kstreetjournal | A pony a day keeps the money away —

~ :: The Vagaries of Mortality ::~

Posted on April 1, 2013 by K

Sounds philosophical, huh? Well, that is not my frame of mind today. Today would be a tomato soup day, except I’m on protein shakes, trying to repent of too much culinary fun over the last few months. I don’t feel so much like I’ve been stuffed into a sock as I do the sock has been stuffed into ME. I defy it. Wait. This is beginning to sound like philosophy.

Just checking in. I’ve been engrossed (not a pun) in making something I will reveal in a few moments here. But first, a few windows into life in our corner of the planet. A few. That’s the April Fools part.

Actually, as usual, this is like three blogs at once. I have to do it this way. Really I do. First, I’m showing off my Valentine:

My Valentine took a sort of shot-gun approach, a scattering of personal symbols. In the center of the red plate, there was a lovely bit of pastry. I didn’t think of the camera till we’d pretty much eaten it.

A heart shaped box, but with extras – a couple of mints, a same box from another chocolatier.

And flowers, of course. Lovely ones.

I had told him how my father used to give me – every year – a very fancy, lacy (paper lace) Valentine’s card, something dripping with special. So MY Valentine drew me one. I took out the mushy message in the middle, but left the design so you could see. Actually, maybe I should get him a long-arm quilting machine. He’s got the concept. Wasn’t this cool?

Some days later, I finally finished painting poor Scooter’s Christmas stool.

And he finally got a pony, all of his own, made to order.

Here is the story of the next bit: in our little town, we had a gorgeous pioneer-aged church building we called The Tabernacle. It was used for – wow, one hundred and fifty years or so for large, multi-congregational meetings and community concerts. Beautiful, built by teams of engineers and craftsmen from all over the world. Every window had stained glass in it, and the woodwork inside was beautiful. A couple of years ago now, as I was on the treadmill one morning, G came in and told me that the Tabernacle had burned. There had been a concert the night before, and something in the wiring, after everyone had left, had sparked. When he told me, I stopped dead and burst into tears. It was like a friend had died.

We didn’t know what the church would do now. The building had been old, not earthquake safe. But it was not razed. Instead, it was to be repurposed – the walls preserved (many of the windows had made it through and were being rebuilt by friends or ours), the basic structure retrofitted. They decided to put a basement underneath it, and bought up properties on either side for parking places and grounds. When I saw a picture of what they were doing with this Old Man of a building, my eyes ’bout fell out. So I’m showing you – the miracles skilled people can pull off when they have to.

The place is fenced off, of course – rubber-necking idiots like me could fall right into that hole. So a lot of these shots were just me holding the camera high and hoping for the best. The building is at ground level. LOOK AT WHAT THEY DID TO HOLD IT UP as they dug away the earth.

A million stilts. HOW would you DO this? Bracing and cross bracing. But that used to be solid earth, compressed for a hundred years by the weight of that building.

See that step at the base of the door? That used to be just above the grass.

I just think this is wild. So not only do we get to keep an ancient landmark, we get to watch all this happen.

And THEN –

SPRING CAME. See the bee in the crocus?

And the fuzzy pussy buds on the aspens? We were delighted. That was two weekends ago. This was the sixteenth:

We woke up to a gray morning. Then a little snow started. This was about ten minutes after it had started.

I thought it’d last maybe twenty minutes. But the flakes got bigger. Then huge-r. Wonderfully fluffy. If it had been November, I’d have been delighted. As it was, I still couldn’t help being charmed.

The wolves like it.

For a few minutes. Now we’re maybe twenty minutes into the storm, lining up to go inside.

A really nice shot of Toby. He’s actually holding still.

Since we kept mistaking the dogs for sheep, we did not let them in. They started a very strange, almost ritual-like behavior. They put their noses down to the wood of the deck and started pushing their noses along, eating the snow as they walked, leaving strange groove-like trails in the snow, building little snowballs over their noses.

Like they were moles, digging.

Half an hour after we woke up, and still falling.

Irony.

Kind of a set-back. But this time of year, it won’t last long. All several inches that fell that day were gone in a few hours, the second the front had passed. So that was last Saturday. This Saturday? I shot the header. And I had more to put up. So I’ll do – ANOTHER POST.

Posted in dogs, holidays, Pics of Made Things, Seasons, snow | Tagged construction, dogs, pony, Scooter, snow, softie, spring flowers, stool, tabernacle, Valentine's | 17 Comments

~:: How Dogs Deal With Seasonal Distress ::~

Posted on March 14, 2013 by K

Okay – this is my farewell to winter. I shot this sequence just a few weeks ago, really. A few days later, the horses started to shed. Now, they are molting and the air at the barn is full of flying horse hair instead of sparkling crystal. There is a price for everything.

There is absolutely no philosophy in what follows – only a day when I tried to capture what you try to capture with your little children who keep changing, except with dogs.

You see how gray-and-white-locked we were for months and months. Here is how Toby beats it: (this is actually a slow movie, sort of)

Here he comes –

And back again.

Then – here he comes –

And — BACK AGAIN —

At this point, you see the man who is egging him on –

A leap off the deck

A little back talk –

then – screeeeetchhhhhhhh – the brakes go on, because –

his brother wants to come out and play, too.

I wonder if there’s ANYTHING I actually throw myself into this way?

And if I did, would I ever get my breath back?

Posted in dogs, Family, Fun Stuff, HappyHappyHappy, Seasons, snow, The outside world | Tagged dogs, joy, running, snow | 31 Comments

~:: Inversion pt 3 – and the punchline ::~

Posted on February 20, 2013 by K

Okay, so I’m making my way through all this by making a story out of it. What a surprise.

Several weeks ago, on our way to church one very foggy morning, we came out the front door and found these stars utterly feathered with hoar frost. By the time we got home, all the charm had melted. I’ve been watching for the same thing to happen, but it hasn’t – till this particular morning, when we got a severely truncated version, which I show you here.

If you look at the very bottom of the bottom star, you’ll see a string of hoar frost clinging to the points.

Early morning after a good fogging: even the air is tinged with frost, blue with cold.

I meet the sun as I go out to the car on the way to the barn—the light just beginning to pour over the lip of the mountains’ ridge. Pine tree light from behind.

This is what was coating the stars, every edge of them, furry with these feathers of ice.

All the trees are made ghostly with it. Here, you see the honey-gold of mountain morning warming the buildings next door to us.

This is the infamous trough, covered still with ice. What is difficult to see is that steam is rising from the ice – if you know how to see it, it’s there, ephemeral and against all sense—that this tiny bit of sun could already have turned the surface of the ice into vapor, a sort of languid cauldron—water frozen but still warmer than the air around it.

And the air is suddenly full of diamonds. Wherever I look – fairy dust, for want of any other explanation. I can only see the stuff when the sun was behind it—but the glitter is everywhere, and I know I am breathing it in with every breath. Another little insight into how our ideas about magic began. Another little detail someone, when this whole system was designed, got a kick out of inventing.

I keep trying to get a decent picture of it. Again, ephemeral. But you can sorta see it, can’t you? All those tiny bits of jewels flashing against the snow?

One more try. Prosaic background for such a shower of light.

I open the barn door, surprising a family of cheeky house sparrows who have decided to winter with me.

When I hauled my camera along this morning, I never thought I’d catch this.

Horses are all lightly frosted, every hair delicately coated.

Why this doesn’t bother them, I don’t know. What I didn’t think to shoot was the tips of their ears – perfect little triangles of dark fuzz lined with frost.

On the way home. My timing couldn’t be better; another fifteen minutes and all this will fade to a dogged gray-and-brown.

Lynn’s house.

Our fish.

Not stipple-backed but frost finned.

