I came to Chanukah as an adult, when I married a Jewish husband, and we decided to raise our daughter in the Jewish faith. I love the simplicity of Chanukah. Surrounded as we are with Christmas hoopla, Chanukah seems such a quiet festive escape. I love the last night the most when all eight candles are burning. I turn off all the lights and sit in the gentle glow of candle light until they burn out. I can do that now because my daughter is an adult on her own path, my husband died and I'm alone in the candle light.

I would choose Grisom from the old  CSI series. He was a multi-faceted and interesting person. He was observant, interested in life, and also
very non-judgmental.

Posting on LJ is becoming more and more irrelevant. Facebook is just more fun. So as my daily thoughts and comedic moments are shared on Facebook, I seem to be contributing abbreviated ideas from my blog *Paws Awhile* to LJ. I'm no longer getting the point. I continue with LJ primarily for the few friends that are not on Facebook. I have not enabled the interactive feature on my Blog simply to keep myself honest. If I'm not aware of the reactions of others, I'm not going to be writing for feedback.

I used to enjoy LJ when we were all using it. There was a true dialogue and more expansive thinking being shared. Now, not so much. I miss those insights. I learned so much more from the ideas and comments we all shared on LJ. Now the trend seems to be more toward using LJ to complain about life (freya46  is the exception She is usually positive). I complain too and I find myself tedious. So I'm still checking in for the few posts I mentioned, but I"m moving my main show to Paws Awhile http://kingmisha.blogspot.com/. I don't have enough time in a day or enough to say, to continue being active in three places.

See you anon.

One of the after effects of a house full of people is the intense quiet once everyone leaves. I really enjoy that quiet. It's like the days when mambolica was little and went to bed at night. I would sit in the quiet and relish my aloneness. There was never such a sweet feeling. That doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy my child or that I don't love house guests. Not at all. I really enjoyed the weekend a lot. It was filled with activity, a birthday party for Tori; a day with my other daughter Tracy and her two little people;screaminglife 's quiet conversation, dinner with Kathleen and Ray in attendance, and throughout, mambolica 's energy and humour. It was wonderful fun and I loved cooking special meals and the lively conversation, but last night when everyone had left, I enjoyed that special calm of solitude.

People need solitude to be friends with themselves. We need silence to connect with our inner selves. In this world of mobile communication devices, silence and solitude has become rare and all the more precious. I find it troubling to see that my daughter, her man, and so many others can no longer disconnect from their Blackberries. Wherever we go, they are checking their messages and texting others. It's done in restaurants, at birthday parties, in mid conversation et al. What could possibly be so important that it justifies such rudeness. At the very least, leave the room if you must check your messages. Nobody likes to feel irrelevant, but that is exactly how I feel when a text or a ring tone interrupts me. It's like talking with someone who is constantly scanning the room for someone more important to talk to. Cell phones are really useful devices for safety on the road, keeping people informed of your whereabouts, checking meeting times and warning about road conditions. None of these need to be reported or checked in mid-conversation at social functions. It sends out the message that being in the now with fellow human beings is without value. This, dear people, is at the very least - rude, and at its worst - unkind.

Getting back into my physio therapy routine means I'm doing my full workout again. Each day Sean makes me up the ante which is good, but really a bad idea to follow it immediately with an evening of pottery. My legs, back and shoulders are killing me. I'm so keen to get back to my full strength, that I forget about such things as balance, moderation and pacing. Also, the beautiful salad bowl I was making (note the term "was") is now in the rejected greenware bin. It cracked when I was drying it, so I tried to fix it. It then broke, and I tried to repair the break causing it to shatter. Oh well, life is short so I moved on. I made a whole new bowl. Not as lovely as the first one but it will do.

I"m trying to make sculptural vessels that are organic and useful. I keep pushing the envelope to stretch the clay thinner and thinner. I got away with it once, but have not been able to replicate that beginners luck. The second bowl is thicker and loses that floating quality I'm trying to achieve. But it will be nice and useful and organic, just not magical. As mambolica  can attest, we have never been "magical".

Now I must take my aches and pains to bed. Good night.

Emboldened by my very hip daughter,mambolica , I bought myself a pair of jeggings today.  They are very well designed with zippers at the ankles and soft stretch denim that I can wear with my tall boots. They really are blue denim riding breeches that are no more flattering than breeches, but in tall boots can handle the high snow this winter, The denim is so soft, I find them very comfortable. The best is - I paid only ten dollars for them. I also bought a blouse for five dollars, thatI admired before Christmas but found too expensive. Add a tunic style sweater vest (also previously admired) for another ten spot and you can see I'm very happy tonight. Thank heaven for end of season clearance sales. The stores may be thinking spring, but I know we have six more weeks of winter to go. A few new togs are no end of a pick-me-up.

I finally made it to pottery class last night. It was wonderful to begin working again.  My teacher, Karen Horst Jensen, is a wonderful person and a fine potter. She has volunteered to make bowls for the YWCA's Bowl of Soup Gala. ( If a person buys a bowl of soup they can keep the bowl). She asked if she could use my Hosta series concept for her bowls this year. I not only agreed, but offered to help lighten her load and contribute my talents as well. It'll be a lot of potting - very labour intensive, but fun.

screaminglife  and mambolica  will be visiting me in a couple of weeks and I'm really looking forward to that. Willy would enjoy a visit from the cousins but it may not happen this time. I won't mention it to him.

