Lovely Surprises

This is Cynthia (left) and Susan, who gave me a wonderful surprise today. They drove from Horton and Valley Falls to come to the Kansas Country Living open house. I had no idea they were coming and when I opened the door and saw them I was practically speechless. It was so cool to see them.

It was a lovely afternoon, visiting with them as well as other folks who came. One nice couple came from Leavenworth, which is a very long drive. They came for the open house but were making a weekend of it in Hutchinson, which is nice.

All in all it was a nice group - some local folks, including Anne from Roy's, and some folks who came a distance. I'm glad I did it.

Plus, it encouraged me to get things "finished" to a degree, which is nice. Tonight I've been relaxing, which is something I very rarely do. I'm going to head into the sunporch and sit down with a book. I've positioned the chair I reupholstered a few months ago so I can sit in the sun porch and see the main Christmas tree from there. Seems like a good way to wrap up the day.
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Cleaning House

I'm cleaning house. For me it's deep cleaning. For most people it would probably be the average weekly cleaning. Honestly, how do people do this on a regular basis? It's exhausting. And boring. Oh so boring. I could deal with all of that - but - it doesn't stay done. How do people have the fortitude to face this every week? Obviously, the women of the 50s were far  better humans than I am.

Of course, in my defense, they weren't bothered with that little problem of making a living, either. Maybe if dust bunnies were the most stressful work issue I faced every week I could make quick work of them too.
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Weekend

I'm so glad it's the weekend. Work is very stressful these days so I welcome the opportunity to not think about it for a couple of days.

I've been decorating more tonight and picking things up around the house. I live... uh... "casual"... shall we say. This translates into there are always piles of stuff lying around my house. Once a year I try to pick them up and make it presentable for company. That's the Christmas season. Now.

Tomorrow is my Kansas Country Living open house and I want things to look nice. "Nice" in Patsy-houskeeping-world means fewer piles. New! Improved! Fewer piles!

I haven't cooked even one thing yet but I don't need to make very much since it will be a small group. So, I'll do that tomorrow. I still have one more tree I want to decorate - just a little four foot one. I never know when to stop. I just keep going until people are knocking at the door. Foolishness, I know. Soon I will be running out of space in which to put decorations, so that will end it.

I really do need to start entertaining in November so I get every last thing done then. Or I need to not decorate at all and do something completely different during the holiday season. That, however, might cause me to lose my nickname of "Miss Christmas."

Teresa and I had lunch again today. We haven't had a chance to do that in forever and now two days in a row. It was great to catch up with her a little bit. She was wearing a necklace she bought from Mia, Greg's girlfriend, who is a beader extraordinaire. I'm not much of a jewelry person, but my friends who are love Mia's things. I have a bracelet she made for me and I always get compliments on it whenever I wear it.

Teresa said today she wanted some of Mia's business cards because people were always asking her where she got the jewelry. It occurred to me that I could just post a link to Mia's etsy store for those interested. So, here it is... http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5518195. She was working on it in Joplin when I was there, putting up more photos. People often ask me about seeing her things, so this seems like the perfect solution. I've now discharged my official duty of connecting people and jewelry.

Well, blogging is not in any way helping reduce the number of piles in my home so I suppose I'd best get up and do more of that. Then I suppose I'll need to sweep up the broken bits of Christmas ornaments and dispose of them properly. This housekeeping thing is exhausting. And never-ending. I'm now remembering why I only do it once a year.
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New Life

I've been decorating more tonight. This is one of my favorite theme trees. I don't have a name for it but it's all copper, brown, beige and gold. Not shiny gold, but a brushed gold. Generally I collect things for a tree for a few years before I gather enough different things to create a new theme.

This one usually goes into my sun porch because I have some of the walls in there painted a coffee brown. But, this year I have a full size tree in there that's green, red, white and gold with a Santa theme so this doesn't work. So, it's in the living room this year, by the bookcase. It's a nice spot for it. I love the golden glow.



