Success @ Work!

YAY! I’ve been feeling pretty bad about work lately, for months if I’m honest, and last week it all started to turn around. I ran a successful program for eight participants, EIGHT! That is the biggest turnout since before Covid19 and I am just absolutely delighted. The presenter who was supposed to run it had to bail on me because she got Covid and has to quarantine and recover. I said “no worries, I got it, I hope you get well very soon.” and then quietly panicked for a bit. We made gnomes and gingerbread men and it went well. ^_^

That was all Friday last week. Saturday I put in my December book order, planned 3 continuing programs for January and beyond, created flyers for the programs and a calendar of events for January, and basically just set myself up for success in the new year as much as I could before taking my upcoming vacation. Well, vacation time, we’re not going anywhere, I’m just going to freaking relax. Anyway, at this point I am feeling pretty good about being able to take the time off and just chill and not worry too much about work.

My son and I are planning the menu for Yule/Christmas and getting ready for some pre-holiday baking. My grown kids and husband put up the tree last night and we’ll be decorating/lighting it soon. I’m planning on games, movies, and other little activities to make the season bright. Here’s hoping we all have a happy holiday season and good health and happiness in the coming year!

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.

Busy and Grateful

I have to say one thing for the pandemic. Between my caution that severely limits the buildings and stores I will enter and the scalper’s prices a lot of craft items go for online, not to mention shipping charges and the potential for delay, I find myself giving very serious consideration for the supplies I already have. I’ve been making Super Mittens for my girls the past few days and I had to go to my yarn stash to do so. Limited amounts of various colors in the worsted weight category made me decide to use 2 colors per mitten/pair creating the body of each mitten in one color and the cuff in another. The lack of access to all my usual choices forces me to be creative and it is a great stash buster assisting me in using up stray balls of yarn and other supplies that have been hanging around. I’m also getting to projects I’ve been procrastinating on. I finally made the napkins for Harry Potter Xmas.

I also find myself appreciating what we already have more than I used to. I misplaced a pair of mittens in the grocery store on a rare in-person run for a few items, and I felt just awful about it. They are not the best pair of mittens or anything, I made them from a felted wool sweater and lined them with fleece cut from old PJ pants all acquired through thrift shops (over a year ago at least). They hit the magic sweet spot of being cheap, homemade, and recycled all at once. And they’re cute. I left a note with customer service and they called after a few hours. The mittens are safe at home again and I promise you, I will be much more careful with them in the future. Our dog also did some damage to the quilt I had on the bed and I thought the only replacement I had was languishing in the laundry room but I found a third bedspread I had completely forgotten about in the hall closet! And again it is cute. Why do I have so many bedspreads? Oh yeah, in the before time I used to thrift a lot and having pets means needing back ups of such things.

We are so, so lucky. We have so far gotten through this pandemic pretty ok. I mean, there’s definitely increased anxiety and stress, we feel uncertain about the future, worried about getting Covid 19, nervous about what may happen to our jobs, and the kids… All adults now, one in his senior year of HS, not able/willing to work because of scarce jobs & jobs they could get would be risky Covid-wise. Their lives are on hold. The girls are waiting for it to be safe to go job hunting again, for it to be safe to work again. We are a million times lucky that we’ve hung onto our house where there’s room for everyone and that we are still paying our bills, getting food on the table. So far we are still employed as long as that holds true we should be ok. My middlest child hasn’t had any min-painting commissions in a long while, not surprising, but she found a little place for herself online where she can use her creativity to make at least a small amount of money. I’m very proud of her for that and I hope that it boosts her self-esteem.

The bare fact that I can find any positives this year is amazing and speaks to how very fortunate we’ve been. I know people who are doing better than we are and some who are doing worse. It’s a mess out there and we are all hoping big for a much, much, much better year in 2021. I have never wished away a year so hard as this one. But, I have much to do before the new year and only scant few days to do it in. Be well. Stay safe.

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 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.

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!

A Very Covid Thanksgiving

I haven’t been posting because I had an allergic reaction that lasted for days and then suffered a tick bite that required a doctor visit and antibiotics. Gods, I hate ticks so much. They are the worst.

This year Thanksgiving is going to be a little different. Usually this is a day to gather with family, and/or friends, to feast and celebrate but this year we would all be wise if we did any gathering via Zoom or Skype or some such. Our day will be spent, as all days since sometime in March, with only those who live in our household. That’s somewhat typical for us, we often have one or two loved ones from outside our home attend,but we’re not into huge gatherings. My mother is very into the big gatherings, the bigger the better. She used to host, and we would sometimes go (or go to my husband’s motherer’s) but the last few years she’s gone to her brother’s. Now, his state has just straight up said if folks go there they need to quarantine for 2 weeks. I predict she will go anyway and just blatantly skip the whole quarantine. That’s my guess.

I saw her the other day and she started crying and said she can’t take the pandemic anymore, she just really can’t. I sympathized and did not point out that she is exactly the reason why we are still in this shit. She travelled to neighboring states 3 times this summer to vacation. I saw the pictures of her on the beach with a group of people and jammed together for a photo not a mask in sight. I know she has gone to friend’s houses and had her friends over. She has had the woman who works for them in the house 5 days a week, she has continued to have a house cleaner in twice a week. Etc etc, etc. She also refused to wear a mask when she was out walking in her town. And now, 8 months since the start of the pandemic, we are still refusing to get together with her for a meal. Damn right we are! Christmas isn’t looking good either because the number of cases is climbing like I cannot even believe right now.