And back home again. This moment of brilliant blue and white: brought to you by Those Who Wait on Spring –

Okay, so I put this together last night and forgot the most important part: the punchline. I wanted to write about this show I sometimes watch when I’m on the treadmill – Undercover Boss. It’s one of those not-so-expensive-to-shoot reality things that puts the CEO of some company (most of which are service oriented companies you’ve heard of) in disguise and out in the field, pretending to be a ground-level worker. You get to watch the CEO struggling to do the jobs his minimum wage workers do every day – one part of the job in, say, Miami, another part of the job in another town.

On the way, the CEO meets the people he depends on but has no personal experience with – most of the people on the corporate payroll. Sometimes he is angry at the lousy work, but most often, he finds people who are real and trying to make ends meet – who do hard things for little money and have families they love.

The payoff for watching all this is the end, when the CEO is revealed as his or her real self, and in a new appreciation of his own blessed and rare state of power and resource, tries to make up to the workers for the tough conditions of their lives. Often, this is a gift of money – or education – he can pay for the entire tuition for a young person without batting an eye, or fix something that is the grossest of challenges someone is facing, just by throwing money at it – money that is small change to him, but deliverance to the receiver.

There are lots of things to be said here – it’s a complex situation, and doesn’t always turn out to have been the wisest way to handle things. But always, at the end, I find myself wishing that I were the boss – that I had the power to deliver and to fix. The last time I watched it – weeks ago – I was once again yearning to be that person, when suddenly, the whole thing turned over in my head, and instead I had this minor epiphany: I saw myself as the person is in the middle of circumstances that are, in many ways, far out of my ability to deal with, to control, to deliver myself from. And realized how much deliverance I have been given, over and over – starting with the gift of my life, from God, from my parents, and the atonement of Christ, and coming down to the tiniest relief given by a stranger – but mostly, by the love of the people who are my family, both by blood and by choice.

It was just a funny moment of clear sight. Overwhelming sight.

And that is the good side of inversion.

Posted in Seasons, snow, The outside world | Tagged fog, Frost, hoar frost, Horses, magic, trees | 32 Comments

~:: Inversion pt. 2 ::~

Posted on February 16, 2013 by K

This is my brother. He’s a great guy. But once in a while, he’s an idiot. He doesn’t ever read this, so he won’t know he should be offended. About this, anyway.

Okay, so it’s the first day that’s really after the holidays, and G goes off to work in the studio, and I get to start out my new life in the new year. I sit down with my first hot breakfast in normal life, but the phone rings. Honestly, the eggs are, like, half way to my mouth, and the bacon smells – (I close my eyes) – like bacon.

But I answer the phone, and it’s my brother. Who says to me, “How far are you from the Marina?”

I blink. What kind of an opening gambit is that? Bit I remember there’s that boat place down at the lake. So I tell him, sounding puzzled, “Two miles?” The upshot is this: he and his buddy have just ridden bicycles across the wide, dangerous lake that sits in the bottom of this valley bowl. Miles of lake – between his house and mine.

I immediately remember the story Guy’s grandfather told me about how he and his buddy tried that stunt on ice skates – and how his buddy had hit a hole, slipped through it and was frozen to death under the ice in seconds. That lake is no joke. And just as Mike and Dan, naive little bikers, got safely close to our shore, Mike’s bike chain broke. Which meant that they couldn’t turn around and make the made ride back across. Which may have been divine intervention. Mike later posted video of the two of them, evidently biking across a wild tundra – and posted it on Facebook. To which I added the caveat: Do NOT try this EVER.

“It’s all right,” my brother says to me. “We were on snow bikes.” Which meant nothing to me until I had driven down to said marina in our tiny truck that would be better on these roads at this time of year if we replaced the tires with blades. I had to collect them, bring them home and call Mike’s wife to come get them. Two huge, freezing men shoved into that tiny cabin with me as I tried to shift gears. But we were safer in the tiny truck for all that extra weight.

These are the very bikes. Brand name: Surly. Yep. Took one look at those bikes and felt much better; I mean really, a bike that can double as a flotation device?

Part of the fun this winter: keeping the water system at the barn alive. Horses have to drink about twenty-two gallons of water a day. Especially important as we have to keep all that chewed-up hay from turning into a cork right in the middle of the equine digestive system. Normally, this is simply a matter of turning on the faucet. And, in the winter, draining it every time we use it so that the pipes don’t freeze. Which we evidently forgot to do one day a coupla weeks ago.

Once there is ice in the pipe, unless you get a warm enough day, you’re cooked. YOU try hauling eighty-eight gallons of water in two-gallon buckets on a day where the high temp is eleven degrees. On top of that, somebody – some four footed person with a two foot long nose – stuck it into the frozen-solid pipe assembly, snapping it right off. Big Trouble in Horseland.

But brilliant Guy to the rescue. He digs up a dead hose and turns it into a whole new system! You see the hose in the shot up there.

Only trouble is, to drain it, we have to use a quick release connection, take the hose off, and let the extra water shoot across the middle of the barn. The quick release has to be unfrozen every single morning – with – a hair dryer – before we can connect up the hose. Still – beats the bucket brigade. YAY!

G, hauling out the holiday recycling. You see that red sun setting back there? That’s the light, filtered through the inversion-poisoned air.

This is the pile of ice I have made, taking a shovel to the horse trough each morning. I have to break the ice, then I lift out the chunks with a hay rake and toss them over the gate onto the snow. We call that: a workout.

See how thick it gets? And the pile grows and grows till you can’t open the gate. And THIS was the metaphor I meant to write about when I took these pictures. Most winters, we go through a period of time when the pile gets about this big. But it only takes one chilly (rather than freezing), sunny day to reduce that literal ton of ice into nothing. Nothing at all. Gone.

That’s a little how I feel today. Like winter has lifted a bit. Like spring actually might come back. Maybe not soon. But still – all this gray that’s been piling up on so many levels – all it takes is a little warmth, good sense and color to put most things right again in a jiff.

A couple of weeks ago, I got up, went out to the car on my way to throw hay for the guys. I actually thought the windshield was wet – it had been raining half-heartedly for about half an hour. But this turned out to be a freezing rain, and the windshield was totally encased in ice.

By the time I got home, the driveway and the street were total ice rinks. My boots had no traction. Neither did my shoes. Going out to get a package from UPS – across the front deck, the stepping stones across the yard – it was insane. I got as far as the little slope the driveway makes to the street – and slid down to the UPS truck like I was surfing.

This snow is actually weeks old. It was so cold, the snow never got to looking old and dirty.

This was just as the weather tried to break – it warmed up to about 33 degrees and the snow started to look strained.

Inside the house is another story. Gray at the windows, but pretty rosy inside. The tree is un-decorated, but still keeps our spirits up, with all it’s tiny bright bits of color.

This is what we see out the windows – most mornings, then again in the evening. Fog is one thing – but this is lake effect moisture mixed with smog.

A better exposure. Like living in London, it was.

A couple of mornings, when the wind got the gumption to blow a bit and the sun broke through at dawn, we looked out our window and saw this lovely rosiness rise on the wooden wall.

I made one of these. I made up about a dozen ponies over the weeks, then tried this guy. Mostly, I am still doing genealogical research and doing a couple of family history books – Mom’s and another. I can’t stick to anything. Just kind of wander from one question to another.

Even so, it’s still beautiful out there. I think the planet is having just as hard a time figuring out what should happen next in the story as I am.

Posted in Horses, Just talk, Pics of Made Things, snow, The outside world | Tagged fog, ice, Pasture, smog, snow, water lines | 35 Comments

~:: Inversion ::~

Posted on February 15, 2013 by K

A day late, and in this economy – lucky to be a dollar short. But here is my traditional Valentine’s greeting, to all who have been kind and patient with me – my dear friends, my lovely valentines!

