I spend at least one Saturday a month trolling the thrift stores for whatever tickles my fancy.  I’m thankful that I am able to spend at the thrift stores and here is nothing like the thrill of finding some oddball thing I didn’t even know I needed!  But as a writer, sometimes the thrill of it is finding a story.  I know much of what ends up at thrift stores has gotten there because some thoughtless person got rid of whatever it was.  Sometimes children are cleaning out a parent’s house, and they aren’t attached to the things.  Sometimes, it’s something outgrown, or not needed, or an extra.  I know, because I have a giveaway bin in the basement, and that’s where I toss things that we no longer need or want.

When I find something interesting, something unusual, I try to figure out what the story is.  Or better yet, I make one up. A recent trip to a local thrift store led to me finding this:

Actually, there were two boxes.  This one was full of home decor patterns – curtains, cushions, slip covers, stuffed animals.  The second box was full of garment patterns.  My first thought was that a daughter had had to clean out her mother’s sewing room.  Two cardboard banker’s boxes stuffed to overflowing with patterns seemed like something I’d find in a mother’s sewing room.  I know some day my daughter is going to have to clean out mine, and it may not end up being any better.

The second box, however, was more intriguing than the first.  Most of the patterns in it had notes on the front.  Notes about length, about leaving off this piece or that or adding something.  Then there would be  name and a phone number, and some of them said “paid.”

Then there was this one:

Lots of construction notes, and “skirt is stupid.”

I wonder which skirt she thought was stupid?

I write on my patterns, too.  Sometimes I make notes about things I changed, or about things I wanted to change next time I made it.  Since I have some patterns with similarity, I will sometimes write on the pattern what fabric I used, or what outfit I’d made, so I’d remember next time I wanted to use it.

I have to think that this woman sewed professionally.  There were too many patterns with notes and names on them.  Like she’d purchased the pattern to make a specific outfit as ordered for someone.  When she passed away or had to enter an assisted living facility, her patterns had gone to the local thrift store.  I, myself, am using a sewing machine that was once used by a professional seamstress.  I wonder what happened to this woman’s machines (she likely had more than one), her leftover notions, her tin of buttons and boxes of lace?  Those would have been treasures to have.  Perhaps the daughter kept those, only getting rid of the patterns.  It’s hard to say.

So many thrift stores, so many stories.  I wonder what stories are being made up about the stuff I dump at the thrift store?

Today, I was poking around in the local Goodwill here in Longmont, Colorado, when I ran across the quilt Becky Fetters of Laramie, Wyoming made for your son.  It is rare that I walk by a quilt without looking at its stitches, its binding, its piecing.  This quilt was no different.  It was small, about 30 x 40 inches, featured sailboats set on a red background, bound in yellow.  The workmanship was remarkable – the piecing was superb, all corners set perfectly, and the blind stitch used to attach the binding was the best I’ve ever seen.  The mitered corners were tight and flat.  It was machine-quilted, but not commercially.  Becky took her time with red and blue thread, outlining squares and snipping off the ending threads.

Then, on the back, I noticed the label.

So this little quilt, perfectly made, which had to have taken hours for Becky to create, was intended for your son. How, exactly, did it end up at my Goodwill, 2 hours away, tagged for $6.99?

I have to admit, my first reaction was anger.  My second was a profound sadness.  As a crafter, as a creator of handmade goods that I gift to people regularly, my heart breaks for Becky.  She worked hard on this little quilt.  She surely intended for Henry to use it.  I’m sure she didn’t intend for it to end up at the local Goodwill, discarded without so much as a thought.  The more I looked at the quilt, the more I realized that it had not even been used.  It was still stiff from the new batting Becky had used, the binding still crisp and not worn at all.

As a crafter, as a person who gives her hand-made goods away often, I have to wonder how many of the beautiful things I’ve made have been tossed away, where they end up in the $1.99 bin with all the other discards.  What would Becky think or feel if she knew the quilt she had worked so hard on was discarded this way?

