Holiday

This has been a fun and relaxing Thanksgiving. Even with two family gatherings, there has been very little drama and a whole lot of warm togetherness. I have had four days away from my jobs. I have crocheted, cleaned, cooked, and read. I have talked to family members, told stories, heard stories, shared recipes, shared dreams. I have had a nice holiday.

But the puritan (I think --- hard to tell when you as much of a mongrel as I am) is not happy. Four days and I only cleaned two rooms. I could easily have finished Brendon's stocking and at least one of the scarves I'm making. I could have baked the bread I thought about. For goodness sake, I could have gotten dressed at least. (I did dress to go to the family gatherings. I even wore make-up.) I really wasted these four days.

One of the other parts of me has told the puritan to take a walk. That part and the rest of me, now that the puritan is grumbling in the rain, are enjoying another cup of coffee and a bowl of apple cinnamon brown sugar oatmeal. (Brown sugar & cinnamon? the Puritan yells from the yard. Way to make a healthy meal unhealthy!) The rest of me smiles and takes another bite. The rest of me is going to enjoy this last day of the holiday.

Sunday morning ice and shine

I sit here at the computer this bright icy morning. Even the sun seems to shine with a frozen brightness, giving light but not heat.

I am told we will have a mild winter. I am thinking I was told wrong. For those of us here in South Carolina who don't expect the temperature to hit the 20s until February if at all, there is nothing mild about 21 degrees in November. Before Thanksgiving. What's with this?

I have spent too much time on Facebook this morning... my new addiction, which is eating up the time I used to spend on my old addictions: blogs & solitaire. I am thinking about what I need to do today and what I want to do.

I am planning to make two pumpkin cheesecakes today. One for each of my offices. I still need to copy and put together the board manuals for the Carolina School for Inquiry board. And I'd like to clean my bedroom --- at least a little.

Oh well... wish me luck.

Moesday

When you take off Monday to do everything you haven't had time to do in the past ten years, Tuesday becomes Monday, only worse.

Yesterday, I cleaned the public areas of my house, explored the Goodwill store (three sweaters, two shirts, a vest that doesn't fit, three soup mugs, and a diffuser for $29), went to lunch with Bob and Joseph, made and ate chili, gathered recipes for Thanksgiving stuff and Christmas cookies, and read Good Housekeeping Magazine. I also watched Chuck, which was irritating, except Casey, who is always amusing. And I so knew that bimbo ex-girlfriend was a bad spy. Doesn't she look like Sarah Palin? That can't be good.

Today I am faced with a bunch of notes on my desk, most of which could have been handled by someone else if someone else cared to think about it. I have taken care of some basic things like sales tax, but set aside serious bookwork in favor of cleaning the office in preparation for tax season. Maybe I'm just in a cleaning mood. I may just need to inhale some lemon fresh Lysol cleaner and get on with my life.

Day off

Last week I realized that if I didn't take some time off between then and tax season, I'd be no good to anyone. So I looked at the calendar and, not counting Thanksgiving & Christmas, because they are work, I could take off: today.

So here I sit at the computer with a comfortable cat in my lap, thinking about what to do and what not to bother with. Today is clean the main floor of the house, go to Goodwill & Habitat stores to see if I can find cute, thoughtful, cheap gifts, cook chili & cornbread, cut my hair.

I have been driving myself crazy with thoughts of things I need to do. I think of them in the shower, driving, while cleaning. These mental to do lists float around and I can't pin them down. I write lists, but then I lose the lists. I have put post-it notes to good use at work, but can't make that work elsewhere.

I bought a sketch pad and some of those new Sharpie pens that don't bleed (black, blue, green, red). I am writing my random to do lists in this book, sort of separated, but not really. My hope is that if I write it down in a safe place (really), I'll be able to move on to actually doing one thing at a time.

I'll let you know how it works for me...

Eastern Standard Time

The good thing about changing to eastern standard time is that my mind thinks I am sleeping an extra hour. This is really nice when I wake up at 5:30 a.m.

The bad thing is that at 2:30, my mind thinks it is 3:30 and I am ready for a nap. Oh well.

It is really fall here now. The dogwood tree outside my window is red. The maple is yellow. Everything else is green, but that's South Carolina for you.

I am still fighting a chest/sinus cold that may or may not be pneumonia/sinus infection, and all I want to do is crawl into bed with cup of tea and a good book. I don't have a good book right now, and a stray thought flittered through my mind yesterday: If you don't have a good book to read, you ought to write one. It flittered out again, but who knows. Maybe it will come back with a more solid idea next time.