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I have had the entire week between Christmas and New Years off. And I have done exactly nothing, except grow a loveseat out of my backside. Okay I did do the filing and I got my hair cut but other than that, not much. Just sitting by the fire, reading and relaxing.

Not that I had plans exactly but I’m feeling a little panicked now that the work week is looming that I didn’t use my time wisely. I’m wishing I had started one of those projects where you need a few uninterrupted days to make headway on it. That is a luxury I don’t get very often and now here I’ve blown my chance. Oh well. No sense crying over missed opportunities.

I find that I’m the kind of person that needs a plan or I get distracted. Even *with* a plan I get distracted. Just watch me walk purposefully into a room only to start picking up a stack of magazines, have something in one of them catch my eye and then I’m online searching for whatever that thing was. Original purpose totally forgotten.

What I would really like to start working on is my February table topper. I have this plan of having a different quilted table topper for each month of the year. I have four so far. Only one of which I have actually made myself. The others were commissioned. I have my April one – pales pinks, greens and yellows. I have a red, white and blue 30’s reproduction one for July, another 30’s reproduction one for September (the colors remind me of the old elementary school primers) and I have a Halloween one for October – also in 30’s reproduction fabrics. My, I am a fan of the 30’s aren’t I?

I have the fabric for three more ~ pale blue and cream fabrics for January. Red and white for February. And some lovely sage green, reds and white for a Christmas one. I’ve put a moratorium on buying any more fabric until I get at least two of them completed.

The beauty of table top sized quilts is that they are fairly easy and quick to assemble. I can even manage to machine quilt them myself if I don’t want anything too fancy. The perfect size is about 48-50" square and most baby quilts are about that size to it’s easy to find patterns.

So that’s my goal for January – to have one completed. If I haven’t posted anything on the subject by mid month someone call me on it.

And so it’s done…

One final look at the decorations – they are all tucked away in their boxes for a long Winter nap. It’s amazing, really, how Christmas decorations expand while they are out of their boxes for a month. I had to buy another big storage bin for the weight they’ve gained.

I am in the mood to declutter and do some fresh, light decorating. I started with the mantel. Gave it a good dusting to get all the glitter off of it and redid it in pale greens and pinks and creams. I may end up actually moving all this into the bedroom to put on the mantel in there. And do something a little starker and cleaner looking in the living room.

Like all white vases. Or a row of hurricane candle holders. I’m not sure yet. I just know as much as I love decorating for Christmas I am just as happy when I put it all away and everything looks fresh and light.

Clean up

I’m trying to redesign the banner on this page and so far I’m not happy with the outcome. Bear with me as this blog goes through an identity crisis over the next week.

I’m in full on putter mode today. I’m resparkling crystally things, writing thank you notes, eating Christmas cookies (it’s my plan of attack – I’m going to eat them as fast as I can and just be done with it), contemplating dragging the umpteen bizillion Christmas decoration boxes out of the garage so I can undecorate the place.

It’s 45 degrees and really windy out so I have turned off the heat and opened every single window and door in the house to ‘blow the stink off it’ (that expression has always amused me). It’s quite brisk in here. And *really* brisk outside – the wind is making the house vibrate. Our pretty white Christmas trees blew right over. Guess Christmas is really over.

Back to puttering.

Sunny side of the street

(lest you think my photography has vastly improved the above photo is from iStockphoto)

I am having one of those really trying days where positively nothing is going according to plan. It’s Rick’s birthday and being that I am without a car this week I arranged to secretly rent a car so I could do some birthday related errands. The rent a car place, who shall remain nameless but claims to be enterprising, confirms my reservation for this morning and says they’ll even come pick me up.

I call them bright and early to arrange the pick up time and the girl answering the phone informs me she doesn’t have any cars available and she’s hoping to have a return by 1:00pm or so. That’s pretty much when I want to be home, wrapping birthday gifts and baking a cake so I tell her that will just not do. Sorry she says. I gave her a little lecture about how if there wasn’t expected to be any cars they should allow the reservations to be made. I could have tried, oh I don’t know, half a dozen other rental car places instead.

We left it that she would call me when she had a car come in and in the meantime I might try making other arrangements.