Perhaps there’s a story I don’t know about this quilt.  Perhaps Becky was not as good a friend to you as she thought, and you never took the gift to mean anything because of that.  Maybe the quilt was with the other baby things, when you and your husband split up, and was lost in the move to new living quarters.  Perhaps Henry didn’t survive his birth, or his early years, and you couldn’t bear to have his things, lovely as they were, in your home any longer.  I would like to believe that this quilt was discarded on accident, or for a specific reason, than to believe you tossed the quilt into the giveaway bin with Henry’s outgrown clothes and the stack of worn towels you culled from your linen closet.

But the truth is, Ms. Brooks, I see quilts like this in the thrift stores often.  Perhaps 1 in 10 of them have such a label, or show the marks of being handmade with love for someone.  It is much more likely that you didn’t even realize the work that had gone into that quilt, the hours, the love and care put into it.  Like others in this world, it never occurs to you that something made by hand has value, and should be treated as such.  Our disposable society has not taught us well these last fifty years.  The handmade quilt has no more value to you than the package of receiving blankets you purchased at Walmart.  I want to believe this isn’t true, but too many times, it is.  The odds are that you carelessly tossed that quilt, never even bothering to think about its value.

I am still sad, and angry.  I am sorry that little Henry won’t grow up to be a father, and find that homemade quilt in the box of things you give him to use with his own baby.  I’m sorry that Becky’s gift meant so little.  I am angry that you were so careless with it. I don’t know enough about your story to feel any differently.  I would like to think that none of these things is true.  But the odds are not in your favor.

Today is the Pagan holiday of Imbolc, or Midwinter.  Most of us just celebrate (or complain about) Groundhog Day.  The day is roughly halfway between the Winter Solstice and the First Day of Spring.  It is a time when ancient peoples believed that the winter began to show a thawing, a warmth in the soil.  Green things began returning.  And in some parts of the world, this is true.

But for the United States this year, spring seems awfully far away.  The Midwest and Northeast, particularly, have been besieged by very cold weather, much of it sub-zero, and more moisture than usual.  The Old Farmer’s Almanac had predicted such weather, but I’m sure that doesn’t make them feel any better about it!  I know when I lived there, this was the time when a last hard bit of winter came slamming in, and then suddenly, there was warm and green and flowers.

Here, however, we are not at our climatological midwinter. We won’t be for several weeks yet.  We are actually headed into our snowiest, coldest season.  We got about 13 inches of snow in the last four days, and while today was sunny and broke 30 degrees (barely), we are in for three snow storms this week.  If there are green things growing, we sure won’t be seeing them under the blanket of white!  We had a relatively mild January, which was lovely, but we are no fools.  Spring is a lot further than six weeks away.

That doesn’t keep me from thinking about spring and summer.  I miss my bike rides, for sure.  I’m also making plans for my summer garden, thinking about all the fresh produce I will be eating when the time comes.  I’m thinking about a day when I don’t wear boots as my primary footwear, and for when I won’t wear two layers of fleece to go outside.

I do enjoy winter.  I enjoy all the seasons.  I’m grateful that we have seasons here, and that they are distinct.  I love watching my daughter play in the snow, I love the look of the bright sunshine and brilliant blue sky against the mounds of white.  In spring, I love watching everything bloom and come forth.  In summer, I love the bright evenings and outdoor activities.  In fall, nothing beats the brilliant golden coins of the Aspen trees as they turn in the mountains.  It is all good.

For now, I will spend my “down time” making hearty soups, building warm fires in the fireplace, crocheting a pretty or two, reading a few books from my “I should read this” stack, and enjoying long winter’s naps under the warmth of quilts. If I want green, I’ll stare at my jungle of potted plants vying for sun time in the windows of my home.  Spring will be here when she is ready, and summer after that.  For now, there are no barbecues, but there are plenty of loaves of fresh, warm bread served with savory, hearty meals, fuzzy slippers, colorful crocheted scarves and snowy mountains to keep me happy.

Happy Groundhog Day!

The other day, I took a link to a news article that was really mostly pictures.  10 Landscapes Magically Transformed by Light shows some stunning photographs, taken by professionals (with presumably very expensive cameras), at times of sunrise and sunset.  I have taken similar pictures, with a cheap camera, hoping to capture what my eye sees.

