The view through my wreath
Dear Friend,
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! A blanket of snow fell this week, and we’re back to cross-country skiing (after a brief hiatus where we could see green grass for a while).
The Christmas decorations are up. Each year I add a new string of lights to my light collection, and yesterday I finished putting them all up outside (although I do have some bulbs to replace). Doug likened it to “abstract art” because the lights seem to be flung into the trees and bushes at random. We have a “real” wreath this year, which I spray with water at night to keep it fresh. It’s Douglas Fir, and the needles are so soft and lovely. I have a vintage ceramic tree from my grandmother on the table, but no real tree, so the wreath fills in.
On Tuesday I helped plate candy for the Friends of the Library bake sale table at Valier’s annual Christmas stroll. We gathered at the library to put chunks of fudge, peanut brittle, and other candy on a plate and weighed each one so that they measured 1 lb. exactly. On Thursday, a neighbor and I sold the plates and by the time I left 30 out of 39 had sold.
I left early because it was Doug’s birthday on Thursday and we were having tacos for dinner to celebrate (he asked for the crunchy shells and I obliged). The Pats were playing on Thursday night football, but we missed the beginning of the game so had to wait until after 10:00 to start watching it. I fell asleep. They lost.
We watched a bit of the World Cup this week and surprisingly, I enjoyed it.
In other news, I have a new job description on LinkedIn. I’ve been working at Modern Direct Seller since last March, and very happy there so decided to make it official with an update to my profile.
This week I published an essay on Substack about my reading life, particularly what I’m reading about Portugal. I really am loving Substack. The writing community there is great, and this week I had my first paying subscriber! It was the best $5 I have ever earned! The goal is 1,000 paid subscribers.
In addition, I’m part of a book club on Substack that meets monthly, and this month we had the author of the memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, Ingrid Rojas Contreras as a guest and I got to ask her about how she handles remembering given how faulty our memories are - especially when it comes to handling sensitive topics. The irony is that I don’t remember much of her answer because I was interrupted in the middle of it, but what I do remember is her saying that memory is like a fabric and it’s important to write about the feelings that you remember at the time.
For me, I’m learning that it’s just important to write.