I spent all morning in the office today, which is kind of unusual for me. It seems I'm always running errands or doing other things that keep me from actually being at my desk. It's a lovely office to be in. We're so fortunate to have it.

Every spare moment these days I'm working on the house. Saturday is my open house for Kansas Country Living readers and I always seem to keep decorating until the last moment. I've had very few RSVPs, but I know I'll enjoy meeting the folks who are coming.

Otherwise these days my brain is in overdrive, imagining my life in the coming year and what it will look like. I know it will be different. Better. More me. It's just a matter of how that will happen and the specifics. But I feel big, positive things on the horizon. It's exciting.

I'm ready for some travel abroad, without restrictions on my time, and with the money to enjoy the time there. I was looking at a hostel in Madrid tonight. I am feeling drawn to Spain and Morocco has been high on my travel list for a long time.



As I unpack Christmas things I'm reminded of travel because there are bits and pieces here and there from trips. The long crystal the bird is looking at in this photo is from a French antique chandelier. I bought it in Paris at a little boutique I was just passing by. I think I paid about $4 for it. My intention at the time was to use it for Christmas, even though I didn't have this tree theme then. It's those little bits that excite me. Not because of what they are, but the moments they represent.

That day I was wandering the streets of Paris, in an area I'd not been in before, just meandering and looking at the scenery. I wandered into this little shop, figuring everything there was out of my price range, but that it would be fun to look. I carried out three little crystals, wrapped carefully in tissue paper for the long trip home.

The crystals have a new life now, as ornaments. I guess they were always ornaments, but they're now of a different sort. I'm ready for a new life, too. A life of far less stress and far more income, blessed with even more good health and friends, and spending much more of my time being me.
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Trish is a Sage

It doesn't matter when I start on Christmas preparations, I'm still doing them at the last minute. There's always something more I can do so I just keep going.

Tonight I realized there was a problem with my database when I printed my Christmas card labels. So, I'm trying to sort that all out. To say detail work is not my forte would be a very generous description. So, if you were expecting an invite to my open house and haven't gotten one yet, realize it's not that you have been left out intentionally and please just come. Do email me so I can fix your address in my database so next year it will be smooth. OK, I'm trying, really. I want it to be smooth. Seems I'm trying to do that constantly. Why can I never get it done? Oh yeah, reference the details not my forte comment earlier.

I had lunch with Trish today and we talked, among other things, about holiday gatherings and friendship in general. I told Trish the Christmas card list always makes me think about people in my life who don't engage with me in any meaningful way.

I mentioned a specific friend... well, I guess he's not really a friend... he's, well, he's a former friend, maybe... although I question if we were ever friends... anyway... I never see him unless I just happen to bump into him. When I do he's over-the-top effusive. "Oh, we MUST get together! I've missed you! Lets have dinner soon! It's so good to see you. blah blah blah"

Well, stupidly, I believe this means he wants to see me and we should have dinner soon. Where do I get these ideas? So, I will email and suggest something and he will be positive but we never actually set anything up.

The thing I do not understand is why in the world would you put this much energy into pretending that you like me and want to see me when you obviously do not? You can be polite and say hello and "it's good to see you" without this "we must get together, oh my gosh how have I lived without seeing you" crap. And it is crap. It's not that this person is not social at all. He sees other people in my extended world. In these days of blogs and facebook this knowledge shows up on my computer screen without me looking for it.

Trish suggested that she thinks maybe it's a way people feel like they're being social because they're acting like we're long lost friends. I'm not lost. I live a few miles away. I'm on facebook, myspace, twitter, pownce, plurk, linkedin, entrecard and a host of other sites I can't even recall. If you google for me you find about a dozen pages of references to me, with multiple ways to contact me. You haven't. That's cool. But why oh why do you pretend like it's just been some horrific oversight? Just be polite and move on. I get it. You don't really want to engage with me in any meaningful way - for whatever reason - that's fine - just stop pretending otherwise. It makes you look like a fool.