I often think I am the only one awake, alert, and out and about at sunrise.  I’m an early riser, as I have been all my life.  There is very little I find more magical than that early morning light, before and during a sunrise.  I am fortunate enough to usually be in a place where I can observe it, especially on weekdays, when I’m in the middle of my commute.  As I drive along the foothills from my town to Boulder, where I work, I have a wide, unobstructed view to the east across fields of cows and huge reservoirs of water.  Our sunrises here are spectacular, even on a day with no clouds.  But beyond that, those early mornings (and late evenings when the sun goes down behind the mountains) produce an unusual display of color, as well as an unusual effect that causes the landscape to be swathed in pastels, softened and lit in a very unique way.  When I see those colors, that softening of my environment, it is heart-stopping with its beauty.  All I want to do is pull my car off the road and sit and watch it transform into day.  The same happens in the evenings, when I catch a sunset doing the same thing to my world.

Photographers call this the “Golden Hour.”  It really isn’t an hour.  Sometimes it lasts for five minutes, or ten.  But it is fleeting, and gone before you can take it all in, most of the time.  If I have my camera handy, I take pictures.  Not fabulous ones like the link above.  But I catch the gist of it.  There is a magic to that time, when the world looks soft and happy and non-threatening.  There is no dread, or worry, when my world is in that Golden Hour.  It is a time when time seems to stop, but only long enough for you to say “wow” and suck in your breath. I know not too many people get to see sunrise, by choice.  I am not one of them.  I am often up before sunrise, ready to see that glorious Golden Hour one more time.

Someday, I will live in a place where I get to see sunrises and sunsets from my home.  I love my townhouse, but it’s in town, and I have only an obstructed view of my horizons during the Golden Hour.  By the time sunrise reaches us, it is too late for those pastels, that softened landscape.

The other day I watched as the sun went down over the mountains, during my commute home.  I wrote the below, and stopped to take a picture.  The words are more descriptive than the picture.

Sometimes, my Colorado is made of pastel blues; clouds floating along the blue sky, skimming across the blue-tinged pine-ridged mountains, the whole of it made misty and magical by a haze of moisture from the vapors of melting snow re-freezing as fog in the early twilight air. Everything is still,. The cold kisses your cheeks and makes you feel alive, yet so soft, calm and peaceful that you could gaze at those clouds forever.  Those pastel blues melt away the visions of brown, dead winter and you forget, for just a little while, how cold it really is.

This is my Colorado. This is my home.

Sunrise in Baraboo, Wisconsin, on the Baraboo River

Sunset from the front of my house, Longmont, Colorado

Sunset on the Front Range (taken from Lafayette, Colorado)

Sunrise from the mountains (taken near Peaceful Valley, Colorado)

Moonset above Long’s Peak, Colorado (taken from Longmont, Colorado)

Sunrise over Estes Park (looking northward)

Sunset at Coot Lake, taken after a heavy snowfall (near Boulder, Colorado)

Sunrise at Coot Lake after freezing fog (near Boulder, Colorado)

Sunset from downtown Longmont, Colorado.

Sunrise over Golden Ponds (Longmont, Colorado)

Sunrise from my back patio, Longmont, Colorado.

Sunrise at Lagerman Reservoir, near Gunbarrel, Colorado.

Happy New Year!  Time for me to come up with some resolutions.  Just for grins, I went back and looked at my resolutions from last year.  I had four.  Then I broke my leg.  So I ended up not doing as many or as much of the few as I wanted to.  In fact, I’d even forgotten I’d set those resolutions!  Durn it.  I need to do up a poster for my office wall that reminds me of what I want to do this year, so I see it every day.  That may be the only way to keep up with it.

Last year’s resolutions included keeping up with my exercise plan, reading a book a month, minimizing again (more simple living), and starting a Christmas fund.  The only one I kept up with was the exercise plan.  I probably read 12 books last year, but not one a month, as it went in fits and spurts.  I still have more crap in this house than I need.  And Christmas fund?  That didn’t happen.  I can say I was busy recovering and had bigger things to think about, but that’s just a lame-o excuse that anyone could make.  Either I need a more creative excuse, or I need to stick to my plans better.  I think I’ll choose the latter.

