the things we leave behind ...

it's that time of year when resolutions are made (only to be broken mere weeks later).  when we all vow to let go of the past, to be better, to move forward.

to be honest, those promises can happen every morning when we wake up.  each day we are given the opportunity to make that day better than the one before.

it's a conscious choice.

this morning, however, i was struck by the significance of our unconscious choices.  or the ones that are made for us that we chose to accept as our own.

i was looking for a coat hanger to hold a macrame project i am working on for my front porch and i found this reminder of a previous (witness protection) life of mine in california.

whether it came from the first one (1985-1988) or the second one (1989-2001) what struck me as significant was the fact that i still had it.

i still had a coat hanger that was likely made in the early 1980s.  why?  why would I hang onto something (pun intended) that old and insignificant when i had been unable to go back to wisconsin (through no fault of my own at the time) and get boxes and boxes of items that did actually have sentimental and practical significance to me?

because it had a function.

when i look at the things i have lost or let go of in the past 50+ of my 62.5 years, it has been the things that no longer had a purpose in my life that i've really let go of or lost.

i could have made the choice to continue to pay on the storage unit in wisconsin until a time when i had actually died or been able to get the items left behind.  but i chose to let them go because in spite of the sentimentality attached to many of the items, they never really had a function in my life.  some had actually been in boxes for decades, never displayed, never held as reminders of happy times.  i held onto them because i was expected to.

i chose to let go of expensive kitchenaid appliances, princess house crystal, pampered chef cookware ... things from my lbd (life before david, not little black dress unfortunately).  i let them go because they no longer had a function. my party ju-ju had been broken by wpl # 3 and his son.  they had dared to break the sacred #1 rule of hosting a party and turned off the background music to watch a very inappropriate comedian because "they were bored."  my guests fled the scene of the crime and never returned, too afraid that the insolence was contagious.

my life changed in 2021.  i changed.  i evolved into someone who valued function over form.  practicality over pride.  each year since then, i have let go of more things that no longer had a purpose or a function in my life.

do not mourn the things lost in 2024.  reflect on the memories or experiences.  choose to make different choices if you want each day.  because what we leave behind no longer serves us.  it is only what we hold onto each day that decides how our lives will function.

choose joy.  choose forgiveness.  choose love.  choose peace. choose kindness, choose hugs ~ Ci 💚

bits and bobs ...

 I made my Yule Blessings Ball for the coming year...

Charlie got his teeth cleaned, and a tooth (broken in the attack) removed.  He was still a little groggy from the anesthesia when I took this photo of him napping.

Bookmarks made with photos & backing stickers I found when unpacking.  The backing stickers for them, and for making postcards, can be found [here at Photographer's Edge].

The grandaddy (or grandmama) of all possums in the yard.  Roughly from nose to start of tail 23 inches, I would add another five or six inches for the tail.  I'm happy to keep it happy with dog food during the winter.  It will be a valuable friend in the summer months when ticks are in the yard!

Hugs ~ Ci💚

it's been a minute ...

 ... since my last post.  There was a holiday blue funk I had to fight off.  A few days of why bother and what's the point.  Too much time watching movies and eating marzipan stollen.  

November came down.
December went up.

I finished a bead suncatcher for myself.

Wallpaper went up in the cabinets.
Doors came off.
A snack center was set apart that is reachable from the dining/living room side.

There was a visit to a new dermatologist complete with several spots frozen (deeply frozen) on my face, arm and shoulder blade.  But I like her.  She's extremely thorough, and listens, whereas my previous dermatologist was dismissive and in too much of a hurry to move on to the next patient.

Charlie has healed quite nicely and has a much needed and overdue dental cleaning this coming week.

Unpacking is still a chore I procrastinate too often, but I've made some progress.  I will be needing to make more progress this week as I've been forced to buy rugs for all the rooms.  We had a week of below freezing temperatures at night, and for some of the days.  

My glow-in-the-dark cat slippers were not up to the task of keeping my feet warm from the chill that was coming up from the basement, and I'm having issues again with frostbite-like symptoms on a big toe.  Reynaud's.  Ugh.  Oddly enough, the slippers have vanished into thin air.  I suspect a ghost has hidden them from my view because I have looked everywhere for them, and in this small house, there are not many places to hide.  I've ordered some winter slip-on snow boots to use as house shoes, and my amazing neighbor also bought me some temporary ones and "HotHands Toe Warmers" to use as well.  It never occurred to me to buy them, and I used to buy them all the time in the Michigan Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin.

A dining/crafting table is also coming next week which will force me to consolidate and declutter the dining/living room areas.  I really don't want to take tubs down to the basement to store craft supplies because I fall prey to the "out-of-sight-out-of-mind" concept too often.

I'm planning on writing again in the New Year ... picking up where I left off in My Best Friends Have Hairy Legs and wrapping up the last decade or so of my life.  My calculator just told me it has been 16 years, 2 weeks since it published.  Thankfully, time flies when you are trapped in an abusive marriage to an alcoholic meth addict.  I've been debating for a long time about writing "that" story.  A part of me doesn't want to give him the notoriety (or the time of day), but I realize there is a lot of healing in exorcising that decade from my soul.  Maybe it will finally put the insomnia and nightmares to rest once and for all.

Wishing you the happiest Yule season and a magical Solstice ... Ci💚