Projects. I Like Them.

Some of you are coming down off a turkey high this morning. The rest of us are just doing Friday, having celebrated a low-key Canadian Thanksgiving back in October.

I’m back at my desk in the woman cave, starting to put together my 2024 blog book. I’ve compiled all my posts in book format for the past seventeen years. It’s usually something I start working on in January, after the last post of the year has been published, but this year things are a bit more complicated.

Something possessed me to change where I host my blog not once, but twice this year. That, paired with the fact that the business whose tool I used in the past to extract the posts in a format I need to create a book is now defunct, meaning it takes more effort on my part to put everything together. Since I’m doing the work anyway, I decided to change the format of the book as well. Sure, why not? I think I’ll be pleased with the end result but I’m starting early so I can send the book to print as soon as 2025 dawns.

One copy. That’s all I’ll have printed, and I’ll put it on the shelf with the others. In the past, I’ve mined some of these books for material for writing projects like The Presence of Absence, but I’m not writing a book right now (and probably won’t again).

I’m saving these books for my daughter and granddaughter and people who haven’t been born yet (my great-grandchildren and their children, should the books survive that long). Legacy. That’s what the books represent. Maybe one day long after I’m gone, they’ll make interesting reading for someone I’ll never have the gift of meeting.

Or maybe they’ll just end up in a trash bin. C’est la vie.

---

It’s been cold this week and I’ve mostly stayed home. This afternoon, I’ll accompany Gerry to the optometrist where he’ll choose new frames for the glasses he’s finally going to be getting after having cataract surgery back in September. At some point either today or tomorrow, I’ll go to the church to set up for Eucharist on Sunday, the first one in Advent. Hard to believe, isn’t it?

I pulled out my paint the other day and splashed some on a couple of canvases. I’ve got an idea for something I might play around with (Another project! Yay!).

I snipped basil from the Aerogarden this morning, chopped it, bathed it in olive oil, and put it in the freezer. The kitchen smelled heavenly.

We woke to hoar frost on the trees. It’s so pretty! If it wasn’t so cold outside, I’d venture out with my camera and take some decent macro-photos, but this image caught with my phone through our bedroom window will have to suffice.

What a contrast there is between these two photos! The bright green of fragrant basil next to the stark and cold white frost on bare-limbed trees speaks. It speaks to me of the paradoxes of everyday life and how there’s beauty in the mundane. I see this as I’m working on the 2024 blog book too.

---

I started off thinking I’d do a Friday’s Fave Five post, but I’ve rambled a bit. I tend to do that these days. I think I can still pull something together though, so let’s give it a go.

• Telephone conversation with my daughter. Always a blessing.

• A good book. I’m reading Summerwater by Sarah Moss. Her style of writing in this novel is simply delicious. I’ll be checking out her other work when I finish this one.

• A heated home. Our furnace hiccupped earlier this week but all turned out well. It’s currently -22C / -8F and we’ve been in this cold spell all week. Heat is important.

• Sushi. I decided I wasn’t cooking one day and Gerry picked up some grocery store sushi. It hit the spot and I’m craving more. Maybe, when it warms up, we’ll hit the local sushi restaurant that we haven’t had an opportunity to try since we moved here and try a bento box.

• Friends. We’re blessed with good ones like this couple who entered our lives serendipitously when we moved to Moose Jaw. We enjoyed dinner out last weekend to celebrate the 77th birthdays of these two fine gentlemen.

Whether you’re enjoying turkey leftovers or just doing the day today, I wish you a pleasant one.