So, here we go:

1. Maintain and increase my exercise plan.  I’ve talked all year about joining Planet Fitness, if only to have somewhere to work out when the weather is bad or it is too cold to be outside.  So I will do that by the end of the week.  I did start taking Zumba classes in September, and have been doing that pretty regularly.  I like Zumba, but it probably isn’t enough.  I know it isn’t enough.  And it’s winter, so the bike rides are few and far between.  It doesn’t help that my riding space was destroyed in the phenomenal flooding we had in mid-September, either.  I have some alternatives, but they are not as good as where I was riding before.  Still, that’s no excuse, and I need to keep up with what I started.
2. Read two books a month.  I’ve been reading a lot lately, mostly junk-food (romances and mysteries) but I do read most nights at bed time.  As I did several years ago, I will state clearly that I can read more than two books a month, but that additional books read in a month will not count for a following month.
3. List one thing each day, in the morning, from my 14,000 Things to be Happy About book.  To remind me to be happy before I have even started my day.
4. List one thing each day, after dinner, that I am grateful for.

Three and four will appear on my facebook page.

One theme of the past year was that I received a lot of blessings.  Things are good.  Theya re not perfect, but nothing ever is.  But I am sometimes not as grateful as I should be, and I don’t always have happy days.  But I don’t want or like angry days, and I intend to make habits that get rid of that attitude.  Habits are hard to break once they are built, and an habit of gratitude can’t be a bad thing, right?

So, we’ll see how I do this year.  That poster sounds like a really good idea.  I think I’ll do that right away before I forget.

I didn’t know what else to call yesterday.  A year ago, I went into the mountains under my own power.  I got in my car and drove there.  I hiked up around the Fall River Road in Rocky Mountain National Park.  I crossed the frozen Fall River several times, my boots keeping me steady.  I took pictures, sat on a rock and watched the hawks, ate a tangerine, and just enjoyed the cold and the fresh snow.  I’d done similar things in all kinds of weather over the last year and a half of living here.  When I think of places to get away, Rocky Mountain National Park is it.

Done with my hike, I headed further uphill in my car to Many Parks Curve, intending to look at the Fern Lake Fire, which ad been burning for several months at this point.  Winter was going to extinguish the fire, and I wanted to see it and take a few pictures.  It was a Sunday.  It wasn’t overly cold, in the upper 20’s, and clouds were coming and going.  There were a lot of people in the park, since it was a holiday week and many people were off work and traveling.  I got out of my car and took this picture before walking across the road to the walkway that looked out over the fire.

Next thing I knew, I was on my butt on very cold, wet pavement, my foot twisted at a completely unnatural angle.  It was a minor fall.  I set my boot in some slushy snow and it slid back and forth a bit, I lost my balance, and went down sideways onto my knees.  My leg was broken in three places, and my ankle was dislocated.  There was no pain, at first.  That came later.  The first thought in my head was “How the heck am I going to drive my car down the hill?”

That was the least of my worries, of course.  And in my usual non-panic mode, I was able to calmly talk to the tourists around me, including four ladies from Tucson, Arizona, who were visiting the park for the first time in their lives.  They called 911, they got blankets and mittens from my car, they stayed with me until the ambulance came.  I could have screamed, and cried, but that wouldn’t have gotten me off the mountain.  All of them kept asking me if I was okay, which of course I was not, but it wasn’t like I could change anything about what was going on. December 30th, 2012, is etched indelibly in my mind.  Facts and details stick with me.  There was the ambulance ride down the mountain to Estes Park, the second fall at the medical center in Estes Park (not a trauma center and not particularly adept at treating me for the short time I was there), a second, very long ambulance ride from Estes Park to Lafayette and a hospital with a trauma unit, then a painful few hours while they figured out what to do about my leg.  I was later told this was one of the worst breaks they’d ever seen.  It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know that at the time.  My leg was set, and I was admitted overnight to see if the swelling would go down.