Finally: the post I started five and a half weeks ago: (First line was: I am writing a blog today. Line edited out as ineffective.) And a disclaimer: I turned a corner day before yesterday. I sodon’t wanna be that person who is defeated by some seasonal dip in my chemistry. I am heartened that I started to perk up before the sky turned blue (as it has today, even though it’s cold as iced under-drawers. And I had the Valentine of all Valentines yesterday – but that was AFTER I’d already shaken it off. I think maybe remembering to take my vitamins after eating a pound of dark choc all during the holidays (took me several weeks) might have helped.

The problem: we live in a high mountain valley. Evidently a deep valley. Like a bowl. And we’re situated in this conflux of high and low pressure zones that get funneled around through all these mountain ranges around here. Evidently, were we sit turns into a dead zone every so often. High pressure stalls out over us and nests, like a heavy hen over all us egg-heads. And it holds in the freezing cold, and engine emissions and sneezes and sighs and steam and the air gets very thick. Something like the L.A. smog sometimes. Then everything is dingy gray and still and very, very cold. And we don’t see the sun. And breathing gets dodgy.

Finally, a storm comes in off the ocean, sweeps across the northwest, whisks away the stagnant air and—voila—we are once again brilliant. But it can take weeks for that to happen. This has been one of our worst years.

Anyway, this is a lot of writing, but also a lot of pictures. So you can sample both, or only one or whatever. If anybody’s still out there. Are you? YOO-HOO!!!

THE POST

I’m all messed up.

I started doing genealogy again, just puttering. Maybe it started with going through the boxes and sacks of papers Dad has been sending home with me the past couple of years – and finding things in them that should have gone into his book, which has long been finished. And I started up again on Mom’s life story, long overdue. Plus, they “relieved” me (read: fired—from teaching my 13 year olds in Sunday School which did NOT make me happy) so I could to start teaching the Family History class at church. Whatever it was, the Spirit of Elijah, once invited in, has grabbed my face and turned it and my heart to the fathers – but in this totally chaotic and helpless and really pretty head-rocking way.

If everybody on the planet had just stayed Catholic, all this family history stuff would be SO much easier. Protestants reek at keeping good notes. And so do counties.

After all this was over

the snow that was so tame and pleasant and Christmas-card like didn’t get the memo.

And suddenly, there we were, huddled together in the gray, freezing, endless foggy dreariness.

I started to write a blog three weeks ago and it got as far as “I’m writing a blog post,” and went splat on the floor.

It was probably stupid for me to re-enter that family history site again. I always say bad words when I mess with that thing. But they’ve redone it, and – well – I’ve now got that class to teach – so I ventured into the land of name-and-date chaos, only to find out that the new set-up isn’t half bad. It still has all the misinformation and mixed up families, but it gives me the power to wade in, delete what doesn’t match up with the records and research I’ve done for decades – connecting people in the right family trees, people who I suspect never even knew each other until some fifth generation cousin got the wind up her skirt and connected her guy to some Mary Smith just because he name sounded almost right.

So night after night, sometimes till midnight and beyond, I’ve been sitting here, mercilessly nuking wrong husbands and merging almost right ones. It is power, and I am mad with it.

The nice thing is that now my family tree doesn’t look so hairy. The bad thing is that it’s like skeet-shooting mosquitoes at dusk in a marshland.

It’s supposed to snow again tonight.

There are so many things I have to do—going through mounds of put-aside paperwork for relevance. Organizing it. Paying the bills. Putting together the tax numbers. Making up the last twelve or so ponies I have fabric for (Scooter reminded me that HE doesn’t have one yet), posting the book reviews I passionately wrote up through December and the first of January, making fabric pumpkins, learning something – anything. None of which will bring a cent into the family coffers or address the issue of blooming-mud-on-eight frantic-and-joyful-paws.

Then Julie the Angel Dog had to be put down today (weeks ago), and now I’m a sopping mess with a headache and stuffed up face.

After we put her down, we found out that Levi, eight miles away at school and completely not aware of what we are doing—suddenly went haywire at that exact same moment—seizure and agitation and incoherence, and misery—while mother is kissing the Angel Dog good-bye. I tell Guy about this and he shrugs: “They were connected,” he says. This comes from a man who is practical and pragmatic. We do not know half what we think we know about What’s Really Going On Here. I am caught between the wonder of it and the sadness.

I am so heavy limbed, I could sleep for a flipping week.

This is why I keep the Christmas lights up. Heavy as a January night can be, you need a little bit of surreality to keep you from involuntary hibernation.

The Christmas tree is still up. But that may be because it has been devilish cold and dreary here, and eating chocolate hasn’t helped half as much as turning the little colored lights on against the still freezing dark. The outside lights gave up the ghost in the last bout of freezing rain, and I haven’t had the heart to talk them back into life. Feeding the horses has been quite enough hoar-frost-in-the-hair for me, thank you very much.

How come Christianity doesn’t have some attendant sort of zen practice? Like Tai chi. How come my religion doesn’t come with something like that? What would the equivalent of “yoga” be in Hebrew, I wonder?

And I need another tall bookcase. Very, very badly.

At least, with the mad making of ponies, the craft table is cleaner.

Have I ever mentioned what a rare gift it is to have an intelligent, thoughtful, strong married daughter? Especially when your mom’s phone line is pretty much busy for all eternity. I always tell you how strange it is to have the children leave – but I haven’t said much about how great it is to have them grow wiser and stronger and finally understand why I yelled at them so much when they were little. Advice from children who know more than you do about things. Important things. Like nutrition and computer code.

Such a great many wonderful things to do. But sometimes, there are so many, I have no idea what to pick up first. So I don’t pick anything up. Like a ball in a pin-ball machine, careening from almost-starting-this to amost-starting-that, and I am beginning to fear that I will never have enough peace in my head to give form to this book that keeps pushing against the inside of my skull. I can’t write about anything. So much that’s important, and it’s like I’m too tired to sit down and freeze it into language. Or images. I don’t even what to mess with Photoshop. Picture this ameba-like mass made out of dark green jello lying on my floor, once in a while flailing its flagella around – that’s me.

Of course, I’m writing at this very minute, here – and using lots and lots of words quite easily to say pretty much nothing at all, so I’m still capable. I want to write about The Undercover Boss thing I thought about. And—there was another moment of brilliance. But I can’t hold on to any one for long, because all these other things keep crowding in line till nothing is brilliant or even remembered. This is really bad. It’s a foggy inside my whole self as it is outside.

I keep chewing gum. Because I really want cookies. Lots of them. All kinds. Homemade. With milk. Or just chocolate. A whole Trader Joe’s dark with almonds, I could eat. RIGHT NOW. Or a gallon of hot chocolate with peppermint in it. Sipped slowly for three hours. Bottomless and still just hot enough. I keep wanting to make tiny presents for people. But I am too tired. I SO love Valentine’s day. Real Valentines with lacy paper and little fussy details. But it’s going to snow tomorrow. And how that relates I have no idea.

Reading novels: self-medication.

Is this whining?

I wonder, if I were living where Linda Dawkins lives, or Jenny – would I be feeling this way? If it were summer, moving toward Autumn? Or is this just cabin fever, do you think?

And Chaz asks me seriously, “Is it just me? Or wasn’t there a time once when everything seemed just regular, just day-to-day without all this drama and trouble it seems like we’ve been going through for years? There was, wasn’t there? Or is it just that I’m older now. And I’m more aware.” Grown up. Responsible for the state of the world. Yeah.

I wonder that too.

Posted in dogs, dumb stuff, holidays, Light, Making Things, Seasons, snow, The g-kids, The kids, whining | Tagged Christmas lights, dogs, fog, ice, sledding, smog, snow, Valentine | 29 Comments

~:: The Ornament Bash ::~

Posted on January 7, 2013 by K

Here it is: an account of one raucous night in the company of greedy pirates and unprincipled chess players.

‘Twas two weeks before Christmas, and all through the place.

All the children were scrambling, with wire and with lace . . .

