Blog Trek

Preparing for Christmas and the Winter Weather

I awakened this morning to find everything white--frost covering buildings, trees, shrubs and grass while a beautiful white mist blanketed the neighborhood.  It almost looked like snow, and very much reminded me that I'm not in So Cal anymore, Todo (or Taffy, in my case.)

By late morning, the sun was out and I made sure I put on all the vent covers outside, raked Taffy's excavations in the flower beds level and pruned the flowers off some bush growing outside my dining room window that has been attracting flies more than bees--yuk!  I see another project in my future--cutting the whole thing down next spring and replacing it with something that won't make my patio a place I don't want to sit and have lunch on under any circumstances.  By the time I had finished my projects, Taffy had gone behind me and dug another big hole at the side of the house.  I took cinder blocks that were about to be discarded and used them to deter her from returning to the scene of the crime.  What is it with dogs and digging up the flower beds?

My next project involved painting the trim in the spare bedroom.  Things are finally shaping up in there, but everything needs two coats, plus I had to use a sealant on all the trim, which was painted the same baby pink as the walls and still shows through in places this evening.  At this rate, it will take me the better part of 2 months to complete both bedrooms, since I have the same issues in my own bedroom, except it's painted a dingy celery green.

After that, I decided enough time had been devoted to the house and I went out.  Pier One was a welcome sight--all glittery and filled with red, green, silver and gold.  I found a suitable secret santa gift for the office party tomorrow and then headed for the new Sears Outlet, where I managed to do some damage in the exercise equipment and bought my own Christmas gifts--a bicycle and a treadmill at killer prices that made them impossible to pass up.  Since Taffy has become less willing to take long hikes as she ages, I have to find other ways to get my exercise in, particularly with the winter obviously here.

Now I have to complete the Christmas shopping for the family.  The traffic was slow moving and plentiful today, and I know it will only get worse the closer we get to the 25th.  I made a vow to myself that I'm going to start putting gifts away much earlier in 2010, so I don't have to join the mad Christmas shopping rush next year. 

Letting Go, and Knowing When to Do So.

I'm about to find out how much I have or have not missed the cold of a Massachusetts winter.  The high on Sunday is projected to be in the 30's.  One of the lows I saw posted on my homepage for the next week mentioned 18 degrees.  Not quite the minus 18 degrees I saw when I looked at the outdoor thermometer one morning in Worcester, but low enough to make me very glad I took my heavy, ankle-length woolen coat into the cleaners at the end of last week.  I dragged that coat around through all my moves since leaving Boston, only wearing it one Christmas for the annual office bash at the Sportsmen's Club while we were experiencing an abnormally strong cold snap, and on my trip up to New York for New Year's.  However, since the coat was still in excellent condition, is in a style that doesn't date, and kept out most of the elements and didn't fall prey to moths, it arrived with me in Portland and will be put back into use.

Some of my clothes last many years.  Others barely a season.  Sometimes it pays to spend a lot of money on an item, and sometimes it doesn't.  I know there's probably an analogy to life or writing in there somewhere, but I'm not going to look for it.  I'm only going to congratulate myself for not throwing out my winter gear, unpack my Sorel snow boots and sub-zero gloves, and wish I had kept that brand new snow shovel I got rid of when I lost the outdoor storage in Highland Park.

Being a bit of a pack rat pays off.  But you have to know where to draw the line between items that may well come in useful in the future and things that should go to another good home after a rest period in Goodwill.

Maybe that's the writing analogy--knowing when to keep and continue to work on that half-finished story you just found at the back of the filing cabinet, or when to consign it to the shredder. 

When I left Highland Park, I shredded my first novel.  It had resided in the bottom of the closet for years.  I would never want it to see the light of day after I pass from this mortal coil, even should I become a famous writer and my children could use the money.  It wasn't worth the time and energy I would have to spend researching, rewriting and cutting all those needless words.  There were passages and even chapters that were salvageable, but oh, so much more that was not.

I didn't need it as a crutch anymore--I had long passed the stage when I needed to see a completed novel of mine that I could hold in my hands and marvel over--I had two published novels that are easily visible on the internet any time I want to look at them.

I didn't even hesitate as I commanded them to the shredder, except to hope that the sheer amount of pages didn't burn out the motor.