Most people know how determined I can be.  One old boss referred to me as a “bulldog,” and he was right about that.  Sometimes when I’m sure of something, I won’t give up.  This was one of those times.  I behaved myself overnight, keeping my feet propped up high, my head low, and prayed.  I went in for surgery the next afternoon, roughly 24 hours after I’d had my fall, when the surgeon was pleased with the lack of swelling.  Ten screws and a plate later, I was put back together, and sent home on New Year’s day.  I spent New Year’s eve sleeping off the anesthetic from my surgery. The surgeon told me the next day that if I did what I was told, I would walk out of his office in six weeks.  He only told me one thing:  non-weight-bearing.  No standing on my foot.  Period.  That was the only restriction.

Today, I am walking, biking, hiking, and pretty much doing my normal thing.  The ankle gives me some trouble if I’m not careful, and it doesn’t twist the way it did before.  It never will twist the way it did before.  There are big numb places, from all the nerve damage. My leg was not set until nearly 8 hours after I broke it, which gave everything plenty of time to go into survival mode.  The numbness from my instep to above my ankle bone will be with me for life.  There is minor numbness on the right side of the ankle, and the entire foot can often be hypersensitive to touch.  The hardware coupled with the regrowth of bone and tissue, not to mention the severe scarring from the fracture blister, have left my ankle misshapen, and that is permanent too.  I cannot wear heels of any kind, and never will be able to again.  Strappy sandals?  Out of the question.

What I do have is mobility.  I am walking.  My injury could have left me with a permanent limp or worse.  My surgeon, usually a hip and knee replacement guy, performed miracles on my break.  He put everything back together, and it all works again.  Yes, I did my part.  I stayed off of it.  I rested when I felt like I needed to.  I ate so much calcium and protein that I was pooping seashells.  I would have walked out of his office in my walking boot, but the dried skin on the bottom of my foot was like some weird helmet, and the pain was too intense when I would put weight on my boot.  So I didn’t do that until I got home and had a chance to shower and soak that foot.  Then yes, I was walking on it.  He delivered on his promise, because delivered on mine.

I am so grateful to so many people.  The four ladies from Tucson who stayed with me until the ambulance came, and made sure that my car was locked, and that my purse got onto the ambulance with me.  The dozens and dozens of people that stopped to ask if I was okay and if they could do anything.  The Ranger and three paramedics who helped stabilize me and get me down the mountain.  The second ambulance crew that had to do the long-haul of getting me out of Estes Park and to Lafayette, 90 minutes of winding, curving road away.  The Xray techs at Good Samaritan Hospital who went out of their way to get my xrays taken without having to move my foot or leg, including the one that actually stood up on my bed so he could press the plate down into the mattress so the xray would be good.  The six or eight burly male nurses and orthopedists who set my leg that night (yes, I was knocked out for that, thank goodness).  Julie, the overnight floor nurse who took such good care of me.  Dr. Chiang, my surgeon, who put me back together.  I’m also thankful that the Perfect Child’s boyfriend at the time could drive a stick, and they came up the mountain to get my car.  He was six foot four, all legs, and he managed to fold himself into my car to drive it down the mountain.  My husband’s boss at his new job was very understanding, so he could spend time with me those first few hours.  And my Perfect Child, despite being sick, handled everything with grace and maturity, doing what needed to be done before she had her own melt-down.

My fall may not have been much of a lucky break, but being surrounded by competent, helpful people made all the difference.  I was out of my cast on Valentine’s Day, and wore a boot for four weeks after that.  The day I took my boot off I was on a bike and rode 5 miles.  By Easter, I was digging in my garden, something I wasn’t sure I could do.  I have not looked back, and I will continue to move forward.  This year, my New Year’s will be spent at home with my family, toasting another good year, and hoping for another good year to come.

Ankles together.  The right one will never look quite right, but it’s better than it was a year ago!

Inside ankle.  The fracture blister took a long time to heal, weeks after my cast was off I still had scabs there.  The area is completely numb so touching it is creepy and weird.  The scar runs from the fracture blister down to below the ankle bone.  There were 9 staples there.

Outside ankle.  The plate is longer than the scar, which is only about 5 inches.  The only numb place is right along the scar itself.  There were 18 staples there. That small red dot was where the bone penetrated the skin, and it has a thicker scar, so sometimes I accidentally scratch it and end up with a scab.

