Friday bullets - December 17, 2021

And suddenly, it is a week before Christmas. December does fly by, doesn't it?

• Writing out that little fact might panic me more if I wasn't 95% done with my Christmas shopping. 
• H. and I are finishing up with the Christmas cards. Then, when D. gets home on Sunday, we'll take the family picture and get them all sent.
• No, I haven't wrapped a single thing. Why rush into these things?
• I did buy wrapping paper at the dollar store today. I discovered, though, that it needs to change its name as suddenly there are multiple products which are $1.25 and not a dollar there now. They are labelled. Sort of. If you're looking. I realize it's only a quarter, but still.
• My most recent library book to arrive on the hold shelf is titled, How to do Nothing. It is perhaps not the ideal book to start reading the week before Christmas. Not if I want to pull off any sort of Christmas, that is.
• H. spent the morning at her the Rising Lights Project. I think I've mentioned this group before. It is the group which joins disabled adults with abled adults and over the summer they grew an enormous garden. Now they have a small store front where they are going to sell the teas and things they created. H. adores this group and it has been so good for her. When I picked her up today, she announced to me, "I love those people!" It's good for anyone to have a place where they walk in and are instantly greeted by everyone by name. (Think Cheers.) It is even more important for H. who really needed a group of people to belong to and call friends. I am extremely thankful for the group and the people who make it happen.
  
• I have not yet played with my loom. I am being very good and responsible. I have decided that I am just going to cut off the warp that is currently on it and start from scratch when I do play with it.
• I wore a pair of shoes yesterday that I realized are looking more than a little used up. What I mean when I say that is there are actual rips in some parts of the leather. But they are comfortable and useful and I don't really want to try to find something to replace them, so there they stay in my closet looking more and more disreputable. I knew they were a little old, but I actually thought about how old they are today. These shoes are actually over 20 years old! I have definite memories of them being new in our old, old house, the 1894 Victorian we lived in before we moved to the Big, Ugly House. I also remember them being rather expensive. I guess I've got my money's worth out of them. It also made me rethink how old my "new" shoes are. Those seem to be going on ten plus years because I bought them when G. and L. were babies. They really seemed newer to me than that. 
• Someone mentioned they wondered how I did it all. (Actually, I get this comment a lot. Really, a lot.) But I don't do it all. I do what is absolutely essential in that moment, meeting deadlines (mostly, when I'm not late) by the very skin of my teeth. For instance, there are a bunch of papers that need to be signed sitting on my desk. Last weekend I thought, "We should get to those today." I realized as I was driving around today that not only did we not get to those papers last Sunday, here it is Friday and they're still not taken care of. This happens more frequently than I care to actually admit. I think I have time issues. Not with the hours in a particular day, those I manage fine. It's the bigger time issues... days, weeks, months, and years it seems.
• We rode out the huge wind storms on Wednesday safely. The trees stayed upright and nothing was blown down. We didn't even lose power which kind of surprised me.
• TM leaves tomorrow morning to pick up D. from school. He is driving over, spending the night, and then he and D. will drive home on Sunday. Then everyone will be home again!
• Tomorrow I will ply the next set of singles yarn I have spun for my future sweater. That will take me up to 750 yards meaning that I will only 550 yards left.
• We went out to dinner with good friends last Friday night. That would be real friends, adult friends, in person, at a restaurant. It was amazing to do that again. 
• You all know that I think homeschooling is a great educational option. I have many, many reasons that I think this. But, I am also heart broken that one of those reasons is that I currently do not have to decide whether or not it is too dangerous to send my children to school on any given day. I will say it again. I hate guns.

And on that pleasant note, I'm going to stop here for the evening. My mystery is calling to me.