Christmas will be weird. My mother usually comes for that and even helps cook but this year I think it will just be my little family and some zoom calls. Our scaled back presents and Maximum Effort feast and holiday decor will have to carry the day. We’ll probably watch movies and play board games since getting a PS5 seems impossible at this point. Ooof. I know they were all hoping big for that console and some new games but profiteers bought up all the consoles and, last we checked, were selling them for FOUR TIMES the retail price. Jerks.

In Good News: I finally got a turkey! It took a month and this is the third time I ordered one and they were always out of stock by the time our pick-up appointment came around. Today we got one. The one I ordered was out of stock but the young woman who got our order substituted from some other brand. It’s about 14lbs so pretty perfect for us. Plenty for dinner and plenty for leftovers and there will be soup, oh yes.

just forget the world…

I’ve done all I can and I need a break from stress and worry so I’m here to talk about things that are bringing me joy in some way, things that take me out of myself and distract me, all that sort of stuff. So, onto that! First things first: Books. They are my sanctuary, my education, my consolation, and my many, many other lives.

Current/Recent Reads:

The Ballad of Black Tom; by Victor LaValle (fantastic mythos-related story)
Adventures in Opting Out; by Cait Flanders
Disfigured; On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space; by Amanda LeDuc
The Library of the Unwritten; by A.J. Hackwith
The Only Good Indians; by Stephen Graham Jones
Dirt to Soil; by Gabe Brown
A Deadly Education; by Naomi Novik (The latest Fantastic Stangelings Bookclub read)
Beowulf; by Maria Dahvana Headley
A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet; by Becky Chambers

There are other books, of course, but these are all the ones seriously in the flow at the moment. Other wonderful things I like to fill up my senses with: Shows!

Community. (Hulu & Netflix) My current comfort watch. Brilliant show with a ton of laughs and lots of heart.
The Haunting of Bly Manor. (Netflix) Pure gold so far. Atmospheric, subtle horror, perfect storytelling. I think I’m on episode #5 and I am having such fun. As always, my brain is whirring on ahead of the story making guesses and trying to expose the whole picture. I spotted a few things before they were revealed but, wow, there is so much here to unpack and it is glorious.
Liziqi. (YouTube) My ultimate escape from my own reality mixed with my ultimate life goals. Somehow relaxing and inspiring at the same time.
Good Omens. (Amazon Prime) We’re on our own side. Perfect.
Vienna Blood. (Dvd from the library) Very cool, entertaining, a bit like a Sherlock Holmes homage. Victorian Vienna. Hitting a bit close to reality with the superior race nonsense but a good crime procedural with interesting characters. Some absolutely stunning voices among the cast; loads of deep gravel in varying flavors. Particularly the lead detective and his rival. (I’m a sucker for a really good voice)
Shetland. (Dvds from library) Love, love, love this. I love the way this show is paced, the slow unraveling of the clues, the deep sense of Place. The landscape as another ever-present character. I have sadly finished all the available seasons of this and…
Vera. (Dvds) The same author wrote the books this series and the series Shetland are based on. Brilliant TV, just brilliant.
Videos of babies laughing hysterically, goofy pets, etc.

There are many more shows I could list that are excellent distractions but these are the ones I’m currently living inside. I’m also playing RPGs, of course. I am currently playing in; Hell’s Rebels (Pathfinder) on most Tuesdays, Azartia (a friend’s homebrew D&D) on Thursdays, and Age of Ashes, (Pathfinder) on Sundays. I am also running; Extinction Curse, (Pathfinder) on Saturdays and The Slithering, (Pathfinder) randomly, and my hubby is running the teens from the library through Age of Ashes as well. I’m playing 2 Human Druids and one Gnome Bard multi-classing into Druid and experiencing whiplash between characters. My bard is level… 12? 14? Something, and in Pathfinder which is designed for characters to be heroic. She is a blast to play, and absolutely good time. My Pathfinder Druid is low level, fun but kind of a letdown after playing the high level bard. The D&D Druid is… fine. She has a few pretty great spells that are fun/effective but… D&D 5e is just, well, it’s awful. Simple to play? Try; Over simplified, broken, frustrating. Cat, my druid, is level 9 with a 15 AC… The champion in our party has only a 20 AC. We get hit constantly, just absolutely constantly. The game is just not on a heroic scale at all. It’s dumbed down to the point of, why am I playing this? But yeah, it’s a distraction for a a few hours a week and time spent with friends. There are a lot of laughs as we play. Many laughs come from failed saving throws.

Other:

Knitting: one big project for a present, over half done now. ^_^
Work: 2-3 shifts a week, busy, on my feet, frustrating with Covid restrictions but, hey, I love it anyway and I’m lucky to have a job at all.
Baking/cooking: my daily chore and sometimes creative outlet.
Macrame’. I just got supplies to start doing this. I’ve been wanting to try it for ages, since like the 70s. Just getting around to it!
Holiday planning: well underway, constantly on my mind, so much to do!
De-cluttering. On the back burner but always on my mind. I want to get the excess out of here and have a semi-orderly, uncrowded, welcoming home.
Writing. Blogging here, jotting down ideas that keep coming to me, writing for work, which is fun and cool that I get to write for work at all. It’s mostly instructions for craft kits I make up or promotional writing for said craft kits, but still.

Sigh, and now the world is calling, I’m afraid, and I must answer. Stay well, be safe, see you soon.

Banner photo credit: “Contemplation – Dartmoor, Devon” by Faborsky Photography is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0