This is the first time in 23 years that I have a house full of non-believers.  It is hard for me to remember the time “before,” and now I’m not quite sure what to do with the time “after.”

You see, Tater is about to be 12 years old.  She stopped believing in Santa Claus this year.  She probably didn’t quite believe last year, but kept it a secret so as not to hurt the Santa she loves best – her daddy.  I had the Perfect Child ask her when they were working on their Christmas lists this year.  And it appears Santa has gone the way of the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

At the time, this revelation actually made me sigh with relief.  It has been hard, all these years, to keep the Santa thing going.  Finding places to hide everything was always the biggest hurdle, but there is more to it.  There’s remembering not to say “I got that for you last year for Christmas” and other brainless things.  So it is a relief to not have to hide presents.  As I bought them, I wrapped them and put them under the tree.  As I found things for stockings, they went into a box I kept under the bed, and a few days ago, I even assembled those so it was done and I didn’t need to think about it any more.  And Tater, for her part, has really gotten into the spirit of things.  I told her she needed to pare down her collection of stuffed animals this year, and she gave them as gifts to all of her friends.  She has happily looked at the presents under the tree, zeroing in on the ones that are hers, and how big some of the ones for others are.  It has been a bit of an adventure for her.  And for me?  I get to see all those lovely wrapped presents under the tree for the entire month, instead of for just a few short minutes on Christmas morning.

And even better?  Klown and I don’t have to stay up late, waiting for kids to go to sleep so we can drag the presents out of their hiding places and to the tree.  We can go to bed for a decent, long winter’s nap, and wake up refreshed and ready to face the mess that is Christmas morning.

In Klown’s world, when he was growing up, he would go to sleep Christmas Eve and there’d not be so much as a piece of tinsel anywhere to be seen.  He’d get up on Christmas morning and the tree would be up, loaded with presents.  I cannot imagine how his mother did that, in one night.  I cannot imagine how exhausted she must have been when morning came.  It takes me two or three days to put up the decorations in the house.  But it made it magical for Klown to wake up to that on Christmas morning.

When I was a kid, my mother worked in a business that was super-busy leading right up to the last day or two before Christmas.  Christmas was a hectic time for her. As I got older, I took on more duties.  I baked cookies, helped decorate, helped wrap gifts.  My brothers did too.  And my beloved Gramma was always around to help, too.  Christmas eve was our big night.  We had practiced for weeks with the choir at St. Joseph Church, and we were ready to sing Jesu Bambino at Midnight Mass.  We were ready for the candlelight, the noise of a crowded church, the joy of the music and the feeling of love and comfort.  We would start napping about 4 p.m., so we would be fresh for our late night.

And somehow, when we got home at 2 a.m. after that long service, our voices hoarse, but our spirits bright, we were supposed to go to sleep.  We were supposed to not hear our parents putting out the gifts under the tree.  In the morning, we were up long before they wanted us to be.  Except for Gramma.  Gramma was always so excited I don’t think she actually went to sleep at all.

This is my favorite time of year.  It is busy, it is hectic, there is a ton to do, I am always behind in shopping and mailing packages and Christmas cards.  There are parties and potlucks and cookies to bake, and meals to plan. There is beautiful music and Christmas lights in the snow, and I drag out my Christmas sweaters and earrings and have fun.

I know I am blessed.  Things aren’t ever perfect, and never will be.  But I live in the place I’ve always wanted to live.  My house has a fireplace.  We have had snow three times in the last week.  There is a metric ton of presents under the tree.  I am not sick with a cold or the flu, something that used to happen to me every Christmas.  We have a big ham for our Christmas dinner.  I have nothing to complain about. I have everything to be thankful for.

Happy Holidays to one and all.

‘Tis the season.  Klown and I have been booking Santa and Mrs.  Claus gigs here and there in the area.  We don’t do a whole lot of them, but enough to remind me about how magical this time of year is for children.