So on to Plan B. I figure if I can at least make it to the grocery store before 1:00pm it wouldn’t throw my schedule too far off. I go on line to a certain brightly hued cab company, who shall also remain nameless, and look to see if they service my little community. They do! They even have a handy fare calculator that indicates my fare will be $7 each way. Excellent since I have all of $20 on me. I figure with tip it would be $10 each way. So I called the cab company and confirm with the dispatcher that they do indeed service my town and arrange for a cab to come get me

Which does about 30 minutes later. I pop into the car with my little wicker shopping basket and give the driver directions to the grocery store two and half miles away. He’s halfway down the street when he turns to me and says "You know it’s a $25 minimum fare, don’t you?" I sputter for him to stop the car because "NO – no one mentioned that – in fact I thought it was going to be about $7 and I had exactly enough to get to the store and back home again." He seemed very put out by this (and is still driving me down the street) but says it’s the dispatcher’s fault. It ended up being way more than $7 anyway so I just gave him my $20 and told him it was all I had.

I did my grocery shopping, trying to keep my chin from quivering too much and walked the two and half miles back home with carrying 15 lbs. of groceries. I do wish I hadn’t picked today to wear my thin soled, pointy toe boots.

Since I had the time I did some reflecting on the walk. I’ve been mulling over what my new year’s goals are going to be. It’s been a trying few years, both personally and professionally and I feel like I’m in a constant state of battle with myself to have a positive outlook and to just have fun and not get too caught up in inevitable stresses and struggles. I’m afraid of becoming a dour old sourpuss if things continue as they are. And isn’t easy to just slip into that poor me mindset?

So my goal for 2007 is simple: Find joy.

Why just on my walk I saw a flock of geese just peacefully pecking in the grass, I saw the sun come out and a teeny little green snake warming itself and I met a new neighbor out tending her yard while the weather was being cooperative. I have a birthday cake in the oven and Belle is enjoying the last few days of the Christmas tree.

2007 is going to be a walk on the sunny side of the street.

Happy Boxing Day

So I don’t actually observe Boxing Day but this post is going to be about boxes nonetheless. Different type of boxing all together.

I spent the day being productive. I have a <ahem> few piles of paperwork that I was determined to see filed before the year’s end. So I lugged them all out and deposited them in the living room where I could spread out.

People, I was at it for *eight hours* and I’m still not done. I do have everything categorized and now sitting in neat little piles on the guest room bed (the filing cabinet is neatly tucked away in the guest room which is probably why I never file. Out of sight out of mind and all) waiting to be put in its final, appropriate spot.

The things that I already had folders for were promptly filed but I have a few new categories that I need labels for and, my big dilemma, others that need special storage boxes.

Do you know it is near impossible to find storage boxes for canceled checks? I went to Staples and to Office Max and neither had any. I must have opened about 500 bank statements today so I could put the statements in one pile and the canceled checks in another and toss the envelope. I’m seriously filing statements from 1995. This is the extent of my procrastination. I’ve moved twice since then. I just keep moving my piles from house to house.

Anyway – back to the storage box issue – I guess no one actually gets canceled checks anymore. I know I don’t – in fact I hardly even write checks. I guess I’ll go to Target and get some photo boxes. That should do the trick.

I did find some interesting things amongst all the flotsam and jetsam of paperwork. My old passport from 1974 (I bear a striking resemblance to Vincent Van Patten in that picture). Every driver’s license I’ve ever had except the first one. My old math notebook from 1970 when I was attending the German Embassy School in Ankara, Turkey. My word problems are all written out in my ten year old script in German. I have no idea what any of it means any more.

My sons are 20 and 21 now and I was filing away their report cards from elementary school. Each and every one of the oldest’s has some version of "very bright but needs to shut up and mind his own business when in class…"

Tons of photos in the piles too. A picture of me on a knee board on Lake Englebright looking tan and slim. Wonder where that version of me went. Filed away for sure.

I was rather dreading the chore but actually it was fun to look back at my life, at least the bits I deemed worthy to save.

Now I vow to keep on top of things. Even if I just file once a year it won’t be nearly the chore it was today.

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