We are having a bout of illness here. First me, with that horrendous ear infection. Both ears completely blocked and aching. I had close to a month of being out of it from drugs, pain and deafness. Now Kathleen, my lodger, is ill with a vicious sinus infection. She missed several days at school and is sleeping round the clock. I've been making healthy soups and stir fries to keep up her strength. For the time being, Willy has escaped it. He had a really difficult time when I was deaf because I couldn't hear him and didn't respond appropriately. He chatters all the time and I respond but when I wasn't answering him he stated to become withdrawn and moped. When I went back to normal, Willy was wary then jubilant. Another example of how sensitive our pets can be to our health and mood changes. Now he is disturbed by Kathleen being shut in her room. He sits and picks at her door but she doesn't respond. This troubles him. Sometimes he'll stand on his hind legs and rattle her door-nob. I call him away so he won't awaken her.

Much as I love cats, I draw the line at cat fisticuffs and caterwauling on my back deck. They are not even my cats. One huge white male belongs to a neighbour. He is a bully and Willy instinctively dislikes him. The other is a dark grey feral tabby. I have been leaving a bowl of kibble and water in a sheltered spot for the feral cat who is too shy to come out if I'm there. The white cat is well fed and should stay home but clearly has owners put him out at night (even if it's freezing). The feral cat has nobody, and my food eases his rough life slightly. Tonight the bully showed up as the feral cat was feeding. There ensued such a territorial dispute, it was alarming. The white cat decided to launch an attack on the feral cat, who wanted to escape but was cornered. I seized a broom and intervened. They both ran off in different directions. The bully will go home and the feral lad will sneak back to eat his supper. Willy, inside, became over stimulated by all this and had to do his cushion to unwind.

Have a wonderful tripmildred  and nocturnalia! Mexico will never recover from having both of you on it's soil at the same time. Enjoy the sun, the food and the people. Enjoy, but also be wise, careful and stick together. There are bad people everywhere.

My winter garden in a blizzard.


I'm retired, so I have no pressing or urgent need to be anywhere. I can work or not work at my own pace. Still, snow days are surprise presents from the sky and out of our control. They just happen and it's the randomness that makes a snow day such a welcome gift. It's like being given a get out of jail free card and I can relax without a schedule or feeling guilt.

I love snow days! Kathleen, my lodger was called early in the morning - college closed - brilliant! Back to bed she went. I woke up to that wonderful silence that accompanies heavy snow falls. I looked out at the pristine unploughed world that is my garden and smiled with the recollected joy of my childhood. Yay it's a *snow day*.

I spent the day in my jammies. I read, wrote birthday cards, played on my computer and briefly went outside in big tall boots, over my pj pants, to smell the air.

Willy, my adventurous little cat tried gingerly high stepping it over the snow. No, not so good, so he walked all around my deck banister and over my window sill to get back inside. I took some winter photos and came in as well.

We ended the day with a splendid supper by relaxing fire. Kathleen, Willy and I spent a perfect winter day. We were blessed with lots of snow.

Three days of films and now it's over. The weekend-long party was a blast with folks moving between three theatre venues to catch as many films as possible. The scheduling was pretty well organized but in making my choices, many good films were missed. The two blockbuster films of Friday and Saturday were screened at the biggest venue so everyone could attend. There were no conflicting options for them. My best pics were: 1. Wasteland, 90 min. Brazil/UK; about redemption through art from trash,  2. Journey from Zanskar, 90 min. USA; about moving a group of Tibetan children in a difficult mountainous area of India, from impoverished lives to Buddhist schools in Manali to preserve the Tibetan language and culture.  3. First Flight, A Mother Hummingbird's Story, 45 min. USA (gorgeous), and  a tie in fourth place 4. Typeface, 65 min. USA, about the dying art of type making and printing; and Third World Canada, 51 min. Canada about the area in northern Ont. with the highest native suicide rate in all Canada. There were others that I liked - some shorter, or more experimental and some blatantly political. In the end it still boils down to production values, story and motivation.

I came home exhausted but very happy and encouraged about the state of documentary film today. If we only watch TV or the escapist movies stamped out with Hollywood cookie cutters, we can start losing hope and perspective. But documentaries are still doing what they were designed to do - open our eyes on the world and let people tell their own stories. If you have a chance to see any of the above films do so - you won't be sorry.I've come home inspired and motivated. Now I must go to bed.

I celebrated the great hearing return by going to five documentary films at the ReFrame Film Festival yesterday, having supper with Ray and meeting a lot of folks I know. Today I'll see three more and two on Sunday. As a former documentary film-maker, I'm really enjoying seeing these films from all over the world. We have three venues screening 54 films over three days and they were jammed Friday. The three day festival passes cost $25 and $12 for students and unemployed. These are the kind of events that remind me how lucky I am to be living in Peterborough. Concurrently several spots are showing Peterborough artists' works as well. It's awesome and a great way to rejoin the living after all this time feeling sick. The energy around town is electric.