The first weekend of December, we performed as the Mr. and Mrs. at an HOA party in a fancy housing development.  The kids ran the gamut from newborn to 12 years, from scared to oh-my-gosh-Santa!!  They were dressed in jeans and sweaters, fancy dresses, fleece pullovers, and pajamas.  A bit of everything.  Each child got a small stuffed animal, a candy cane, and a cookie recipe (for mom to make for Santa).  The little ones who wouldn’t sit on Santa’s lap would sit on mine, and I got all the babies.

This year, Klown is also doing some part-time gigs at the local mall as the Mall Santa.  They don’t usually hire his type as a Mall Santa – he is wearing a wig and beard.  Mall Santas always have real beards.  And they are usually older, in their 60’s or later.  This is the preference, and I understand it.

But when it comes to these real-bearded Santas, natural isn’t always better.  In fact, I might suggest that the naturally-bearded Santas don’t always have what it takes to be Santa.  They don’t have the personality, or the buy-in, to do it right.  By “do it right” I mean that they need to care about what they are doing.  They need to care about the kids, they need to care about the magic that is Santa.  They need to have not only the look, which anyone can buy with a good wig and suit, but they need to have that ability to become the legend.

Because, in the end, that is what Santa is.  That legend has kept children in a suspended state of happiness throughout the month of December, for generations.  Yes, he has changed over the years, but not that much from when I was a kid 50 years ago.  When I go to perform with my husband, I am always enamored of his ability to talk to the kids, to encourage them, to treat them gently when they are frightened of him, and to be brusk with those that may abuse his good nature. When he goes from Klown to Santa, when that coat gets zipped and the wig goes on, he becomes what the children expect.  He becomes Santa.

It takes more than a suit and a beard.  It takes someone who hasn’t forgotten what it was like to be a kid, who hasn’t misplaced or forgotten the magic of the season.  It takes someone who believed in Santa once, and didn’t forget what that felt like.  Klown is that kind of guy.  I am proud of him for it.

We came back from our trip back to St. Louis, excited to be back in warmer temperatures.  It was in the 60’s the day we came home, and sunny.  I had missed my sun after being in St. Louis for a cloudy week.  I sure don’t miss those grey, damp winter days there.  There was, however, still snow in places when we got back, despite the warm weather.

But we dived right into a severe cold snap on Monday night.  There was snow, about four or five inches of it, but mostly, there was cold.  It’s been well below freezing, and mostly below zero, for the last six days.  Today we have reached 20 degrees.  I don’t mind cold, but it does become a bit of an inconvenience after a while.  Our streets are still snow-packed, even the highways, and without warmth from the sun and temperatures, that will stay the same.

In the two and a half years we’ve lived here, we have not seen a cold snap like this.  We will get a cold day or two, where it will get near or below zero.  But we’re going on nearly a week of below-zero temperatures.  Parts of my house have frozen, reminding me of my days in Kirksville, Missouri, when our terrible dorm windows would freeze over and stay that way all winter.

This is the window by our front door.  Today the ice has melted some, but it had covered the lower third of the window most of the week.

This is ice on the door sill, next to the window in the previous picture.

Ice on the patio door frame in our bedroom.  This has glued the curtains to it, as you can see.

We are not cold in our house.  I have put weather stripping on our two main doors, and our furnace runs well.  We’ve had a fire in the fireplace several times this week, and our beds are nice and cozy at night.  Even my basement office is comfortable at 68 degrees, after I sealed up the window over my desk.  And we have bright sunshine which warms up the interior of the house.  I’m making savory, stick-to-your-ribs meals that keep us all feeling happy and toasty.

I have always said that winter is my time.  Winter is beautiful to me, with or without snow.  It is a time when I can slow down somewhat, regroup, re-gather my energies, and do some things that I don’t have time for any other time of the year.  That being said, I do not stay inside all the time, either.  I get out and let the sunshine get on my face, let that frosty air cool my cheeks.  I put on my chapstick, bundle up in layers of warm clothes, and get out there.  The mountains are gorgeous this time of year – dusted with a sparkly fairy-dust of snow, with crisp white peaks in the background.  Yes, driving can be messy, and it’s too cold to ride my bike, but I still enjoy it.

