a little wooden house-shaped advent calendar full of drawers. Every year I find and print out holiday jokes, holiday traditions around the world, random christmas or yule facts, holiday poems, short xmas passages from books, etc. This idea is super adaptable. You could use anything from a wooden house like mine to a bunch of numbered envelopes. And you don’t have to make reading slips like I do. You could use little toys, chocolates, etc, etc.

My goofy little advent calendar all stuffed and ready for December first.

Banner credit: “christmas tree ornament” by zaimoku_woodpile is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Reopening & Other Progress

My library will be opening by appointment starting next Tuesday. We have approval from all sorts of boards to allow one family/household at a time come in to browse, use computers etc for 30 minutes at a time. Our local numbers are very low and flat so everyone feels like this is a good move but as we are heading into a season when this virus is likely to surge again, I am nervous. We will be starting with only Tuesday hours and I don’t work Tuesday so, who knows, maybe we will be reevaluating this move before it even changes anything for me specifically.

I’ll be off next week until Friday so I can celebrate the holiday and other things. I welcome the time off to cook and clean for our feast. All the laptops are finally gone now so I can get moving ahead again! We also have 2 slightly raised bed gardens installed at this point and one in progress for what will be our berry patch. We have tentative plans for a live willow fence along the front yard as well. I am looking forward to finally, hopefully, growing a decent portion of our veggies and berries. Even our yard is becoming more organized.

Our new raised beds and future berry patch

Our Thanksgiving feast is pretty much planned and our Yule feast is mostly finalized. I have the main course narrowed down to 2 options and I’ll just order both and see which I get. I’m looking forward to our once a year, amazing turkey next Thursday, and our Yule/Xmas feast next month.

Yesterday I finished 2 projects for Xmas, one was a small, simple project I made 6 of and one was a longer term, lots of work project for a dear friend we are adopting into our clan. (Assuming she doesn’t run screaming into the hills when she realizes we’re all mad here.) I still have a bunch of projects I haven’t even started including a set of Hogwarts cloth napkins I want to make for our table. I’m not into matchy-matching everything except for special occasions. For our big feasts and celebrations I like to go all in and give us a real sense of occasion. I need to keep reminding myself that I am very much on track right now and that it is all under control. I am doing less this year and that’s why I have room for the long-delayed napkin sewing etc.

Got the first two napkins pinned and ready to sew. Only six more to go!

Thankful

I’m sitting here with my tea, planning my day, watching my husband doggedly keep trying to secure a PS5 for Christmas, and I feel deeply grateful that if he lucks out and bags one of those things we can afford it. We are both somehow still employed during a nightmare scenario for this country. We still have food, shelter, warmth, (thank you wood stove)and the plausibility of a new gaming platform. A whole lot had to go right for us to get here.

23 years ago we were living in subsidised housing, with food stamps, WIC, and assistance with heating. We worked hard to get out of poverty, no doubt, I thrifted like a master, he educated himself one certificate at a time to make the move from retail to tech. Yes, we worked hard, but our biggest help was connections, no question about it, connections to people in a position to help us were 100% critical. The first big jump was helped along by a dear friend who highly recommended him as an addition to an IT department for a little nonprofit she worked at. He had a fistful of certificates and some natural talent with computers and he walked into a department in chaos from long neglect. It wasn’t long before he was in charge. Another friend fiercely fought for him to get into the organization he’s in now. Again, he ended up in charge of that department in fairly short order because he worked hard and kept learning but he wouldn’t have gotten either of these breaks without the help of friends.

We’ve also received monetary help at times in the form of loans and gifts. We’ve had relatives buy us major furniture, pitch in on home repairs, buy clothes for our kids, lend us cars when our car was in the shop, hook us up with a friends and family discount on a new car! These are all important things, substantial things, that helped us get here. Our many connections, along with our advantages, made a pretty strong ladder for us to climb up out of poverty on and I am thankful that we could take advantage of all of it. People without well placed, decently well off friends and relatives, who didn’t go through well funded, well maintained schools, who lived in food deserts, have to work much harder than we did to make a fraction of our progress, or even just to avoid winding up on the streets. I don’t think we should rest until we, as a country, fix this unequal, broken system so that all folks can live with dignity and have their biggest holiday worry be that they won’t get the new gaming platform and their kids will be marginally disappointed. That’s the dream.

Banner credit: “Traditional Cornucopia — Leanne and David Kesler, Floral Design Institute, Inc., in Portland, Ore.” by Flower Factor is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0