The First One...

After I mailed my Christmas cards this afternoon, there was a big envelope in the mail for me from Canada with a calender with my first Christmas card in it. So the Christmas season has really begun for me now. The calender was from Violet Sky, who sent me the Canadian Milk Calender, which has recipes with milk as one of the ingredients in it. I coveted it and she was kind enough to send it to me. It got here just in time, because I needed the month of January to write appointments in.

Now I have a brand new, almost empty year ahead of me and I can't wait to start filling in all the little squares and read all the recipes at the same time and, most likely, try some of them out also. You see how there is temptation in even something as innocent as a calender. I think 2009 is going to be a good year. A tasty year.

I wore my glasses today, after I put my make up on sparingly, but nicely, and then everyone kept looking at me and doing double takes, but mostly nobody could figure out what was different about me. Some people thought I had gotten a haircut, but nobody said, "Oh, you're wearing glasses!" I thought that was interesting and it goes to show you that wearing glasses is really no big deal. People just accept them as being part of you and can't even remember if you always wore them or not, which makes me determined to keep wearing them. It's part of my new style and approach to the world. They are not rose colored, but they could be.

I went to the grocery store to buy more milk and bought stamps for all of the cards and swung by that clothing store to buy another scarf for 5 Euros. I like wearing the green one so much, that I wanted another one in another color. This second one has purple and black and red in it. I know I have things in my closet that will match it. I'll be known as the scarf lady and it will become a whole new hobby of mine, scarf collecting, along with necklace collecting. I can't have it tight around my neck, though. That makes me feel like I'm suffocating, so I drape it loosely.

The Überhund has decided that what he really likes for breakfast, is a bowl of muesli, so I have been giving him one. He eats it up all at once and can't stand having the cats come near, he likes it that much. He is extremely fond of milk and I am assuming it is okay. I give him more muesli than milk, and he just chows it down.

His eyes are also starting to look really good and I think the worst of it is over. They are looking much more normal now. The right eye is still a little cloudy, but it is definitely better than it has been and he sees better too.

I finished another collage at creative therapy today, I worked and worked and suddenly it was done. That was it, there was no more I could do to it. Next month I'll buy two frames and frame it and the other one that I have done already and hang them above my bed. Or hang them above the sofa and hang the ones above the sofa above the bed. I'll see. Whatever colors work best. You always think that the one you finished last is the best one you did. That's the one you are the most fond of. I have already cut images for the next one, I have to find bits of text, but I am going to wait until I have the images down. I want this one to be more whimsical and playful and less structured.

The time passed quickly this morning and before I knew it, it was time to go home, when I could have stayed there for a few more hours. Alas, it is not to be so. Three hours is all we get. Between Christmas and New Year's there is going to be no therapy and I will miss it, but on Friday the 2nd of January, we are all invited to come to a creative therapy class. Thank goodness for that. If I could tell you how much I like creative therapy, I would be a heck of a writer.

It's only 5 o'clock and already it is completely dark out. It makes you think it is much later and that you ought to get your pajamas on. The days go by quickly when I don't get home until 1 PM. I wonder how it is to work from 8 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon.It must be real drudgery, because you spend so many hours away from home and come home tired, with hardly any hours left to do anything interesting. I have admiration for people who do it and hope they love their jobs. Otherwise it is just a sort of slavery to your work and having to go to earn the money because you have to and not because you want to and that must be awful.

Well, I'll find out one of these days, although when I had children, I felt I was on the job 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, non stop. Always alert and always patient and always ready to jump in for whatever needed to get done. They don't teach you that in school. Nobody tells you about that. I envied my then husband, who drove off to work in his nice shiny car, in his nice pressed suit and his freshly ironed shirt. Although I am sure that he had his tough days too.

Well, I have to feed the animals. Various ones are staring at me. Sort of hypnotizing me into action. I have to feed myself also. I may just have scrambled eggs. That would be a treat.

I hope you all had a good day and that the world has treated you right. Noli nothis permittere te terere.

Ciao...