The table was set by this beautiful child

to serve crazy people, a party gone wild –

Okay. Not going any further with that. The first image up there is a grouping of things my father has given me. He made the wooden mosaic pictures, and the lovely hurricane lantern. And the Mandolin was made in Chicago for his aunt, maybe one hundred years ago. It makes a warm tableau, oui? As for the rest, Murphy and Laura truly are scrambling to finish their ornaments at my chaotic studio table. Chaz always sets the table beautifully. And the house is lit up. Easy to see the diff between led and incandescent.

Just a flick of the wrist, and it all becomes ever so much more interesting.

And just a touch more flick, you get flame.

The photographer. I have a disclaimer before we start: A) we were working with a new camera, my new Nikon 7000; we’d never used it before. And we kept messing with the settings. B) It seems that our new room is the worst place for photography on the planet. Add to that the fact that the tree is glowing with extra yellow and orange lights and the windows with very cool blues and purples. And we had the main lights, which are a mix of all temps. So we have some good shots – some that I’ve been radical with, and some that are just so warm, I want to throw water on them to cool them down. But at least you can see the treasure.

Some of these friends, we only see once a year. Like Phil and Rosemary – who used to live down the street – he was Bishop of the ward, too. We saw them all the time. The first experience the kids had with horses was watching Phil trim his beautiful horse’s hooves in his carport one day.

The feast is always huge and festive – wonderful things of all kinds, sweet and savory.

This is actually what all the shots should look like. It was this kind of lighting – enough to see by, but set so that the Christmas lights were still bright.

Laura brought this cheeseball – shaped like an ornament with a hook. Clever!

The lovely Chaz and Melissa, the costumer.

Dick. He looks so dignified and quiet, doesn’t he? Biggest pirate of all.

Okay – here – well, I asked them how many people had brought something for the game, and then I tried to count them. Tried. They got testy after five minutes – but the pictures of them waving their hands are the best we got of them that evening.

Here’s how it works: I count how many are playing (which is mostly everybody), and I’ve made up these little numbered squares –

Then I walk around with a little reed basket and you reach in and snag your number.

Then you may grit your teeth or rejoice, depending on our strategy.

Or you can stick it in your eye.

Then down come the presents. The designated butlers (Chelsea and Brady this year), have taken the wrapped ornaments from the guests as they came through the door – taken them and hidden them upstairs where Dick cannot find them and sabotage the game. Later, trusted friends and butlers help me bring them down. We pile them on the big ottoman.

Then I explain the rules. Every year. This is important because it gives everyone a chance to make fun of me. Which they enjoy very much. There are no pictures this year meant to make me look like a pedantic tyrant, which – of course – I am not.

Just this one of Marvin kibitzing.

Then it’s just a question of number one, choosing the first gift – in front of all of us. A grueling moment that is, not the least for the maker of the first ornament to be opened.

The Ornaments

This one is not for playing. This is the gift my beautiful Jenni sent me from Australia. Maybe she wanted me to play it. Too bad. I didn’t.

This one has a story. It’s a perfect replica of the ornament that started this thirty three year old tradition. My parents had started a little party like this when he was in the bishopric, and one of the people had brought the real version of this ornament to that party. When I went home for Christmas that year, I saw it on the tree and fell utterly in love. So this year, Chaz and I replicated it and I threw it into the mix.

Chaz’ tree.

Guy’s tree. Deer hair.

My fat silky bird, with beads.

My fancy donkey – ready to rest near the manger.

Debbie’s owl mobile. I should have adjusted the temp, darn it. Looks yellow. But look at the detail. Chelsea had a heart attack.

Tracy’s dragon. Ever so fitting, considering he writes books about these things in dungeons.

Jeannie and Dave’s red morovian glass star.

And their beautiful yellow star.

Ginger’s beaded fir twig. The beads came from Venice – in her suitcase.

Tricia’s little gnome. There were two of these. Ummm. Yeah. Mark must have made one.

Gordon and Lynn’s sparkling joy! Two of these also. Ummm. Gordon must have made one. (Am I not good at giving the benefit of a doubt?)

Johanne’s bright star.

And this was Dick’s offering this year. It’s actually pretty cool, this vintage looking giant world of an ornament. ‘Course, you’d need a fifty foot tree for it. But this is benign next to some of the years’ Dick-surprises.

Marvin liked it.

Steve’s rosewood angel fish. Except I think it’s a dove.

Cam brought a toy robot and –

a robot ornament. This is Essential Cammon and I loved it. But I don’t have one.

Marilyn’s VERY FIRST ornament ever (for the party) and she made it up as she went along. A penguin with a penguin egg – that turns into –

a penguin with a BABY penguin. Nothing tame ever comes out of THIS house.

Rosemary’s teeny embroidered star.

Dick, opening something. The rapscallion.

Now wait a flipping minute here. This is supposed to be Phil’s. This is NOT made by Phil. There’s no leather involved. No braiding and no bell. He got Rosemary to do his ornament for him. What ever happened to “cowboy up?”

Chelsea’s hand painted cardinal.

Melanie’s felt bird feast. Yeah, I wanted this one. Teeny-weeny birds.

Marvin did a duct tape Celtic star. But he didn’t leave it at that –

He threw in the traditional Marvin’s little blue whale. Somewhere in the world there are about thirty three of these guys – and thirty three families of children who think that whales are a natural part of the festivities.

Laura’s pretty little antebellum Christmas lady – or Mrs. Santa?

Rachel. She will tell you that this is another frantic Santa, and she’ll laugh with this little edge of hysteria. I love these things.

Bob’s peppermint lighthouse whistle. And yes, it makes a great sound when you blow it. We know because everybody had to have a go.

Steve P’s snowman. He says his own children were scared of it. The eyes were too scary.

Melissa’s hand beaded star.

Lind, who is a whimsical carver, has done so many great Santas. I don’t remember who got this one. Or how many people they had to beat up.

Brian made this guy. But I never did get to see what was inside. It’s hollow, and I know there’s a little room in there with a person and a decorated tree. If I weren’t sitting there shooting each of these things, I’d get to hold them myself.

Oh. So I keep forgetting to go down and make Meridee teach me to do this. This owl is SO COOL. I saw it in Mollie Makes. But I haven’t tried it yet. I’m scared. Chelsea had another heart attack over this one.

So Sam’s first time, too. He and Marilyn. Yeah. Should have made them come decades ago. But then, they’d have been babies instead of having them. Sam got a woodburner just before Christmas. And picked it up pretty fast, I’d say.

It doesn’t hurt that he’s a brilliant artist, either.

Okay. Now the Brands did these two folded stars. I don’t know if they each did one, or if one did two. But I’m looking at all these angles and layers, and these things frighten me – I mean, how could a person ever make something like this? Origami on steroids.

Murphy and Laura went with a “light” theme this year. M made this snake. If you look close, you’ll see he made it out of small Christmas lights – and the head has eyes and a tongue.

And Laura made this bouquet of bulbs, ribbon and wire – which would actually be super cool for a December wedding.

I’m guessing this was you, Gaye – right? Because you didn’t write it down, did you? Uh-huh. I love these little birds. You could make some more, couldn’t you? I mean, just a couple?

And finally – this is Terri’s traditional impossibly tiny petite-point. I can’t even see it without my reading glasses. In thirty three years, I’ve only won one of these. But not this one.

Now – is this all? Am I missing anything? Somebody tell me if I’ve missed anything.

One fine passel of long-time beloved friends. This is our true Christmas card – only missing Ginna, the Beuhners and a few others. Our idea of a wild party. And don’t we love it!

Posted in Christmas, Events, Family, friends, Fun Stuff, HappyHappyHappy, holidays, Making Things, photo games, The kids | Tagged food, friends, fun, ornaments, party | 39 Comments

~:: Doing Things ::~

Posted on January 6, 2013 by K

As I think about this past strange year (wondering if all years seem strange as you leave them and shoot out the other side), I realize that I have done something really unusual: I’ve actually checked off a giant number of things I Have Always Wanted to Do. The last time I did this was just before Gin got married, the year before the nest, which was already shredding a bit, really started coming apart in chunks. Those were big dreams I checked off: taking the family to Paris and to Disney World among them. Last chance on those things, miraculously grabbed before they passed me forever.

