resolved . . .

Thank heavens! We've survived one last weekend of family comings and goings. Picked up my youngest at the Baltimore airport back from a friend's wedding in sunny Puerto Rico. Packed off my husband for another week in sandy Kuwait. Shuttled my grandson back home to Maryland after a nice long visit. Suddenly, although the house reverberates like Grand Central over the holidays, all traffic seemed coordinated to end with a final clap of the front door, leaving me as the lone elf staring at the half-burned-out tree lights in the front hall. The house sits becalmed now, sighing gently into the stretches of silence. Together, the house and I watch the dust motes settle through shafts of sunlight on all the holiday-recovery chores left after the bustle. It's January again.



While my grandson and I worked into the New Year on the kitchen island, creating our fabulous hodge-podge journal of knights and heraldry in his favorite colors of red and gold with black, all chores were put on hold. But now it's resolution time, time to start afresh with a clean slate of promises to myself. Little and big things, like a promise to spend a month of Sundays resting, reading, listening to my old jazz recordings. Is that a little thing or a big thing? A promise to spend concerted effort on organizing my studio so it invites me in and stimulates creativity. Big thing? Promises to . . . well, tackle the big and little things as they come.


On the agenda is the online journal class "Remains of the Day," offered by Mary Ann Moss. This is my kind of no-stress class, with class videos (and registration) remaining active through next December! First step is collecting all that leftover scrap paper and fabric from one's stash, along with labels and other ephemera, in preparation for assembling the pages with "guerrilla-style" sewing. So it seemed fitting to use some of that paper stash to cover a postal box to hold my labels. Ah, progress! And it's still only January!

P.S. See you in class at the store tomorrow, my first class taught in the New Year!
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