Happy holidays?

I feel like so many people in my life are struggling with sadness this holiday. A friend lost her husband this year, another lost her mother this week, still another lost her stepson, all of them aching with grief. My young Namesake is displaced and homeless, my old friend is being treated badly by his only child. So much sadness at such a joyous time of celebration. My answer to it all? Grab the simple pleasures while you can, enjoy every minute. And hold one another tightly.

My Christmas Junonia

Back in the saddle again

After a two-week respite on Sanibel Island, it is a shock to be back in Detroit. Here, in the frigid cold, I must again use my car for trips that would be within walking distance on Sanibel, and will need to turn my heat up again now that I am occupying my house. It was depressing to come back to the dirty airport and dirtier air, but my grandchildren are the bright lights that hold me here like a moth to a candle.

While on Sanibel, where my favorite activity is shelling (the ideal in low tech hobbies), I found one of the coveted Junonia shells, apparently named after a Roman goddess, and, according to my sister, an omen of changes to come.

As thrilled as I was to find the shell, it does not appear that the goddess is smiling on me. It turns out that there will, indeed, be changes in my life, but not all of them all entirely welcome. My daughter, the Namesake, has decided to fly back from New York and move back in with me “to save money.” Even overlooking all the money it will cost me to have her here, I think it unlikely she will be able to save a cent given the job climate in Michigan. In New York she was able to find work when she felt able to deal with the stresses of actually going to a job, here she is unlikely to find it at all. So she will be in my house much of the time, and, because she demands a much warmer house than I can justify, I am sure there will be a struggle over the thermostat. Oh well, it will be nice to have the family together for Christmas. But I sure will enjoy my clean house and simple life for the next couple of days, because it’s going to be a different world after that!

Is this the other shoe?

With my mother’s Namesake back in New York, and no excuse any longer to pamper a houseguest, I turned the thermostat down and was freezing this morning when my clock went off at 4:45 a.m. I handled it in my usual way, by falling back asleep. What the heck, this is my birthday weekend and lately the best celebration of all is a little rest.

Heard from the younger Namesake, she is in a New York emergency room with an abscess on her foot. She said she knew a few days earlier that it hurt but she thought she had bruised it by kicking my table . . accidentally, I hope, although it is a moot point, since there is clearly something more going on.

Cold feet, warm heart

My sweet retro-namesake leaves for New York tomorrow. She was so cold while she was here, I finally took pity and turned up my thermostat for her . . . ahhhhhh, what luxury. I have been dialing down for so long that I had forgotten what a warm house was like this time of year. No shiver of dread as I push back the covers, no morning shock as I race to the bathroom to do my necessaries. It has been a real treat. Soon I will be in Sanibel for a couple of weeks, where I willingly jump up on (much warmer) mornings to comb the beach for shells, but I will return to frigid Michigan workday mornings after that. Thank goodness the little namesake will be back for Christmas so that I can get warm again! In the meantime, I will get back to doing my part to save fuel. I am getting to old for these cold nights alone, if I were a better environmental activist, I'd start looking for a warm body to warm my feet against!

Breathe

I am having pretty good luck with my homemade grocery shopping bags, which I am finally remembering to take with me almost everywhere. (apparently I am having better luck than my sweet daughter-in-law has had in her local area, where the switch from 'their bag' to 'her bag' is too challenging. (Imagine the cool link I will someday learn to make to her blog at http://infiniteparentheses.blogspot.com/ here.) Honestly, some of the five bags I've made so far are kind of neat, although the others are embarrassing losers. I bought a remnant today to make one out of patterned fleece, we'll see how that goes. Someday maybe I will also learn to post photos, but don't hold your breath. You will just have to use your imagination for now.

I spent Thanksgiving knitting another baby blanket to donate at the "local" Florida hospital when I visit my friend in Cocoa Beach in the spring, because that is my excuse for visiting her. I wanted to try making my own cheese, because clearly I am more cut out to make homey things than to actually do anything really useful to conserve or contribute, and I guess we each have our own path . . . I read about making cheese in (another imagined cool link here:) Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, which I read about in another favorite blog, (tah dah, use that imagination again) http://crunchychicken.blogspot.com/ But I ran out of time and energy and never got past buying the milk. Maybe I can try to be a contented cheesemaker for Christmas, instead.

This month has not been without its challenges, but in my life as, no doubt, in yours, that's just the way it goes. I am grateful to get to take a deep breath between the times when one or another shoe drops. My mom's death was sadly anticlimactic after her troubled and volatile life, and it was a wonder and a blessing that she went so sweetly and gently when the time came. Soon after, her sweet namesake had yet another melt down, such an appropriate term. I picture a graceful, slightly exotic candle that burns down to a puddle and a fragment of wick, so unrecognizable and sad. I hope she will be able to reform herself again soon, there is still a lot of good wax there. Thankfully, she was out of the hospital by the weekend, and she was able to set aside, for the moment, her nearly 30-year old conviction that it is still my failed responsibility to give meaning to her life, and we eventually had a nice dinner. When the namesake of my mother, her bittersweet remnant, was ready to rejoin the world, I made cheesecake instead of cheese, and other exotic healthy foods, and we had a nice time after all.

The drama put everything else on hold, though, and so now I am even further behind than I was before . . . I leave for Sanibel in a week and am holding my breath hoping that things will go well enough til then to allow me to really go and breathe a bit in paradise with as little guilt as possible.

Being thankful

It has been such a long time since I have taken the time to post. I have been using my few "optional" computer minutes to read other people's blogs! There has been illness in my family, both physical and mental, and I have been feeling a bit drained . . .

But I have much to be thankful for, including the wee ones who first inspired me to make more of an environmental effort. In that vein, I have ordered a fairly local, hormone free, free range turkey, even though at this point I have no idea whether we will be having a family thanksgiving any time soon . . . certainly my grands will stop by over the weekend, and nothing says loving like as much local, healthy food as I can muster. I am hoping that a couple glasses of red wine (domestic, to save on petroleum) will help give me the oomph I need to get things done and keep a smile plastered on my face! Blessings of the season to all.