On A Point in Time:

The planet turned, the seasons marched on by in succession, day followed night followed day, all long before time was counted by the second, minute, hour, day, month, year.

It is all arbitrary. No, not the cycles, but the counting. At some point sixth seconds made a minute and then sixth of those made an hour. Why not one hundred or thirty-five or something more random like forty-two. Some person out there at one point in time decided that twenty-four was a good division to the day and sixty for one of those hours.

There are three hundred-sixth-five days, five hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds in a cycle around the sun. All random and arbitrary numbers to count. And at any time an object in space or time could hit the earth and/or blow off a large enough portion of the planet to change that. One nudge and we are off our rotation or orbit by even a small amount and a new count and calculation has begun.

But that possibility aside why don’t we count the weeks? (Note the fact that it is missing from the list of counting tools in the first sentence.) There are fifty-two of them. We do it for travel. ‘On week five of our excursion we saw a…’ is noted in our travel journals. I want more notoriety for the lowly week. Who really cares if they don’t fit neatly into a year. Make an adjustment like we do for our days. A leap week. And why is a week seven days long?

Some one decided that a certain point in time was to be the start of a new rotation, the point where the, always moving, never ending, circle of time is noted to come around again. And this brings us up to New Years Eve.

It is upon us and doesn’t really change a thing. An excuse to celebrate. A time to look at our lives and accomplishments and take note. A time to cast off the old and put on the new. It is as good a point in time as any other. And it is here. So count on. Count those minutes of your life to collect and mean something. Count the weeks until we can do this again. But don’t wait for New Years Eve to count the blessings in your life. It is really only a point in time.

On Today I am Accomplished:

The days of this year are running out. I almost said down but they are moving far to fast for that analogy. Running down in my mind means a slowing, but these days seem to speed past.

I find myself thinking of plans. Plans for things to be strived for and for things strived for but not yet accomplished. There is of course the group of things that have seen an end. Done things. Finished things. Accomplished things.

There is a sense of satisfaction in this group of done things, but no longer or because of handing them on a daily bases there is a disconnect. A putting aside for more pressing matters.

Today I am taking time to look at the done group. Time to enjoy the accomplishment once again and to build a foundation toward accomplishments in the future.

Children revel in accomplishments. They tell everyone that they meet how they can count to ten, tie their shoes themselves, hop on one foot, or ride a bike. But somehow in the growth of self as we learn to stop telling everyone what we can do, so we are not perceived boastful, we stop enjoying the accomplishment in ourselves.

The older we get the more the jobs and projects in our lives tend to run on together in a never ending stream of forward movement. ‘One done, unnumbered others to go.’ Next. Moving onward and upward. No time to smell the small sweet buds of accomplishment roses in the garden of our lives.

Today it is not just ‘yet another load of laundry or dishes’ but an important puzzle piece in my life. Without it the picture can not be completed. I am not looking for holes to fill today. I am looking at the done works of my life. In them are the sum total of what I am. Not the high lights and celebrated moments of my life, nice as they are.

I am a group of little things swirled into a complicated group of matter and ideas. And I am accomplished.

On I Caught Him and the Horror of it All:

Although I am quite normal in a lot of things, and the scariest thing about me is my black lip stick and finger nail polish. I am in fact a fairly nice person. I try to spread kindness and share the love wherever I go. I smile and remember my manners. But I am not immune to troubles.

I am a carboholic. Once refined flour or sugar passes my lips all bets are off as to just how much food I can consume in a day. A switch is thrown in my head and I can’t stop eating. It’s not a good thing and a horror to look at.

I fell off the wagon yesterday and right into a binge of sugary sweetness. There is the added downside of uncontrolled hot flashes added to the mix. And it was all the Gingerbread Man’s fault.

‘Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man.’ He sat there taunting me. He knew my weakness and sang his little song over and over again in my head. He did this for days. How much can a woman take? I just had to bite his little head off to stop him from smiling up at me.

In the end I was reduced to, after raiding the refrigerator and eating a whole box of cookies, sitting on the floor in the pantry wrapped around a box of chocolate cake mix, eating it dry and adding sips of juice from the bottle to get it down. Horror! Undeniable, out of control horror.

I checked the ingredients and this man cookie was made without eggs. He was not made in a place that also processes nuts. He was said to be, at least for me, allergy free. But he did have those dreaded refined carbs not only made into his spicy soft form but he was dressed in refined sugary sweetness too.

Now I can have gingerbread if I make it from scratch myself and replace the ingredients that give me trouble. Honey for the sugar, substitute the eggs, whole wheat flour for refined, if I dress him in dried fruit like raisins. It is do-able if I only take the time to do it. But I didn’t. Instead I ate the store bought Gingerbread Man and I’m paying the price.

There will be weeks of exercise and calorie shaving in my future. And all because I took up the challenge of a gingerbread man.

Next time I’m running the other way.

On Do I Smell Pizza Cooking?:

Yes, I know that in this day and age what I’m talking about here seems strange, old fashioned and silly. But things and attitudes really were different back then.

Now back in the day, having food delivered was a luxury. You did a pick up if at all possible and you didn’t do that often. Food was made hot at home and you sat at the table for a family meal each and every night. And everyone you knew did it that way too. Oh, and soda was only for parties, the same with chips and dips. There just were no ‘First Night’ celebrations.

When I was a kid my parents often went out for New Years Eve with friends. We would have a sitter and my parents would have pizza delivered. Even when they did stay home we had pizza delivered. So growing up in my house, New Years Eve meant we were having a Pizza Party.

With eight people in the family, six of which were growing children, there was more then one pizza ordered and there were different toppings on each. There was a variety of sodas too. Chips and dips appeared. We always had a Dick Clark/Guy Lombardo on TV, home style Pizza Party for New Year Eve.

