Dear 2007,

I just wanted to write and thank you for everything.

*thank you for my family - for my Mom and Dad and my brother and sister-in-law and my gorgeous little niece, and my extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins and one Oma. Thank you for their health and happiness and just for them being here in the first place.

*thank you for this blogging community. I'm not very good at it anymore, but people still come to read what I have to say and I appreciate that. Thank you for all of them. Thank you for their honesty in their own posts and comments. I hope they all have love and happiness and that they know that their words matter to someone. (I won't put links here because I don't want to hurt anyone by forgetting them.)

*thank you for the tribe of women I have encircling me. They know who they are. It's been a difficult year in a lot of ways. You gave us a lot of work to do and some pretty big challenges. We have made it through and are stronger than we were in 2006! Thank you for their presence in my life.

*thank you for the roof over my head, continued health, a job, and for constant inspiration and challenge.

*thank you for the most romantic moment of my life - so far.

*thank you for other adventures - for Bath and for London and for Bournemouth and for walks around reservoirs, and for Dartmoor, and for the beautiful place I live.

*thank you for my parents coming and seeing me where I live and for every ounce of unending support they continue to provide - even when they don't understand their unconventional daughter.

*most of all, thank you for another year with the love of my life.

Thank you for everything, and I look forward to meeting your successor.

All my love,
meg
xo


Dear 2008,

You are going to be the best year of my life - so far.

(Just thought I'd better let you in on that so we are both on the same page!)

LOVE, meg. xo



(Happy New Year everyone!! Make a good wish tonight and I'll see you in '08!)

into my pail

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” - Dr. Seuss

I had "one of those days" yesterday. Things have been strange and difficult here so yesterday I finally dropped out. I had one of those days when I put on clean pajamas in the morning and then go right back to bed. I read Oprah, ate soup, napped, but mostly found myself staring off into space for vast stretches of time. I haven't had a day like this for ages. If I paid attention I could literally hear the index cards falling into place as my mind filed and sorted through the accumulated bunf that has been filling my head lately. I felt sorry for myself, I cried, I sighed, I understood, I held my breath and at some point in the evening I came up for air.

I'm writing this because there are people out there who read blogs and think that other people have it all together. There are people out there who compare their dark sides to the sunlit sides that we allow ourselves to put out into the world. Sometimes life gets too hard, but hard is important in our stories too.

Today I am feeling a little better. My Mom calls days like that "going into your pail" after the character on Star Trek who used to have to go into a pail to regenerate every once in a while. Sometimes we need to retreat into our pail and let our filing system get to work. I'm going to spend some time with my oldest friends tonight. That's another kind of regeneration. Between the two I should be ready by tomorrow to take on the world again.

xo

my Christmas rant.

“The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart.” - Helen Keller

I need to warn you, this will be a little bit of a rant. NOTHING bugs me more this time of year than people saying that they hate Christmas. HATE CHRISTMAS?!? HATE CHRISTMAS?!? Well, if you fall into that category, I'm sorry but you just don't get it.

Now I understand about hating the commercialism and the crowds and the pressure. I understand about being sad and lonely during this time of year. I understand about the weather and the traveling and feeling overwhelmed. I get that. I understand all of these feelings, and often feel this way myself. But I am here to tell you that it's not CHRISTMAS' fault that we feel this way. It's our own. WE create our reality. If you spend Christmas worrying about the perfect present or having the right amount of baking done or whether or not you can spend one more moment in the company of someone, this is not Christmas' fault either.

One year I spent Christmas in bed. I worked at a Christmas craft show at the end of November and came home on December 5 with a socking great case of Mononucleosis that kept me in bed until nearly March. I was completely bed ridden and semi-conscious for much of the month and when you are in bed in December there is not very much on television except those specials. Being in bed meant I didn't help with the preparations or the shopping and I got out of the hoopla by having a neck swollen out past my ears.

When you watch nothing but Christmas specials for 20 days you begin to see a bit of a pattern. Whether it is The Grinch who Stole Christmas (the original one!) or Frosty the Snowman or The Year Without a Santa Claus or Rudolph or any of the nine million other Christmas specials that are on, the message is exactly the same. The point of Christmas is to be nice to each other. To love each other. To believe in magic. And most of all, the point of Christmas is to "keep Christmas in your heart" for the the rest of the year. KEEP believing in magic. KEEP being nice to each other. Believe in love.

So go ahead and hate the crowds, the pressure, the multiple family crisis', and the commercialism, but don't blame Christmas. Look at what you are doing that makes you hate Christmas and for heaven's sake, DO SOMETHING ELSE. Hatred is not the way to move into a new year.

So I wish you peace and joy and warm cookies and angels. I wish you warm legs to put your cold toes on. I wish you laughter and calm and love. I wish you help getting everything you need to get done. I wish you a perfect moment of peace. I wish you belief in magic. I wish you a moment of clarity. But I don't just wish this for you today. I wish you a whole year of these things. I hope that you can keep love and joy and magic in your heart until I can wish it for you again in 2008.

