This post has been sitting, half-finished, on my desktop for over three weeks now. Everything, everywhere just got to be too, too hard and so I stopped doing what I could in order to better manage what I couldn’t.
I’m way behind on Iain’s colorful, crazy, and wild birthday sweater. The sizing on this pattern seems to be way off. I already came to the sickening conclusion that it wasn’t going to fit, ripped it out and started again. Now I’ve finished the back and after stretching it flat, I can see that I’m going to have to pull back all of the shaping from under the arms up, so that I can add in extra length. Frustrating. I still can’t decide if it’s going to be kind of cool or completely hideous. Mostly I think it’s just going to be really, really late.
We finally got our garlic in, 200 bulbs, which will not be enough, I can never plant enough. It was a warm day of golden sunshine that tricked us into feeling like we were deep in the heart of the growing season and that just maybe it might never end. The very next morning we awoke to heaps of snow, with more accumulating every few days ever since.
On one side of that “curtain” there are three young people working on a play involving a turkey with dish glove feet. On the other Thanksgiving dinner is being prepared, with Little Miss Two flitting back and forth from one side to the other.
On Thanksgiving proper we did nothing. We didn’t go for a walk or get down the nice dishes or make a new set of napkins or get dressed up or even go around the table saying what we were thankful for. None of us had the strength or the heart for it. We were just beat. I swore I would do better with Christmas, but my holiday spirit is fickle at best this year.
We laid on the futon and I read my girls book after book; Giving Thanks: The 1621 Harvest Feast, The Great Pumpkin Switch which I didn’t particularly care for, A Stawbeater’s Thanksgiving which made me sad, The Very First Thanksgiving Day which I like, An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving by Louisa May Alcott which made us laugh, and Home Sweet Home which isn’t exactly a Thanksgiving book, but probably should be.
I recently overheard a mother complaining about how she couldn’t take the stress of keeping track of even one library book in her house. I had to laugh. We currently have 66 books checked out, with another 5 sitting at the library waiting to be picked up. To be sure this is excessive, even for us. But there is something about this season, this year and we keep on coming home with more and more.
I’ve been reading Little Men aloud to Mairi Rose. It’s one of my favorite books of all time and I always get a hankering to read it at this time of year, probably because it ends at Thanksgiving. She is reading Gwinna aloud to me. I just finished Mist on the Mountain, both written and illustrated by Jane Flory, which was a chance library find. I picked it up thinking it might be a good family read and my goodness, I just loved it so much! And as much as I loved the story, I think I might love the illustrations even more. I read it all before discovering there is a book that comes before this one. I’m so sad our library system doesn’t have it.
I both started and finished my Christmas shopping this week in an intensive and stressful last minute shopathon and am very glad that is over. I’ll happily settle in to some holiday crafting as a pleasant change of pace.
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Well, hello there! I was wondering where you were, hoping everything was well. It certainly is a busy time of the year, and the shorter days always seem to lend to less energy for me. I’m much more motivated during the warmer, sunnier days of the year. The one thing I do love about winter is the coziness of it all. And the knitting. The knitting for sure.
So glad to see you here! I was worried when I hadn’t seen a new post in some time…is it odd to worry about someone I haven’t met? I don’t think so. We have been doing mostly heaps of library books this year as our holiday celebration as well. Cranberry Thanksgiving and Apple Tree Christmas are two new favorites of myself and five year old.
I too was worried about you. It felt like you were absent from here for a while. Glad you are ok.
Thank you for the book tips…hope you get to have a relaxing christmas.
I’m sorry to have worried everyone, truly. We were having a particularly intense period with our unwell one. And truth be told, I wasn’t holding it together very well and was having trouble really caring about anything that wasn’t absolutely urgent and right in front of me.
I was thinking of you this past week because I just read a book I think your children would enjoy. It’s from a series called Little Fur. I read the second book, A Fox Called Sorrow and it was so sweet. It’s about an elf/troll girl who works as a healer for the animals in the wilderness and she goes on quests into the city sometimes. Sounds cheesy but the writing was just so unique and vibrant. I’ve requested the next few from my library. (Have I ever said that I live directly across the street from an amazing library? I’m so lucky!) It seems like the kind of book your children would enjoy and it has messages about the relationship between humans and nature that you’d probably appreciate.
I hope your family has a healthy and happy Christmas!