Hello to the Last November Monday of 2023

Ice forming on Dead Creek
Addison, Vermont, 25 November 2023

No Ice on Windy Lake Champlain
At the Fort Frederic shoreline
Upstate New York 25 November 2023

Earth's Moon Over Vermont
Waxing Gibbous 94.29% 25 November 2023
Northern Hemisphere
Beaver Full Moon on 27th

Have a Lovely Week! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Scheduling a post means  there's no news on what's going on when you wake up, unless, of course, you can tell the future.

That said.

This morning my most unfavorite weather is sleet. Sleety slush (nice ID name) is covering everything. Thankfully, I have no errands to run today. 

I've been researching pan watercolors because they are so easy to use. Thus far, I'm staying with Winsor & Newton. Pans, maybe not. I have dry watercolor in tubes that are about the same thing. Adding up my palette of watercolor 5 ml tubes, there isn't much difference in the cost of pans versus tubes. I don't know how to figure out the volume of pigment difference. 

There was a time when I was mainly a watercolorist. I changed over years ago to acrylic because it suited the depression better.

Now that I'm lifting out of an episode of the horrid blues, I'm rethinking things in various areas of my life. 

Thankfully again, not blogging hasn't resurfaced. Art has because painting has been a real struggle.  Wardrobe is another area as I want to down size my volume of laundry. I didn't buy a beautiful sweater at a fantastic price on sale because it is chenille aka bulky lint city. There's no longer an entire wash of chenille pajamas and sweathers for me to do since I stopped buying, and tossed most of them. I also tossed old tee shirts into the rag bag. Cooking is on the list as well. When I was a stay at home married person, I daily fed my family. Sure, there were new recipes that created laughable surprises, but I cooked more good meals than bad. Frankly, that burnt pumpkin pie was rather attrative with a rustic vibe.

Today I'm filling a big soup mug with the different teas for a teast tasting. Most are repeats I forget the flavor of. The trick is to taste any of them because the 2022 covid booster took away about 90% of my sense of taste. The covid booster this year hasn't brought it back as I had hoped. However, I was able to taste tea the other day. 

I could rattle on as I hear what sounds like a plow truck. I think it is probably a sander. It is thickly slushy outside. I woke just after 4 AM EDT. Maybe a nap* is in order. 

*Nap was nice, but not long enough. ☺

The Nice Things To Do For Yourself List

For December, a nice things to do for one's self list, I feel, is a good idea because it reminds folks to not be too busy for personal time, rest, being good to yourself instead of a gift giving overload or feeling the holiday blues.

Me first...

• Make a holiday ornament
• Set up a weekly tea tasting
• Cook a new recipe once a week
• Read a biography of a person who was born before 1950
• Weekly foot soak using scented soap, herbs and such
• Daily watercolor sketch
• Blackberry brandy & hot chocolate toddie on dark windy afternoons or at 3 AM when I wake up because I napped too long the day before
• Mail homemade greeting cards
• Sing a Christmas carol

Your turn.

Faux Tomato Cage Lighted Trees

2023

• Upside down Tomato cage
• Bend over bottom wires into a top
• Tie with twine
• Wrap faux greenery around the tomato cage
• Wrap 100 count fairy lights around faux greener
• Holes in the sides of a planter
• Put twine through the holes and tie up the tree
• Wrap planter with garden burlap 
• Secure with twice to match

2022

Day 328 of Week 47 of November 2023

 

Maple Leaves & Rain
December 2018

Should we think of ourselves in terms of cyber years? Think dog years where in comparison one dog year is 7 human years. The last 5 years for me have gone by as if in one year. In cyber years, if I add up the about 20 years years I've been online, I'm in barely in my fifties.

It's no wonder that the new 70 is the 60s. In other words, could it be that the longer we are on the Internet, the slower we are aging? 

The new fad for shorts (videos on YouTube, Tik Tok) feels like the new neighborhood of sitting on porch in the afternoon to catch up on everyone's news, and talk about what is going on around town and the World, a dash of community via cyber space.

Have a refreshing weekend!

Do a tea tasting with new flavors

Learn to crochet

Draw your own vehicle design

Have an egg salad sandwich & chocolate milk

Talk a walk with friends

Read about Chronoception

Build a cardboard bird house ornament

Pray for Peace

When Things Change

3 Quart Cassarole

All I see in the photo is the dinning table I have yet to finish sanding. During the deepest part of a depression episode, there will be reminders scattered about that pile up unnoticed until energy rises. Pressing my mind to think positive, the shiny new cassarole creates a smile on my face.