Ho Ho Ho.

(If you are need of a little bit of Christmas cheer, go onto iTunes and download Stuart McLean's "Dave Cooks the Turkey" or any other of his Christmas stories. It'll be the best .99c or .79p you've spent this Christmas! I promise.)

OFF to the Great White North!!

Yo Hosers! (Canadians'll know what that means!)

We are off right now for the two day trip to Canada (don't ask!) where they have been snowed in already!!

Yay!

See you in North America!

Sigh.

homeland here I come!

xo

weirdness!

This little fella is a "Pink Fairy Armadillo." Strange little guy isn't he? Kind of makes you wonder about evolution and how and why it works. In fact, if you go to this website, you will find LOTS of reasons to think twice about evolution!!

Mark and I saw one of these at the Natural History Museum in London when we went there at the beginning of December. If you are ever in London, GO to this museum! Even if you just walk in the door and walk out again, you will feel just like a little kid. It just looks so much like a museum you might find in a movie. There are monkeys carved into the walls and every single surface seems to have detail on it. Our overwhelming impression of this building was, "they don't make 'em like this anymore!!"

We went to London to see the exhibit of Terracotta Warriors at the British Museum. (This picture is from their website.) This is the largest exhibit of these statues that has ever been outside of China. It was really amazing. (If you don't know what they are, go here.) We marveled at the scope of one man's power and need for immortality. It's interesting that 2000 years ago a megalomaniac was able to create an entire world for himself and be in control of an entire nation and achieve a kind of immortality. Our modern megalomaniacs (Michael Jackson, for example) create their own worlds (Neverland) and we think that they are crazy, (and I suppose he also has achieved a kind of immortality.)

Funny isn't it?

On our trip we also slept (as Mark says) in Tupperware (open the 'small rooms' link near the bottom of the page), shopped in our dream grocery store, and ate in a most unusual place! We had lots of talks about what we want our life to look like and where we are going and what we are going to do. Things are tight right now, but we are really going places. I have been inspired by beauty and potential and the unusual this month. I hope my eyes stay this open.

earliest memory

“It's surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time” - Barbara Kingsolver

Do you know what your earliest memory is?

I think I figured out what mine is today, and I don't know if it's good or not!

We were talking about chickens at lunch and I was recounting a story about when I was a child and my parents had chickens. When I was just a tot they decided that they were going to (with a bunch of their friends) kill and butcher the chickens themselves. There is a photograph of me at about 2 or 3 kneeling on a table in my navy jumper and tights and cute little blue cardigan sweater looking at a half butchered chicken. I don't remember that part very well.

Today when I was telling that story, though, I had a vivid memory of our friend Lawrence showing me an egg that was still inside one of the chickens when he was cutting it up. I remember that it looked just like an egg but that the shell was still soft and squishable. I can see it as clearly as if it was yesterday. I have a few other memories, but it's getting so that I don't know if the memory is actually mine or if I have seen a photograph of it and it has turned into a memory. So I think that this is my first honest to goodness memory.

A dead chicken and a squishy egg. What does that say about me?

What is your earliest memory?

bigger and bigger

"Feel the light caress your fingertips.
You have just begun, the word has only left your lips.
Maybe in time, you will find
your arms are wrapped around the sun."
- Deb Talan (Big Strong Girl)

When I saw this ring on Thea's blog (and then her Etsy) I knew I had to have it! It's my new writing companion. It's a tangible reminder that FROM NOW ON my intention is to be so much more than I currently am!

RRRrrrrrroooOOOOoooooAAAAAAaaaaRRRRRrrrrrrrr!!!

big day!

I keep three wishes ready,
Least I should chance to meet,
Any day a fairy
Coming down the street.
I'd hate to have to stammer,
Or have to think them out,
For it's very hard to think things up
When a fairy is about.
And I'd hate to lose my wishes,
For fairies fly away,
And perhaps I'd never have a chance
On any other day.
So I keep three wishes ready,
Lest I should chance to meet,
Any day a fairy
Coming down the street.

Annette Wynne


Mark's Mom let me see her copy of The Wish Book a few weeks ago. According to that book today is one of the few days in the year when all of the cosmic forces are aligned properly and you can make a really big wish! Apparently the powers are strong all day, but most powerful between 3:18 & 3:22pm today. (Now, I don't know about time zones... that one is tricky! I'm just going to go with it!) It doesn't matter if you subscribe to the idea of cosmic ordering or not, it's a lovely idea that today is a powerful wish day and that all over the world, people are believing in the power of magic, the universe and their dreams.

I used to wish the same wish for everything. It used to be a wish for my Grandfather, but now that he is gone I am a lot less focused. If I met a fairy or a genie walking down the road, I'd be all flustered while I searched for something. So I think that today I am going to come up with my BIG wish and wish it at 3:19. It can't hurt, can it? You NEVER know!!

Do you have a great big wish ready?