I hope everyone had a fun or at least an uneventful evening last night. We are old farts so we are happy to stay home and off the roads. I remember 'back in the day' when THE event to be at was the Grateful Dead show in Oakland. I got to see three New Years Eve shows in 1989, 1990 and their last in 1991. Those were the days. Apart from that, it's been a struggle to make it till midnight. I used to stay up and read in Washington because of the fireworks. After being woken up one night with my heart pounding after someone let off an M80 nearby, I decided to just read till the noise died down close to 1 AM.
2014 absolutely flew by. We had our ups and downs just like with every year, but the highlight of course was our marriage. I closed out the year with my laptop finally giving up the ghost but luckily I'd been saving money to get a new one. As I write this, I have not yet received the new one and am still able to use the old one as long as I don't close the lid!!
I wish all my friends and family a happy 2015!!! Better get used to writing it on your checks! lol
2013 got off to a rough start, at least for me, and it seemed also for a lot of my friends, judging from my Facebook newsfeed. There was a lot of frustration with vehicle repair issues, and then losing power after the blizzard in Feb. definitely sucked out loud. The summer was long, hot and humid and I was a prisoner in my house for days at a time. August was extremely social and full of photographic junkets on the few cool, dry days we got. Yet I can't really remember what all I did while I was trapped in the house all summer. I know I made stuff, but I have better memories of the summers of 2011 and 2012 than I do 6 months ago! My fave part of the year was spending time with the kids.
I was pleased we were able to get a few things we've needed for awhile. My new recliner and camera are awesome. And a generator....that's the best. It's also nice to have a small wood kitchen table instead of a card table.
It snowed a few times this month, although we didn't have a white Christmas. I managed to get a few snaps of the lights reflecting on the snow before the rain washed it all away.
Sunrise on 12/19.
Pepperbean rocking the comfy coziness on a cold winter day. I put the blanket on her. I had it on both dogs, but Sagan promptly got off the couch, wanting nothing to do with yet another photo op. I've figured out that I can get them to stop pestering me if I point a camera at them. That usually makes them turn away and go lay down.
We had a quiet holiday season. I ran out of time to take night pics of the lights in town and in Sandwich. The weather just didn't cooperate at all. It was either bitter cold, snowing or raining. I did enjoy getting together with some women in Sandwich one night, as one was in from China! She's lived there for 21 years and is a teacher there. She said she was only supposed to stay for 2 years! My cousins came up from Maryland right after Christmas and I visited with them as well. I was also asked to take Christmas pics of our great nieces, Abi & Katie. This is the first time I've ever shot portraits of humans, let alone babies! But I think they came out really well.
This one really makes me laugh. It looks like Abi's pulling Katie's hat down and saying, 'Pay no attention to her! I'M the star here....'
Such sweet girls!!! They were good as gold for the shoot.
Christmas Eve.
New toys for the puppies on Christmas day.
We visited w/ my mom on Christmas morning and then went to his sister's to visit his family before coming home to cook. The youngest came over for dinner around 3. Mom finally let me take the small jar of beach glass that I found in the 70s and 80s. The jar has been on the hallway window sill since I was a kid, and many of these pieces are over 40 years old. I noticed how much thicker the glass is too.
Sunset Christmas day.
The weather's been so erratic, temperature-wise. It's either 20* or 50*. It got super cold a couple days after Christmas.
This is the hood of my car. My friends pointed out that it looks like a mountain range as seen from a plane.
I was amazed at this almost perfectly round spot of different frost patterns.
Indeed.
Close up of the patterns in the circle.
My stepdaughter and her boyfriend celebrated Christmas with us on the 28th. I made these cupcakes for our get together.
Oh yeah! Michelle sent me another box of pure awesomeness!!
This fibre is gorgeous. So many colours with hints of gold sparkly thread.
Seriously, what's not to love about this stuff?!