This is unusual because I hardly ever actually get around to doing anything. Ever. No, that’s inaccurate. What I do is, I get an idea, buy all the raw materials (enough to do dozens), then never do anything with any of it. Good in theory: when the urge hits, you’re prepared; you ready to act. Unless something else – anything else – gets in the way.

List of things: 1) Just go ahead and publish all my own books. Couldn’t be harder or more heart breaking than submitting them to publishers – or now, agents – a soul-sucking hobby if ever there was one. 2) Drafting a pattern for stuffed horses. 3) Designing burned and painted pieces of furniture. 4) Working with gourds – burning and painting. 5) Just madly stitching up crazy dresses for Andy. 5) Putting my Parents’ and Sibs’ life history into a hardbound book. 6) Doing the hardbound book of my mother’s life and ancestors. 6) Making silky little stuffed bird ornaments. 7) Going to Zuni. 8) Reproduce Ginger’s sparkly star. 9) Paint the bathroom wall a joyful green. 10) Make Raven’s Haven’s crazy black Halloween cat. 11) Organize the whole house, going through every drawer and closet and cupboard and dealing with the things I always leave in place because a) I don’t know what to do with them b) they’ve become dear simply because they’ve always been there c) I can’t make up my mind to throw them away. 12) Make the gourd bells. 13)Take a real Parelli course with the horses.

I don’t know what it is that pushes a person over the edge of meaning-to-do-something into doing it. How many things do you have on your list? Why aren’t you doing them? Tell me, and maybe I’ll figure out why I haven’t. And in the process, figure out why, suddenly and relentlessly, I suddenly did do them. Some of them. When you see a gorgeous sunset, when it stops you in your tracks to stare and wonder – what mechanism is it that says, “You’ve seen enough. You can go now -“? What makes us suddenly have had enough of something? Or decide to pursue something? It’s a puzzle to me.

So this is what I ended up doing – and I say this helplessly, not with any pride or sense of accomplishment, really – and maybe I’m writing this so I’ll finally understand that I am NOT as useless as I believe myself to be:

1) I scanned the remaining 1500 pages of family photo albums—preserving maybe the last fifteen years of our history with the kids. It took six weeks to do all that. Then I set up two of the hardback books that will contain some of those pages – the yearly Christmas gift everyone pretends not to expect. Then I color corrected the photographs. Let’s see – how many of those? Average of four point something pictures per page? Over 6000 pictures. And I loved doing it. LOVE messing with Photoshop. But as I did these, I couldn’t help but think how much better I am at it now than I was three years ago when I started – and how I should go back and fix those first coupla books I’d already given the kids. Anyway, that took through August.

2)Almost at the same time, I had to figure out inDesign again – and boy, had I forgotten everything about using it. In fact, for the first half hour, I sat in front of the computer screen, trying to figure out how to start a new document, weeping in frustration. I finally figured out the basics. And then I bought a membership in Lynda.com to learn the tricks to using that program, and then the Photoshop tricks, stuff you don’t learn by stumbling on it. And started watching Lynda every time I sat down to eat

3) But before that, I had to read every one of my manuscripts and out-of-print books, edit them myself, find patient friends who are smarter than I am to copy edit (you will be blessed in my heart forever, you darling, long-suffering, precious ones). Then take the stuff out of the word processor (and some of the older manuscripts I literally dug out of the computer memory with a spoon) so I could into them into InDesign. Then reformat every one of them – and there were – how many – four? Set up styles for paragraphs and characters and chapters. Then learn how the inDesign file had to be configured for publishing in three different ebook file formats – then for the paperback publisher and the hardback publisher. And get the Library of Congress numbers and the copyrights and ISBNs and the rest of it.

4) Then I had to figure out how to let people know the books are there – merchandize or whatever, which I still haven’t figured out, and which I have pretty much given up on. I set up a Facebook author page. Redid my old website, consolidating two of them, actually – redesigning pages and restructuring content. But then, maybe I just did all this because I needed to have the books in my own hands? An awful lot of hours of brain-breaking thinking just for a couple of books to put on the shelf.

5) I stripped and painted the bathroom wall. After all that waiting and meaning to do it, I chose a color and just did it. SO much easier to do it than to see it undone for the last three years and MEAN to do it.

6) After that, or maybe during – no. During. I made the seventeen camels, one at a time every evening through June. Dressed them in October. Didn’t realize till then that I really had needed to make something more like thirty eight of them.

7) Set up and published a small hardback volume of pictures of Mom when she was young for Dad – on mother’s day, I think. I do the family publishing through blurb.com

8) Finally figured out the wood burner I bought two years ago. Cleaned up the poor little unfinished stool that has been kicking around our house since Chaz was tiny, drew on it with a pencil – and then burned in the lines and painted the shapes and varnished the whole thing till you could drive a steamroller over it without scratching it. Later did three more stools for grandchild presents.

9) Did two tiny gourds, burned and painted festively – and turned them into Christmas ornaments.

10) Drew what I fondly thought would be a good pattern for a stuffed horse. Made it in muslin. Drew it again. Made it again. And drew it again and again and again – eight models before I had it. Then I made ponies. WOO-HOO. That only took a couple of weeks, the making of the pattern, I mean. Now I can make ponies whenever I want. Which is good, because I’d gathered enough fabric to last years.

11) Drew a pattern for birds. Made 2 silky birds. YAY!!! Even invented a new tail (new to me).

12) Inspired by Donna, who flew out here to play with Rachel and me and who taught us to make baskets and deer and work with reeds, I decided to make 40 reed deer, a couple a night through the autumn. Didn’t take long to finish that many. Wasn’t hard. I have watched more TV this year than I have in my entire life. And considering how lousy most TV is, it was hard going to dig up enough stuff to last through all the camels and deer and lions and donkeys and foxes I did at night. But I should have made 60 deer.

13) Took the mountain of almost-right glitter, and almost-right yarn and almost-right wooden star blanks and tried to replicate Ginger’s star. Didn’t ever do it, but ended up with about ten almost guys that sparkle pretty well and shed glitter and micro-beads over everything.

14) Made the black cat. It was SO easy. So quick. So fun to make. After sitting there, looking at that pattern on line for years, then finally buying it and having it on the studio table for another year – simple. So I made a few of em. Chaz is so greedy. I can’t show her or Chelsea anything.

15) I also woodburned some wooden easter eggs and a picture frame – those were the first experiments. And I still like them. So they count.

16) Then I made Andy a dress. It wasn’t what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do was a wild, crazy combination of fabrics with a full skirt – just on the fly. But it was a beginning. And I drafted the pattern myself, borrowing from other dresses and pieces of patterns I dug out of the garage loft storage from the old days when I used to make clothes.

17. We went to Zuni on the way home from being with Gin. Went there, met artists, saw the black mountain, slept at the Inn. WE DID IT. And it was wonderful because of Jocelyn and Les.

And I think that’s all. But the thing about all this is: the check marks. Amazing check marks. Box:check. Box:check. Box: check. I went back through this little Steno notebook where I keep lists of “DO NOT FORGET that you want to/have to/should do this” things. It is the newest in a long line of these notebooks, and yet the first list in it is dated November 2005. And as I went through the lists, I checked of boxes that had been gaping reproachfully for years and years.

So why? Why 2012? Do NOT say, “Oh, my gosh – she’s tying up loose ends. SHE’S GONNA DIE.; somehow, mystically, she knows it.” Because I better not be dying any time soon. I have too many animals to worry over yet, and kids to sew for, and books to write (maybe) and that mountain of raw materials to make up. Still, the fact that I actually DID some of these things astounds and exhausts me.

