Something Different

Tomorrow will be a week since I posted here. Where on earth has the week gone? Makiya had no school on Monday and that turned the week topsy-turvy. I haven’t been overly busy, but there have been things that needed doing and I was out of the house more than I’d like to be getting them done. I watched the final episodes of The Great Pottery Showdown and it tweaked my creative side. I have wanted to pull out my watercolours and play, but the opportunity hasn’t presented. I’ve puttered and visited and run errands and just carried on with life this week.

There’s snow on the ground and it’s here for the season now. The days are short and dark; I’m going to bed early and sleeping later than I like, tangled up in vivid (and not always pleasant) dreams. And reading. Always reading. What a treat it is to crawl under flannel sheets and dive into another good story! This year I allowed myself to unapologetically embrace once again the sheer pleasure of getting lost in good fiction. It’s all I’ve read. I needed the escape words have provided because, you know, the whole world is kinda crazy right now.

This December is different (aside from current events). Right now, for example, three tweenage girls are laughing and having fun in our hot tub. It’s good to hear laughter. The world needs more of it. Gerry and Laurinda are out for the evening so, after Makiya’s friends leave, it’ll just be the two of us for supper. I predict even more laughter then.

The other night when Laurinda was cooking supper, Makiya picked up my phone and noticed my wallpaper was an outdated photo of the three of us. She suggested it was time for an update—something different—so we hammed it up and managed to get one reasonable photo of the three of us I could use.

Two years ago, right around this time, Gerry and I were traveling back home after visiting our kids in Prince George after celebrating an early Christmas. It was a beautiful travel day and we stopped so I could capture some images with my phone camera. I was thinking about that day earlier and thought I’d share a few pictures with you.

Speaking of different, how do we navigate these days when every day it seems like the news offers something different to be concerned about? After struggling mightily in 2020 now, at the end of 2021, I’ve come to the conclusion that we do so by living and loving as well as we can—not seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses, but through a filter of knowing we all struggle and carry different burdens and, despite evidence to the contrary, it is still a wonder-filled world. As individuals, we can’t change everything, but we can change something for someone and that, more often than not, is our better work.