When my nose gets cold, it's really uncomfortable, and for some reason, that happens a lot, even when I have the heat on. Nothing I do seems to warm it up either. Last year I mentioned it in passing to Michelle, and teased that I wanted her to knit me a little teeny blanket for my nose with thread on either side that I'd hook around my ears. Instead, she knitted me this freakin AWESOME cowl that slips over my head and I can pull it up around my ears and nose, while keeping my hands & eyes free. It works like a charm and I've been wearing it quite a bit. It keeps my neck so toasty too.
As soon as I saw the fibre, I knew exactly what I was going to do for my first project with it. I made a coiled little basket out of clothesline wrapped with the fibre.
It's quite small and I could have continued to make it taller but I stopped at this level. I worked with 3 foot lengths at a time to avoid massive tangling, and used a tapestry needle to help with the wrapping and securing each coil to the one below it. I was gonna top it with beads but I think I'll leave it plain. As usual, this was just a prototype to see if I could remember how to make this (I made on in the late 90s from a kit and fortunately, I'd saved the instructions).
It's hard to believe this is our 3rd New Years Eve together and coming up on our 3rd anniversary on January 7. We are talking more about getting married sooner rather than later, and it just may happen in 2014. We want his son & fiancee' to be present, so we will have to coordinate when they are able to come out from Ohio. My stepdaughter is my maid of honour and I am pretty sure that the boys will be the best men. It'll be really small, just the kids & us, I think. Then later on we'll have something at the Legion or somewhere, for our friends to celebrate with us, eat and so forth. I still get the butterflies when we're together and I look forward to taking his name. I'm very blessed and grateful to have so may great friends and family. I love my stepkids very much and I am so pleased that they love me too. They see their dad happy for the first time ever and I really love making new memories together as a family.
I hope 2014 is a healthy and prosperous year for all of you!
Like most people, I try to look at January 1st as a chance to turn things around. Finally gonna do this or that. I make a half hearted attempt and usually abandon my quests by early spring. That's why I don't make resolutions. I try to start the new year off with a positive outlook with high hopes that maybe this is the year
Bran will get work, maybe this will be the year our country turns itself around, maybe humanity will start working together. Call it the 60's/Deadhead in me.
Unfortunately, these days, by the time late December rolls around, I feel like I've been beaten, mentally, emotionally and physically, into an exhausted, apathetic pulp, as I crawl towards another new year. That said, I do try to project a positive attitude and spin on things because, let's face it, if I didn't, I would be huddled in a corner, completely catatonic. If I let all the stressors in my life, all those really annoying "what ifs" that can drive me into a panic attack, get to me, I'll be in a bad way. 2009 is proof positive of that. Worst. Year. Ever. Compared to 2009, 2010 was a way better year, even if finances are getting very tight and work is 100x more intense and crazy. But that's a sign of the times too. Life just sucks right now, for everyone, everywhere. People are pissed off and taking it out on everyone around them.
I'm going back over my post from this time last year, with all the things I wanted to accomplish in 2010. I actually did get my business started and have made a few sales on Etsy, which is cool. I consider that one a huge accomplishment...for me anyway. I said I wanted to start cooking more, and I guess I have but not like I used to back in California. The bottom line is that I'm just too damn tired when I get home from work to bother. Didn't really take many walks like I wanted to, but as I recall the weather this year wasn't actually conducive to it either. I did spend a ton of time making stuff this year, both during lunch at work and on the weekends.
I also wanted to get out more and see people. That one didn't work out as well as I wanted but only because everyone, including myself, has a schedule and they don't all jibe. And on the weekends I just don't feel like getting in the car and driving long distances. I'm so tired by week's end. I did get to see my dear friend Joe, from high school, in July up in Seattle, which also gave me the opportunity to finally play tourist. And I got Victoria out of my system (for now) and had a great time with Moriah at dinner & Ghostly Walks. Plus I went to Mt. Rainier in the summer and that was well worth it.
