Spirit of Bees

As a child I lived in West Berlin for almost 4 years,  from 1952-1955. It was a very interesting and informative experience for me being in a different country and learning a new language and learning about different cultures and customs, among other things.

Christmas was a really big deal in Germany. Lots of fancy decorations and such. We loved to go downtown to the big department store, the KaDeWe to see the really fascinating, high quality  animated window displays. The toys in Germany were fabulous, having been beautifully crafted in the old world tradition. My brothers got fabulous train sets one year and I got a pretend store, completely stocked with perfect miniature products. Wish my parents had saved that for me.

Anyhow…

One New Years Day a chimney sweep came to our front door, and we were told by our German housekeeper that it was good luck to see a sweep on New Years Day and that we should shake hands with him for luck in the coming year, which we did. Whether or not we had good luck, I can no longer recall, but I’d never seen a chimney sweep before so it was a pretty interesting and memorable event, regardless.

Here is a photo of that very sweep from 1953. I hope he brings all of us some good luck. I know I could sure use some this year. Happy New Year!

Somewhere in between the Christmas ironing…

And the Christmas garbage…

Christmas happened. And it was good.

One thing about writing a journal is that when I go back to look at the old archives, I have to face reality and it’s not always pretty. It appears that I do not learn from my past mistakes and that things are unlikely to change. I’m not sure I like knowing this.

Tonight I was scanning through some entries I made on comparable dates from year to year. It’s depressing to see that we always wait until about this exact moment to seriously address what needs to be done for the holiday. It seems we never shop until around the 19th or 20th. When we do shop I always have the same complaint; that is, that I am the only one who gets at all engaged in the gift buying, and C. is always grumpy and grouchy throughout the whole process.

We both work, far too much, really. So there is never much space left open for doing things unrelated to our work. And, it’s clear that we are pretty bad at advance planning.

I enjoy the idea of shopping for presents because I want to buy gifts for the family. But I can’t enjoy it when the person I am with is so obviously hating every minute of it.

I don’t feel that I should be the only person responsible for the gift buying. I don’t think that automatically falls into my job description just because I am female. Gifts are from both of us, why not have equal participation?

Yes, I could do it myself, but I have a very real issue with my knee which sometimes makes driving a problem. It hurts my knee, and I always worry that it is going to lock up when I am driving, especially when I have to drive in the snow when good braking reflexes are important. And walking in the ice and snow is not all that easy either.

Even if I did do it myself, I know I would just start to feel annoyed and angry. And I wonder if I did it all myself, would there be any other part of the holiday planning for which he would then take the entire responsibility? I doubt it.

I despair of ever finding a solution to this problem.

Been a little slow getting started posting this year. It’s always a busy time, and I really do not know what causes me to think that I can post every single day during this season.

This past weekend was especially busy. We celebrated my daughter’s 40th birthday. I cannot believe I have a 40 year old daughter. What’s more, I have a 42 year old son. Ah well, my ‘baby’ is only 36.

The birthday was very pleasant. I made a very, very special pair of one of a kind earrings which looked gorgeous on her and which she loved. Score one for Mom. I was just happy that I still had it in me to pull a good one out of the old bag-o-jewelry-tricks. In fact, I liked them so much that I had a brief moment in which I contemplated designing a whole new upscale line around that theme.

Though it was Susan’s birthday, she was upstaged by her 18 month old daughter, who was adorable as usual. Because I took care of the Papaya two days a week last year, from September through March, we have a very special relationship, and she loves her ‘Ge Ga’. She knows hundreds of words now, not that she pronounces all of them perfectly, but anyone can definitely understand her and she is not shy about expressing herself. One of the cutest new things is that when she accomplishes something she has been trying hard to do, she’ll look at you and very proudly exclaim, “I did it!”. I think she is very verbal for her age.

After that party, we went to the holiday party for the dealers at the antique mall where we sell stuff. We rented a space a couple of years ago, and we find it a great way to transfer some of our excess collectibles to new owners. Not to mention that it also gives us a perfect excuse to buy more junk, uh…valuable collectibles, to fill the spaces we empty out. It doesn’t hurt that we also like the mall owners and the other dealers a lot as well. What’s not to like? Everyone else has the same sickness we have, so we can share freely about our disease.

All that partying was just way more that we are used to, so exhaustion and the inclement weather, with the snow and ice, provided just the excuses for us to sleep in and stay home on Sunday. We puttered around most of the day doing some tidying up and some maintenance that we have neglected. Wasn’t exactly not working, but was very much more relaxing than going to the studio/office to continue the massive rearrangement we’ve started over there. In between chores we took a Larry David break to watch new episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”. I love it, but it is so painful watching him screw up that I can’t do a marathon viewing, I have to do it in small doses.

Now, this week, we are just hoping to get caught up a little before the whole holiday rush begins in earnest. Since everyone is coming to our place on Christmas day this year, we have to prepare. That means more cleaning and rearranging, not to mention planning the dinner, decorating in some way, as well as shopping for gifts.

All in all, things are OK for us and for most members of my family this year, and we have no major health issues to distract us. All my children and their families are doing pretty well, and we all get along fine. I have the very best grand daughters in the world. How ever did I get so lucky? So, though I usually tend to be somewhat of a Grinch, I find, a little surprisingly, that I am actually looking forward to Christmas this year.

All the uncharacteristic relaxing over the past couple of days must have gone straight to my head. For when I returned to the studio today, I got a bug up my ass to rearrange my space.

I wanted to figure out a way to do some woodworking where I could use a flexible shaft to power sand and carve some boards, without getting wood dust all over my jewelry bench and tools. So I figured by simply switching a cabinet and an extra jeweler’s bench I had, I’d be able to easily set up a separate area for the woodworking and other messy tasks.

Well, that’s how it worked out in my head, but reality is never that simple. It required removing all sorts of stuff from drawers and shelves to make things light enough to move around. And then I realized I’d have to reorder just about everything for efficiency. The final straw was that my perception of size failed me completely, and the pieces that needed to be moved turned out to be larger than they actually appeared based on my eyeballing the situation. Measure first, you say? Me? Uh, uh.

We carried on anyhow and finally had to face the fact that I needed to get rid of a desk entirely in order to fit everything into place. Of course, that desk was filled with stuff I needed, and I had to find a way of redistributing all that stuff to fit it in somewhere else within the designated space.

I wandered from one area to another, and from one piece of furniture to another, trying to figure out where to start to make some headway so I could proceed with the rearranging. But, by then the task had become so complex and overwhelming that I had a complete meltdown, right down to the point of collapsing in a chair and sobbing that it was all just too much and I couldn’t deal with all this crap anymore and that I’d just have to just throw it all out. That may sound stupid and childish but I was truly devastated and totally at a loss as to how I could possibly ever get things back in order.

To his credit, C. came to my rescue and instead of getting mad at me, he helped me look at the space in a different way and helped me see where to begin, and started moving things around for me. Once he got started, I could see that a solution might be possible, if not immediately attainable. So I calmed down and started to move stuff. We actually got the desk free and moved it out into the alley, and by the time we left things started to look better, but the job is still overwhelming.

This shows just one view, from one angle. In this small picture it doesn’t look nearly as daunting as it does large as life. I am so not looking forward to going in tomorrow to face what awaits me.

Studio Mess