My hope for this year?

Peace. Peace and love – and just enough doing to be fun.

I’ll put that on the list.

I just wonder. Was last year kind of weird for you?

Posted in Journeys, Just talk, Memories and Ruminations | Tagged Books, camels, deer, doing, making things, stools | 19 Comments

~:: The Christmas Projects ::~

Posted on January 3, 2013 by K

Okay, so I decided to make some handmade presents this year. You remember the camels. And the dress I made for Andy? And there are a few other things that will show up in the Party post. I swore years ago I wouldn’t ever make big Christmas projects again—it always come down to the wire and muddies up the season. But money is tight all over, and I really do love making stuff, so I took a leap and forged ahead.

But before I post the images, I have to say this—I wouldn’t say that I’m a person with tons of friends. I mostly hang around my house and my little family. Rachel and would hardly ever see each other if we didn’t both end up at church every week. And yet, when I sat down to make a list of all the people I’d like to give something to – even just a tiny token of affection – I was pretty shocked by the length of it.

There are beloved family members – parents, children, sibs, cousins, grandkids – and friends that are like family, then neighbors I may not even know all that well – because there isn’t time in the world to become intimate with every person who lives in the neighborhood or the church ward or the school – I mean, so many people you’d really like doing things with if you only had the time.

And when you try your best to give something to all those people, you can’t. You just can’t. So then you have to winnow down the list – do you give only to the very special kindred spirits? Or do you give to the people you know are lonely? Or the people you like very much from afar? Or the people who have been so kind to you? Or to the people you really DON’T like very much, but you should try? Eventually, you start finding reasons why you shouldn’t have to give to this person or that person, and the whole thing becomes one big rotten mess of confusion and guilt. Which is stupid and no fun at all.

Hurray for the party, where I get to give some of my dear ones a sort of living Christmas card all at once in person. And church, where we get to do the same thing in a different way.

In the end, I still ache to give something to some of the people I feel kindred to, but missed this season. I want to send good wishes and affection to them, even without an accompanying something. In fact, as I handed ornaments to some of my neighbors, I got glimpses of their trees – my earthy little ornament and their dignified, very carefully color coordinated and formally sparkling designed trees – and realized that I had just burdened them with something that didn’t match them very well at all, well meant as the gift might be. They’d probably have been much happier with a hug and a kiss – or maybe a cheeseball (like I know how to make those).

Ding Dong: Little Drummer Girl at the door.

Oh, too many words and not enough pictures.

Pictures of Sultan, just because I love him. He came with Gin for Fake Thanksgiving.

And a picture of our amazing and wonderful neighbors who came after the huge snow storm broke dozens of huge branches off our trees in November. One day there was a knock on the door, and there’s Luke – offering to haul away tons of dead branches in his giant contractor’s trailer. Then another neighbor stopped to help. You can see Luke’s very young son, working like a man, raking the driveway. This is about un-making messes. This is about a gift that goes far beyond a token in the hand. Given TO me.

The pile of presents destined for Gin’s car. If you look closely, you can see the very beautiful tags I made to put on the boxes.

I made the tags with this machine. It’s call a Cricket and it belongs to a very kind, wonderful, funny neighbor and friend, Lisa, who hauled this thing to my house and taught me how to use it – and then trusted me enough to leave it with me till I’d used up all my tag paper.

I cut these –

Out of this. How glorious the holes are –

And I cut them in this place, hung with lights and guarded by the Three Wise Deer.

I made these guys. The crazy one is for Andy. The dark Pendleton blanket one with the red mane is for Max, and the Gozo green guy is for Donna, and the light blue Pendleton is for Sandy. The last one is for memememe.

This is winter pony. He’s twins.

You remember the seventeen camels? They’re all part of this, too. I just wrote to the camel pattern designer and sent him the link to the Dressed Camels post and got a note back – he was pleased with my excess and the baubles I added.

Then, after Donna taught me to make reed deer, I made a few. Forty of them.

They all look like this one – leaping deer, trimmed with ribbons and feathers and a fine, tiny red bell.

Gin sent me a picture of a really cool ornament she loved, so how could I not try to make her something close to it?

Front

Back

Remember the stool I made a few months ago? The burned and painted piece of wood I’d been aching to try doing for years and years? I thought I’d better try to do one for Sandy. So I asked a few probing questions about motif and came up with this:

To remind Sandy of his California trip. The beach and the seals.

Top detail.

Being no artist, I search for photographs, images of the thing I want to render. Then I trace the outline of the thing in Photoshop and print out the line drawing. Then transfer it onto the stool, part of a bigger design. The sun and the fish and the water and the clouds are characters I’ve “drawn at” all my life. And palm trees.

And not-really-Nemos, because Sandy loves them.

Old lady, wrapping.

And I kind of wanted to do something for Andy and Scooter, too – so I did.

One day I asked Scooter what he’d like on a stool if he had one. He said, “A tree with four happy dogs under it.” So I found four happy dogs. The blue one is his sleeping buddy, “pup.” Andy just got my long-time loved cat.

Last, but not least, Murphy came to me privately—swathed in a dark cloak, his face covered with a slouchy hat – to say that Laura would never ask such a thing, but had confided to him secretly that the Christmas desire of her heart was for me to make her a Calvin-and-Hobbs Hobbs doll. Which I had no idea how to do.

I love the net. LOVE IT. When it behaves. It was the act of a moment to find a pattern—drafted, it turns out, by a man who loves to make things for his son. The pattern is on “Instructables” (sp?). He happens to be Mormon man who sews and does carpentry, among other things. So I girded up my courage and gave Hobbs a go. How could you not try to deliver somebody’s secret Christmas Desire?

Holy cats. Hand sewing on the stripes. I didn’t do a swell job. But it was all done with love. My fingers are still sore.

And he seems to know how to do his job.

I watched a whole lot of very smarmy Hallmark Christmas movies through all this making and the hours of wrapping and cleaning while G worked his heart out in the studio (we are so grateful to be working in this bizarre economy). It was such an odd season, kind of running before the storm, keeping the bow to the swell. But then, it was a strange year. Many of you have said the same of it. I wonder why? Did the earth shift just a piece of a degree on its poles so that the shadows haven’t lain quite right?

But there has been no dearth of love or fun or living. I can’t figure it out the feeling. I just can’t.

Posted in Christmas, Family, friends, holidays, Making Things, Pics of Made Things | Tagged Hobbs, ornaments, painted furniture, reed deer, stools, stuffed ponies, Sultan, tags, woven deer | 40 Comments

~:: Gratitude ::~

Posted on January 1, 2013 by K

Where I’ve been.

Assuming anybody is still there, remembering me and wondering.

Snow on the ground. Fire in the sky.

I haven’t been on-line at all for weeks (read: months) except for occasional bouts of Facebook—the conversational equivalent of Twinkies—when our service wasn’t down, which it was on the Eve of Christmas Eve. Which explains nothing about the last two months. Or maybe everything. I apologize. I hope somebody remembers me.

So I’m going to explain myself. Or try. I’m not in writing mode—everything is coming out in bricks and splurts and mashes. And it’s been like that for weeks. I can read. I just can’t lay words to paper. What follows is a mess. A TOTAL mess of confusion and bad writing and bewilderment.

I blame my condition on Etsy. If I’d never discovered the place and I’d never seen a knitted horse, then who knows what great and substantial things I might have accomplished in these last two years?

Less, actually. Much less. Of everything including friendship.

So what has been the central problem these last two months? Focus. Not that I’ve been wild-eyed and scatter-brained. It’s just, when you get down to the holidays, things have to go in order. You set your first focus point—Halloween; you aim for that; you fire. But if the focus point moves or splinters, all the dominoes fall before they’re supposed to, and you waste a lot of time having to set them up again. This makes the holidays sound like a task-oriented time. Which it is. And the difficult heart of the problem is that most of the deep focus points around the holidays are people. Who don’t hold still or behave in an orderly manner. At all.