I did way more blogging this year and that's been a great outlet for me. My muse left me in 2009, but it returned last year. I'd like to thank my photographer blogging friends for showing me new ways to view the world, and my photography has started to transform. It amazes me the new frontiers that digital photography has opened. I resisted it at first, big time. I swore I would never stop shooting film. I was too much of a film snob purist to use digital. Unfortunately with film, you only have a set number of pictures you can take, so you really only get one opportunity to take a decent photo, and you can't take a ton of photos of just one thing either. Digital has made it so that I can spend a couple of hours window shopping in Sumner, but take more than 90 photographs. That'd be like shooting 3 rolls of 36 exposure film, which is something I've never done, nor would it have ever occurred to me to do on a short shopping trip. Back in the 80's, when I was still vacationing in San Francisco before moving there, I marveled at the time I shot 6+ rolls of film in a week! SIX!!!! This year I went to Victoria and shot nearly 500 photos in less than 36 hours.
And then there's the whole 'instant gratification' factor, which is a huge plus, because I am an instant gratification kind of gal. Gone are the days of filling out your film envelope, dropping it off, and picking up the pictures later on. often days later. Now I shoot them and have them uploaded and on line like that *snaps fingers*, in less than an hour. I can tweak them if the colour is off or the exposure is too light/dark. I can look at them whenever I want. I just had the Victoria photos processed and am finding that putting them into a hard-copy photo album is a real chore. Of course I can't just put pictures in an album like normal people. No no no. My Craft OCD dictates that each page be a work of art. So I'm over there cropping pics, working up a layout, seeing what stickers and travel-related doo dads I can add, whilst grumbling about all the other craft projects I want to start and get to. It's freakin WORK, you guys! Seriously! I have scads photos to go through and put into that album, and I'm only about 100 in. As Dorothy Gale once said, "I'm frightened, Auntie Em!!!" I just got some really cool new ephemera, plus my new beads, and want to get to another altered book. Not sure what it will be yet, but they always manage to evolve on their own. So many crafts! So little time!!
Overall 2010 was a more productive year, but we are still in a precarious financial situation right now. I'm using my Christmas & b-day money to buy the craft supplies I want since it's not in the budget at all for next year. And I also finally sucked it up and got a medicine cabinet at Home Depot, a store that really intimidates me. I have always found the floor help to not be quite as helpful as the commercials portray, if you can even find anyone to help you at all.
New Years Eve has always made me feel melancholy. I used to weep at midnight whenever they'd show Guy Lombardo leading his orchestra through Auld Lang Syne. It makes me cry at the end of "It's a Wonderful Life" too. Midnight on NYE , for me, was somewhat depressing and lonely because I was usually alone, as my parents always went out with their friends, leaving me in the care of a babysitter. When I got older my cousin Diane used to spend the night and we'd tape the Top 100 hits of the year off WRKO and have Dick Clark's New Years Rockin' Eve on the TV downstairs. We'd watch the ball drop in NYC and I would choke back tears. I hated it that time was marching on, and the fun holidays were over and now it was just another slog through another depressing January. It was even worse once I was home from college on break. The loneliness was crushing. Only once I went to a party during those college years. NYE was way more fun and less lonely after college when I was out on my own and especially after I moved to California.
I continue to hope that 2011 will be a better year, but it's getting really hard to psyche myself up for it and be hopeful. I am reluctant to list things I'd like to accomplish in 2011, because at this point, I'm just taking each day as it comes. Thinking about the future is impossible because life is throwing way too many curve balls. I'm afraid to hope for anything because I'm tired of having them dashed. All I can do is just keep playing everything by ear, hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. That's life in the 21st century, I guess.
So I leave you with one of the few New Years pop songs that I can remember, one I love: George Harrison's "Ding Dong Ding Dong". Happy New Year everyone! Ring out the old, ring in the new!
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