Here's the story. While shopping, everything I put in my basket, I put back. Nothing entertained my Spirit of Shop well enough. I was feeling a bit down about it as I wondered how did it happen. I am a good shopper, on the cheap side, but quality first. 

I realized working on goals, setting a budget, and down sizing stuff plays into what style of shopper I am. There's no fun in a good buy if I don't need it. I don't donate things to make space for more things. I donate to let out the waist of the things I already have. 

All in all, I am grateful I no longer shop aimlessly. Change can be good. I now have a perfect size pan for soups is a bonus.

What style shopper are you?

The Sense of It?

Beautiful Spirea 

To my shock and horror the Beautiful Old Spirea has been removed, cut down and dug up, gone. Things like that make me feel awful that I don't pay enough attention to what is going on where I live. There was no disease that I saw on the spirea. Why it was removed is a mystery. I'll call tomorrow to find out what board meeting minutes to read as to why the spirea was removed. It feels to me like an old friend has been kicked out of town for no good reason.

I posted photos of flowers because sometimes a person just needs to see flowers.

Update

The spirea in the photo above, not the ones in the background next to the monument, appears to have been removed without  the proper channel's approval.

I haven't looked to see if the other spirea on the city green are there. The monument is U.S. Government property, as in Federal property. I was told many years ago that even the city can't even do things there without permission. 

 

Funny Surprise: Look What Happens

On side table

next to your favorite chair, 

empty take out coffee cup

use as mini wastebasket 

for torn up address pieces of junk mail

From your chair,

Toss the now full take out wastebasket cup 

into a real wastebasket

about 4 feet away.

The cup will go in the wastebasket,

but all the papers will not.

They will fly out as soon as you toss 

the cup towards the wastebasket.

A wheee

Fun surprise

Brushing By Progress

Depression is starting to lighten for me. First time I've picked up a brush in almost 2 weeks. 

Its only a watercolor study, no major details. 

I like the green pumpkin, but not in that setting for a painting.

The background is different than the photo I took.

The sunlight needs work, lots of work. I think I'll change the sunlight on the pumpkin so it doesn't look like it is cut open. 

Half Way There Wednesday

A fascination with clothespins [2005]

A Cozy snowfall 

I bought marshmallows yesterday.

A covid pandemic era banner

No words Wednesday?

Waiting for the ferry?

Life at still

Not sure what that is
Looks like apple muffins?

P.S.

About forgeting the blog subject I was keen to post about,

I'm half way there. I remember the shirt I was wearing.

It will be draped over a chair to help shake out the memory.

Winter Cozy Porch Ambience with Beautiful Relaxing Music and Falling Sno...

A favorite video to relax by fills my monitor as I sit and write or just think. This YouTube video on the Enchanting Ember channel doesn't loop images in a way that you easily fall into the rhythm of the pattern. The music is also pleasant without being sappy. There are many others on that channel and other channels to chose from. Enjoy!

Thoughts About the Holidays

Upstate New York Adirondack Mountains
November 2017

 Photographs are part of our history, images  for moments we will never experience again. We can have similar, not exact. There is no camera that can record the future. 

Speaking of the future...

I read a CNN (11/09/2023) article by Kristen Rogers, about a UK study published in BMC Medicine that indicates people that don't have connections with their family and friends have a 39% chance of dying earlier than folks that do interact with their family and friends. 

It boggles my mind how we ever survived without all the information about what to eat, how to exercise, find friends, survive divorce and so on. I imagine most every subject that can be a study, is a study somewhere from a high school final paper to a PhD dissertation. Oh, and then to be established in one's field, one must be published...more conclusions about what is bad for us or going to shorten our lives.

As for any time of the year, following our doctor's instructions goes above any holiday frollicking, including drinking and food.

As a single parent back in the day, I had a family rule that during the holiday season, December into January, there are to be no arguments. It bit me a few times, but I survived.

With that in mind, holidays are a time to relax, go with the flow, find enjoyment in things, the people we shmooze, spend time with. If being unconnected to friends and family, then maybe you can find other ways to connect.

• Bird Seed (to watch birds)
• Mail homemade cards
• Church
• Christmas Carol Concerts
• Volunteer at a local animal shelter or food shelf
• Book a vacation
• Watch holiday feel good movies (stop if you have nightmares about Santa's sleigh going missing)
• Join an exercise group where nobody knows  your name until you tell them
• Take ballroom dance lessons
• Blog