This was a new concept to Mountain Man when I married him. To him living the country life in the woods New Years Eve wasn’t a day but a moment in time. He waited for midnight and made a loud noise, mostly firecrackers or gun shots along with his neighbors, if they did anything at all, and then went to bed.

At my house noise was the end to the long pizza filled evening. Only we had an old school bell. (You know the hand held kind in the old movies where the teacher held it in her hand ringing it out the door when school was to start.) It was our, self appointed, job to ring that bell up and down the block for a full minute to ring in the new year. (One of the first things I bought when I moved from home was an old school bell of my own.)

Well Mountain Man and I married when my kids were in their early teens. They were Pizza Party and school bell enthusiasts too. But living out in the woods meant no pizza delivery. So since then I make fresh dough and we have had a ‘build your own pizza’ party with all the toppings chopped and readied as part of the fun.

So if you hear a fire cracker or bell on New Years Eve or smell pizza you know it’s us. What do you do for New Years Eve?

(Sorry for the poor pizza quality in the picture. I wasn’t making pizza at six in the morning just illustrate a point. So I cut a picture of pizza from an old box of frozen I had hanging around with craft stuff in it.)

On Lists:

This is a time of lists. The end of one year and the beginning of another. Top 10, 40, 50, 100 of things march on by on the news, TV or radio.

We list the things we want to do in the new year. Even the ones of us that don’t write them down or tell what our new years resolution are have them in our heads. We all have things we want to do and ‘lists’ are how we keep them all straight.

The trouble with lists is the tendency to compare. Longer or shorter, accomplished or not, do-able or unrealistic, we want to know how we stack up against others. Are the songs we like on the list of hits or not and what does that say about us? Is a favorite celebrity on the in’s or out’s with the press or public opinion and what side of the fence are we on about it? Lists do make us feel connected.

Even when we didn’t get the job done we feel we have at least tried when we can say it was on the ‘to do’ list.

A list helps us keep order in our lives, serves as a memory receptacle or a map. We would be lost without them. Never again would a recipe go right without the shopping list starting the process.

Whether or not they are written or mental these lists hold an important place in out lives. So we must give them our do. The end of the year is upon us. Make a list.

On My Best Xmas Ever:

I don’t do a traditional Christmas thing. I spend the day mostly alone and have my own little rituals. I light candles. I listen to classical music. I dress in black. I drink cranberry tea. Eat flavored popcorn and do a jigsaw puzzle. And I remember.

I remember good times and some not so good times that led to big life lessons. I remember my best Christmas ever.

This was in the nineteen sixty’s. I was about ten years old and already knew things about Santa and Reindeer and Elves. I was the oldest of six kids and was already helping my parents get that big job done. We always trimmed the tree on Christmas eve then the kids went to bed. I helped clean up, collect and wrapped presents and arrange things for the others before going to bed myself and letting my parents finish readying the rest of the things for Christmas morning. In this way I was still surprised in the morning but helped just the same.

We all got up early and lined up from youngest to oldest and trouped into the living room. There was a mad dash to the tree and stockings, wrapping paper flying, giggles and tears of joy. The regular Christmas craziness under the tree with six kids. Then things settled down as each kid played with their most treasured toy of the day. I got the name brand fashion doll and the Mouse Trap Game that I had asked for along with clothes. My doll had a problem and her head kept falling off and I had to wait until one or more of my siblings were ready to stop playing with their toys to play my game with me.

So until that happened I played with the younger ones, looking over at the box of my Mouse Trap game, lid off so I could see the pieces inside the plastic wrapped interior still kept all safe from harm until I could play with it properly. Play time was up and we dressed in our new Xmas present clothes for church and Grandma’s house. My new dress was miss tagged and it didn’t fit. I handed my new dress to my sister and dressed in my old best dress.

At grandma’s my present hadn’t arrived in the mail in time and I had to wait for another week for it. I watch as the others played and had fun. I knew a secret I still had my game to play with at home so I just dug in and enjoyed watching everyone else enjoy the day.

Mom and Dad sent the rest of the tired kids to bed early and took the time to play my ‘One’ good Christmas gift with me. I carefully opened the box on the table beaming with pride that my parents were spending time just with me. Something they rarely had the time to do with six kids under the age of eleven. We started to play making sure to followed every rule. Half way thru the game it was evident that we couldn’t finish because key parts were missing from the box. The mouse trap couldn’t be put together and run it’s Rube Goldberg contraption self to the end to trap the mice.

Not one of my Christmas presents panned out that year and I was more happy then I ever was when I had arms filled with goodies. The broken toys were later replaced. But I had a life lesson that was priceless. I experienced the joy of the others around me and it was enough.

On Small Fun Today:

First, Happy Christmas to everyone celebrating it today. I hope everyone is happy, healthy and safe today and everyday.

On to smaller things:















Now, Once upon a time, I was pleased with myself for making a little set of knitting needles for my doll house and knitting part of a scarf for them. I placed it on the rocking chair by their fire place, in the Doll’s house, years ago. Yes, I made the Doll and most of the stuff for them including the house. No, not the chair or cats.















The knitting needles are made out of tooth picks. The Dolls are 15 inches or 37 centimeters. That would be 1 /4 scale.

I show you this because I am steering you to a true artist in tiny knitting. With the movie Coraline coming out I have been all over cyber space looking at things involved in the making of the movie and I found Bugknits. The woman who made the knitted clothing for the puppets has a lot of other little knitted thing there.

Althea Crome is a true artist at her craft. And for those that are looking for something Christmassy there is a sweater there for you too.

Have a fun little time at bugknit and I’ll be back tomorrow.