As we decorate our house for the winter holidays, and plan cozy evenings at home or out and about at local events, I focus on the joy of being alive, of being blessed with a warm house, a good job, a great family, and a beautiful planet to live on.  Driving through our downtown’s main street last night, all of the shops were decorated for the season, and the city has draped lights on every power pole and tree.  At one end, our 25 foot tall pine tree is decorated with twinkling white lights, and the tall Ash trees on either side are hung with dripping icicles.  This coming weekend is the Longmont Holiday Lights Festival, and we will spend two nights at one of our parks, watching the ice skaters, enjoying the decorated trees, drinking hot chocolate, listening to carolers, and visiting Santa.  Saturday night we will snuggle in blankets and boots in the snow and watch our Longmont Parade of Lights.  I honestly cannot think of a better way to spend an evening.  We will come home with frosty cheeks, and happy smiles

Yes, it’s cold.  But here, it’s winter, and we expect it to be cold.  We embrace it, and we revel in it.  Soon enough, it will be spring, then another hot summer will roll over us.  I’m hanging onto the cold for now, as if I could keep it for later when it is hot and I’m sweating in the garden or on a bike ride.

Our green space behind the house.  The pond is frozen, and will probably stay that way now until spring.

I know it’s been a long time since I posted.  I’m a slacker.  I’ve been busy but there is really no excuse for not keeping up with my blogging.  Going to have to work harder at that.

I have much to be thankful this year.  On Sunday, we piled into a rental car and drove the thousand or so miles to Missouri to spend the week with family and friends.  Other than a stiff wind about the first half of the drive, we had no trouble at all.  We were tired when we got here, but we’ve spent the last few days really enjoying spending time with our friends and family.  We’ve gone shopping, eaten out, slept hard, and feel renewed.  I still hate St. Louis weather and traffic, but I have missed my friends and family.

My thankfuls this year include being able to make this trip in the first place.  As my job shifted from part time to full time, we suddenly had the money to be able to make a true trip home.  I’m a bargain shopper, but there are some things that aren’t cheap no matter what you do.  For us, it was the hotel, and the rental car.  Even with discounts, these things are still pricey.  I couldn’t have done it if my job had not gone full time.  This is Klown’s first trip home in the two years since we left.  The girls and I were able to go home last year for a short stretch, but all of us getting to go, and spending an entire week – this has been priceless to us.

I am thankful that I have the intelligence to choose NOT to shop on Thanksgiving or Black Friday.  There is no deal worth my peace of mind, or worth making other people have to work through the level of crazy this kind of shopping is.  I will still shop for Christmas, but it will be online, or on weekdays, or anything other than giving up what is sacred about Thanksgiving day and that whole holiday weekend.

I am thankful to have healthy family.  My mother is living a happy life in Florida, and I get to have her live with me for a month or so every year.  She is able to travel, and dig in the garden, and do what she wants with her life.  She is blessed, and I am blessed to have her in mine.  My dad is hale and hearty as he approaches another decade, and my amazing step-mom is just that, amazing.  They are a happy couple, and generous beyond belief.  My brothers and their wives will surround our table this year, and the grandkids are not kids anymore.  We will have a day of turkey and stuffing and potatoes and green bean casserole and wine and some hard apple cider I brought with me from Colorado.  The Packers will play football just for me (although without my beloved Aaron Rodgers as he recovers from a shoulder injury), and we will come back to our hotel tonight in a turkey-induced haze.

I am thankful to have a beautiful and warm house in a wonderful complex that believes in green space and quiet.  I have a fireplace that warms us, an office I can escape to, a guest room that our friends and family are always welcome to use for a visit, and plenty of windows to enjoy the Colorado sunshine.  We have a great landlord, and we love our little town that is big enough to have what we need but small enough to be a pleasant place to live.  I am blessed to live in one of the best places on earth, full of beauty and a thousand reasons to be outside.  I am thankful that even though I got hurt in the mountains in December, I am walking, climbing, hiking, doing zumba, and riding my bike all the time again.  I will never ski or snowboard, but I can (and will) do everything else.

I have no complaints, and if I do, I am going to keep them to myself, as my blessings far outweigh my problems.  I wish everyone a blessed and happy Thanksgiving, and may the rest of the winter holiday season bring you more joy than pain.  Love to all of you.