The end of 2009

Each year at this time I wonder if I should make a list of things to achieve in the next year, and as each year nears the end I come up more or less empty. Now is "more or less empty" like being a little bit pregnant? It's a gloomy, humid day today and I can't get warm. I should welcome gloomy days since we have 99.9% sunshine where I live.  I need to get two things ready for January 10th when my daughter and daughter-in-law both have a birthday. I said I should, but so far I am doint nothing and the date is moving closer. Buddha's writings will tell you that doing nothing is doing something in which case I am doing a heck of a lot of something, but it's just not tangible. Windows 7 is throwing me for a loop, nothing is like the old laptop which had XP and was easy to figure out, not even the computer guy is that familiar with it, but he was able to get me on line again so I could get going, just haven't figured out get going to what, when, where, why and how? Okay so here is a partial list...get stuff to mail for the birthday girls, enter data in the new Brigitte Calendar Bernd sent from Germany. Straighten out the Christmas address list, exchange a jacket in Las Vegas and get some new clay and glazes, chemicals as well. Try to figure out Windows 7 and figure out the new photo program, the old one was simple and just right for my needs. At the top of the list should be "get going already, time is wasting".

World Peace Cookies

Today, five days until Christmas I decided to bake cookies. I'm not good at it, don't have a passion for it like my daughter does and only do it because it seems the thing to do. I stuck to some successful recipes from the past then called my daughter who is a terrific cookie baker and asked for some easy recipe. "World Peace Cookies" caught my eyes. She said I could use a variety of chocolate, and I searched the freezer for some. I found some white chunks and took the hammer to them and added them to the cookie mix. I thought they looked tasty and tried one, it didn't taste right and I couldn't figure out what it was. I looked in the garbage where I had tossed some papers that came with these chunks and realized that I just mixed Encaustic wax into my World Peace cookie mix. I tossed the whole thing out and started over using chocolate chips. Tomorrow I'll bake them because today my patience is at an end and I figure next year I'll buy them in the store.

Mothers, Memories

Something happened yesterday that reminded me of my mother, it brought back one of her habits. She would visit us here in the States from Germany where I am from, and I would offer her a Pepsi or whatever, she would say no thank you. That to me meant she didn't want one and I'd go on with what I was doing. She'd sit there patiently until I noticed that something wasn't quite right and I'd ask her. She'd say "you offered me a Pepsi" and I'd tell her that she declined. "You didn't ask me three times" she'd say and I would tell her there was no need to since she said no the first time. She had to explain to me more than once in the more than 30 years that she visited, that when she grew up it was impolite to say "yes" the first time one was asked, she had to be asked three times and only on the third time was she allowed to say "yes". It did not matter that 80 years had past since she had been taught that, she stuck to the old set of manners. What happened yesterday reminded me of that. I dropped a friend off someplace, he left the car in a hurry and I sat there waiting to be asked to come out and greet the other people, perhaps come in for a minute or two. I waited, nothing happened so I turned the car around and left. I got the impression today that it was not the thing to do and today I reminded myself of my mother, I've been in the States fifty years and I can't abandon some of the old manners, makes me smile, makes me think that change is not always an easy thing.