I decided that the key will be for me to respond differently the next time it happens. The next time I'm approached with this fake BS I'm just going to be polite but very non-committal. There's no point in me wasting any breath/time to respond beyond that, and it's making me look like a fool, too.

Then Trish, as she so often does, made the wise comment of the day. She is a sage, that one.

"It can't be meaningful if our entire relationship depends on chance encounters." --- Trish Rose

That is friendship in a nutshell. Those chance encounters may be that you're showing up at the same workplace or church, or that you bump into each other at a concert, or that you run into each other at the grocery store. It's not that those can't be fun, but if those are the only interactions we have, the relationship is not likely to grow and survive long term. It isn't meaningful and it's not going to be at that rate.

Trish and I also talked about how alcohol is such a driving force for so many people when they're gathering - that it is the big attraction. I do not serve alcohol in my home. I do not want the ethical or legal obligations to make sure people get home safely. And I just don't like to be around drunk people. Of course, not everyone gets drunk just because there is alcohol around, but in a group of 10 there will be one that's obnoxious in no time. I don't want to deal with that person, so, I just avoid the whole issue. Trish suggested that probably keeps some people from attending my open house. I suppose that may be true, but so it goes. I'm just going to proceed as normal and assume there are still some folks in the world who are interested in things other than alcohol.
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Snow in the Forecast

Winter came down to our home one night
Quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow,
And we, we were children once again.
                       ~Bill Morgan, Jr.

We have snow in the forecast for tomorrow for the first time this season. Of course, I got to see snow in Joplin on Sunday. I love the first snowfall of the season. It signals a shift in the seasons unlike anything else.

Of course, this won't amount to much accumulation, but it's just the idea that it's the time of year for such things. I do hope we get through this winter with the power intact the whole time.

There's something very cozy about being in a warm house while the snow falls outside. I've pulled out my long underwear, which appropriately enough have snowflakes on them; I've stocked milk and marshmallows for hot chocolate; I've fluffed up the warm socks in the dryer; so I'm ready for a cold snap.

No doubt I'll wish I'd spent some of the time I devoted to marshmallows to winterizing my home instead.
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Home

I am tucked into my warm house tonight, thankful to be here. I woke up early this morning to return to Hutchinson for work and was very sick. I had the worst tummy ache I've had since I was about four and ate too much German Chocolate Cake. (Mama let me have some, then Aunt Audrey did, then Cousin Cindy did, etc. etc. etc.) But I hadn't eaten too much German Chocolate Cake this morning - or any, for that matter. In fact I hadn't eaten anything that should have upset my tummy and it was more just pain than upset tummy.

I finally left Joplin early afternoon, with an aching tummy full of a variety of Miss Joy's over the counter medications, figuring I wasn't going to get much better/worse sitting there. It got much worse once I was in the car and I was starting to think I needed to turn around and go back to Joplin. Then, a miracle from above, it disappeared and has not returned. I was, and am, so thankful.

I'm a pain wimp. I've always been very healthy and the least little thing makes me whine like you wouldn't believe. Imagine how I was when I had a kidney stone. It wasn't pretty. My photo may still be at the emergency room with a big red circle and slash over it all these years later.

Today I was going through all sorts of options - appendicitis, gallbladder, kidney stone, etc. - but couldn't come up with anything other than tummy ache. That's the other thing I do, which I hate about myself - I start imagining I have horrible medical problems, including things there's a .0000000001 % chance I could ever contract. I simply cannot read medical books or websites. Next thing I know, I'm imagining I have some sort of rare disease one can only contract in the tropics, when I've been no where near the tropics. I just don't go there.

Tonight I'm so thankful to be feeling normal. I had some delicious dry toast for a midnight snack. There's no point in tempting fate.
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Check www.patsyterrell.com for the blog, art, and more. Friend me on Facebook.com, Follow me at Twitter.com.