Also, over-preparation. If you get all smug about how early you started and how much you’ve done to be ready – you can end up doing too much. If you’ve prepared only one thing, you only have to set up the execution of one set of logistics. If you have eighty things prepared, eighty sets of logistics. I am swearing off preparation. Spontaneity is far more manageable. And it cuts down the impact of expectations, which can lead to stress of the most desperate kind. And disappointment (mostly in self). And stuff.

I love how warm the house looks, lit up on a winter evening. The three wise deer are sharing the porch with the corn stalks and pumpkins of harvest.

All-in-all, I think that Halloween is the perfect kick-off in the face of coming winter. It has you putting up lights, lighting up lanterns (gourd ones, mostly), putting on silly clothes, and—best of all—it involves no presents; buy one Costco-sized bag of assorted candy bars, and everybody’s happy. Happy, loosened up, too busy doing crazy things to think about the fact that as many leafless, gray-brown, freezing months lie ahead as actually do.

Then you’ve got Thanksgiving, which is really a people time more than anything else. No presents. Only food and getting together. If your family is no fun to sit at table with, then God Bless You—because all that sitting and eating and getting together and laughing and thinking about gratitude really can and should be the best time ever. So, considering that families are organisms with wills all of their own, if yours refuses to be happy, well—I’d do myself a favor and find/choose/build/grow a brand new good family of my own and have a glorious time with it.

None of this explains my months of silence. Which I shall endeavor to do now, for those who are crazy enough to have read this much arready, but mostly for myself, as a journal entry. I wouldn’t want to start thinking I actually live a nice, quiet, uneventful life.

The people we love to have come to our house. No matter the chaos that brings them here.

November: the plan: the 4th Thursday of the month—Thanksgiving. Simple. Gin’s family doesn’t come to us for it; Thanksgiving is a huge time for dentists of children. No time for travel.

Focus point movement #1: a Very Important Dear Friend of Ginna’s has planned a wedding in our city the weekend before Thanksgiving. So Gin must come up here, at least for a few days. So, of course, we want her for Thanksgiving dinner. Kathy (Gin’s m-i-l) also wants her for Thanksgiving dinner. We switch our Thanksgiving dinner to the Saturday before Thanksgiving to let Kathy have Real Thanksgiving, which will include all her scattered kids and also other relatives of different kinds. So far, simple. And with Thanksgiving out of the way days early, I will have nearly two weeks between it and December first, plenty of time to set the stage for Christmas.

Focus point movement #2-3: Murph announces that he and L will be in San DEIGO the weekend of our Fake Thanksgiving dinner – oh, sorry!! Didn’t we tell you about that conference? And Kris cannot stay till Real Thanksgiving because he’s got to get home and work. The whole thing blows up in all our faces.

The first time we’ve had an official “kids’ table.” Max presided over it.

So we switch our Fake Thanksgiving dinner to the Wednesday before the Thursday the week before Thanksgiving, which allows Kathy to switch her entire family to the Saturday before Thanksgiving (including changing airline tickets). Kris will have to fly home the day after dinner. Gin will drive home – alone with the children and the dog. One of us wants to go with her, but there are no flights that can get us back home from Santa Fe before Real Thanksgiving Eve, and all flights will cost thousands of dollars. Why is Real Thanksgiving a consideration at this point? Because I have decided that Fake Thanksgiving dinner will be a traditional roast-and-potatoes family dinner (with tons of pie) so that Gin’s family won’t have to eat two full Thanksgiving feasts within four days of each other with a huge wedding dinner between. So the other children—the ones who live NEAR their parents, like all good children do—insist on having a REAL Thanksgiving dinner on REAL Thanksgiving.

Minor fluctuation of focus points: what exact time on what exact day Gin’s family will roll in for Fake Thanksgiving dinner. What exact time on what exact days the wedding/other Fake Thanksgiving dinner will happen. Confused yet?

The family table for dinner #1

And in the lulls between events, I must find/buy/make/finish/wrap/pack/tag all the gifts for Gin’s family so that they can be shoved into every “open” cranny/seat/space in a car that will also be crammed with stuff from Kathy and Ken.

Aunt, nephew, niece – a nice mix of families.

The table full of beloved people. I SO LOVE the way this room and these people glow.

See? Three separate unexpected climaxes to that part of the story, leading to mis-leading dénouements that put me WAY off my seasonal game (but worth it).

It’s strange – so natural to have them here with us, that when they disappear again so soon, we are left blinking, constantly haunted by the feeling that there should be more of us –

We opened the present Gin had brought up to us, so she could enjoy. This hat and scarf and mittens ensemble, doubling as a wolf disguise, was for Scooter. But he just didn’t catch the vision – until Andy fell in love with it and began to demonstrate its charms.

Cute little wolf.

Soon, Scooter will come to take possession – being a wolf was just too charming to miss.

November: original end-game plan: after having a nice fake Thanksgiving dinner (this would be the proposed Saturday one with turkey and everything—the one that didn’t happen), I’d have the boys bring in the Christmas tree, which would subsequently be put up and decorated by what would have been Real Thanksgiving, so that when Major Focus Point Movement #4 happened, the Holiday Plans would still flow on quite nicely – house decorated before December 1^st, presents made and wrapped, plans charted out neatly.

Since none of that happened and we were all a little tired already—but still wanting at least a token Real Thanksgiving Family Dinner on Thanksgiving, we decided to have a Real Thanksgiving Leftovers dinner on the hallowed day – which would, in theory, be simpler and more casual: turkey sandwiches with dressing and mashed potatoes and gravy that weren’t actually leftovers (with tons of pie), but which would be scaled down in portion (except the pie). The preparation for this did not turn out to be simple, though I will tell you that cooking the turkey and making the gravy the day before the feast really takes the pressure off. It was a yummy dinner, all the same – fun, with much laughter and good will. And pie. Did I mention the pie?

Here is the Real Thanksgiving dinner. Do you notice that I tend to take lots of pictures of the laden table? This is because I am fascinated with a half-tame setting of ceremonial intent. And I want to remember the Good Old Days while they are happening.

Sons together. That used to be Just The Way Things Were. Now, I take pictures of it, a lovely and relatively rare event.

Our adopted son, John, Lorri’s brother, a great favorite around here. One compensation for the children going out to find their own lives; they bring home great surprises.

Lorri brought this. It’s a turkey made out of veg. Very clever, my girl!

Second Children’s Table

And that’s the end of this part. But I think you can see why I haven’t spent a whole lot of time reading or writing or cleaning the house or knowing what day it was. There are two other parts to follow: What I Made and the Family Christmas Portrait—which was supposed to be for the Christmas Card post, which never got put up. And after that – the ornament party and Christmas. I missed telling so many stories this year. And these are only the highlights of these months – these astonishingly crammed months. I don’t want to forget anything, but I suppose that’s life hoarding? And I always think I’m going to go back and look at where we’ve been. The only thing is, we’re so busy moving forward, there isn’t a whole lot of time to look back. And that’s a good thing, right?

Posted in Events, Family, holidays, Seasons, The g-kids, The kids, whining | Tagged family, fraud, Thanksgiving, ticket | 21 Comments

~:: Nor’ Wester ::~

Posted on November 10, 2012 by K

In the mess of feeling I’ve had over the last many weeks, there was this shining bit of smug satisfaction: I was, in some small things, ready. For one thing, I’d made a boat-load of deer ornaments, plus the junk I’ve shown you already – but the big thing was, I’d compelled G to go out and get the house Christmas lights up a few days before Halloween – and I’d spent three days putting up the ones in the trees. Because cold weather was coming, and I’d spent too many dang years with my fingers aching and stinging – frozen to the bone, hanging those things. But this year – I had ’em up before it froze

YAY. We got our freeze. Then the world warmed up to seventy degrees again. But, hey – a check off the list is a great thing. And I had put all these Autumn pictures up on Flickr, ready for a blog I haven’t posted yet, but was anxious to fire off – just the yard and the leaves. One of the most beautiful falls we’ve ever had. I wanted to get it up there before it became irrelevant.

For once, I’m almost on top of the holidays. Moving forward. Not just waking up one day and realizing that tomorrow is (fill in the blank) and I hadn’t even THOUGHT about it yet.

But global disasters (and yes, I am including our election in this) have a way of rendering EVERYTHING irrelevant. So I hadn’t posted those beautiful fall pictures of the yard yet. Not until today. Today, I am showing you a few, so that you will know what our yard looked like right up till October 28th or so: that’s less than two weeks ago, right?

The secret passage to the studio.

The back yard (garden, for you Brit-based English speakers).

The secret shop in the glen.

The front yard. You’ve seen this already. Just reminding you. See the nice, open yard?

The front yard. A nice feeling.

The front gate. You’ve seen this one too. This was six days ago.

You know, we don’t get Nor’ Easters here. I don’t really even know how to spell that. Maine fisherman probably know how to spell it. We get clouds and rain and stuff from the north west, but those storms don’t get names; not exciting and terrible enough. We get super cells once in a black-and-blue moon. But nothing like what hit the east coast last week.

The weather people have been telling us for days that we were in for some early snow this year. They even pin-pointd the day. If I had the energy, I’d put the darling little photo of my Gin, about eighteen months old and in a Michelin Man snow suit, drawing little circles in the quarter inch of snow we got Thanksgiving morning that year. We hardly ever get any snow before Thanksgiving. Heck, we haven’t had a real snow storm in the valley now for about three, four years’ worth of winters lately.

So we didn’t pay a whole lot of attention. Oh, I worked my plans around to avoid driving into the city, stuff like that. But really, any exciting weather usually comes to us as a dull day and maybe a drizzle of rain.

See? A drizzle. Just enough to kick up the dying yellow again. I do SO love yellow leaves against rain-soaked almost black tree trunks.

So I took a few shots. And when the snow came spitting down, I recorded that historic event (it was ONLY the 9th of November, remember) right here.

It even stuck a little – great, squishy meshes of sloppy snow.

Then we went to bed. I know the snow sky. I see it out my bathroom window. When it’s gonna snow, our sky looks brown. When I went to bed, it was gray. A couple of hours later, I smiled. A little brown. Two hours later, the sky had gone a brilliant apricot color I’d never seen before in my life – and snow was clogging up the windows.

I opened the blinds in our room – the entire world was this apricot color, lit up like daytime, like just before the sunset – vibrant, strange. And there was snow everywhere. This morning, very early, we began to hear cracks like gunshots, the groans of dying giants – and when G put the dogs out, our yard had become an odd forest.

A flipping foot of snow.

See that teepee sort of thing back there? Christmas lights, now weighed down with snow, pulled out of bushes and trees, buried entirely. This is what I saw from our downstairs windows as I stood there first thing this morning, barefoot and tousled. But it was only the beginning.

Some of the lights had survived.

And out the front, the world had magically transformed.

This was snow made of water and cement.

The people who got up to try shoveling found it heavy work.

And the trees bowed like they had just had terrible news.

The stuff came up to mid-shin. Covering my boots entirely here.

It was too much for many of our trees.

This branch came off the tree outside our front bedroom window.

Broke right off the top of it.

This one came off the side of the Vucan-eating tree.

Split off this bit. Our trees grow leggy, searching for sun. Too many of them to share the sky without shoving each other aside.

This was right up against the garage door. G had to make himself very small and twisted to get through it all to find the saw.

The dogs don’t seem to mind this oddness. I think, generally, everything is always odd to them. Here they are snarling and savaging each other in delight, sending sprays of snow everywhere. Canine jet skies.

Does this look like a sky that’s finished with us?

Then I walked around the back. Holy cats.

This is beside the secret shed. You can’t find the shed in the glen anymore. There is no glen, and will be no glen till we can get out the chainsaw and chase half a tree off the front of the shed. See the holes? Those are potential dog escape hatches., dang it.

This branch (looks like a tree, doesn’t it? Yeah. Our trees are fairly old and big and the branches are huge) came over from the neighbors’, took out a post and section of fence. There’s the side of the shed. The branch in front of it came from one of our trees.

Everything bowed.

The back yard. There are SO many strings of Christmas lights that have died here today.

I went over to check on our beloved neighbors. Reed is ninety years old now. This is how I found him – on his little plow. He’d already been down to his rental property and cleaned it up.

Across the street.

Down the street. Lowering sky. That blue house down to the left? Our neighbor, Devin, had been up on his roof at three in the morning, moving a gigantic branch off his roof in a foot of snow, all by himself. And he saw one of our big trees come down.

This morning, I caught this look. Reed is really about fourteen – he was having a great time –

and took off down the street looking for people who need help clearing up.

The secret path to the studio.

Sigh.

One neighbor went whizzing by, towing his kid behind the truck. They were having a great time. But this was SO dangerous – especially around that corner down there where everybody comes around at a million miles an hour. Yea. Kill joy. Me.

And all the fall leaves are still all over the ground. Under there somewhere.

Me. Trying to find my car.

I found it. And went down to feed the freezing equines. They usually don’t run to greet me. This morning, they did.

Big dustin stepping high over a dam of slidden snow.

Slidden off this roof, bits coming down in whOOfy-Plahffs.

Wet, discouraged horses.

Wet, discouraged tractor.

Possible header – not used. View from the arena.

Ditto.

So, now I don’t feel so guilty about the north east. Yeah, we’re not suffering a fraction of what they’ve got. But we did lose power twice yesterday. For about two seconds each time – enough to fry your hard drive and make you reset all the clocks in the house. We didn’t expect this. But isn’t that what makes life so interesting? Hmmm. I’d never realized how large a component of inconvenient there can be in interesting.

So, if anybody out there can just tell me exactly what season of the year we’re in right now? I’d appreciate the head’s up.

Posted in Horses, Images of our herd in specific, Seasons, snow, The outside world | Tagged branches, dogs, Horses, neighbors, Reed, sky, snow | 30 Comments

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~ :: The Vagaries of Mortality ::~

~:: How Dogs Deal With Seasonal Distress ::~

~:: Inversion pt 3 – and the punchline ::~

~:: Inversion pt. 2 ::~

~:: Inversion ::~

A day late, and in this economy – lucky to be a dollar short. But here is my traditional Valentine’s greeting, to all who have been kind and patient with me – my dear friends, my lovely valentines!

After all this was over

the snow that was so tame and pleasant and Christmas-card like didn’t get the memo.

And suddenly, there we were, huddled together in the gray, freezing, endless foggy dreariness.

This is why I keep the Christmas lights up. Heavy as a January night can be, you need a little bit of surreality to keep you from involuntary hibernation.

~:: The Ornament Bash ::~

The Ornaments

~:: Doing Things ::~

~:: The Christmas Projects ::~

~:: Gratitude ::~

Where I’ve been.

Assuming anybody is still there, remembering me and wondering.

~:: Nor’ Wester ::~

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A day late, and in this economy – lucky to be a dollar short. But here is my traditional Valentine’s greeting, to all who have been kind and patient with me – my dear friends, my lovely valentines!

After all this was over

the snow that was so tame and pleasant and Christmas-card like didn’t get the memo.

And suddenly, there we were, huddled together in the gray, freezing, endless foggy dreariness.

This is why I keep the Christmas lights up. Heavy as a January night can be, you need a little bit of surreality to keep you from involuntary hibernation.

The Ornaments

Where I’ve been.

Assuming anybody is still there, remembering me and wondering.

Find something:

Recent Comments

on the menu:

Blogroll

Buddies

Cool Places

Lovely lives

The Artist's Heart

Pages

Meta

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Looking for this?