More Gratitude

1.  Yoga.  Is there anything more basic than breathing and moving?

2.  Tea.  Warm, delicious, varied.

3.  Time.  Not that I don’t wish I had more of it, but I do have enough to do lots of things that I find fulfilling, interesting, and useful.

4.  Companionship.  Jim is absolutely one of the most compatible people I’ve ever been around, and I’m always happy to see him.  I enjoy our conversations, our silences, and nearly always have a good time in his company.  I feel safe, considered, and loved.

5.  Knitting.  Having a daily opportunity to create something beautiful, warming, and creative is certainly a gift.

Grateful

For these things I am grateful today:

1.  Emmett.  I was so afraid that parenting would not come naturally to me, but it’s not hard to be a good mama when you have a child who is such a sweet little boy.

2.  Proximity.  Having my parents as neighbors has been so much easier than I feared it might be.  It’s so nice to pop over and see them, have them be part of Emmett’s daily life, and know that they are ok.

3.  Work.  I get to spend 38 hours a week at my dream job, working with the public as well as a group of truly amazing women.

4.  Home.  Jim, Emmett, Franklin, and Luigi, our warm and cozy space, the things I’ve collected over the years.  It’s a nice place to be.

5.  Health.  One of those things that is easy to take for granted until something happens.  Fortunately, I have not been rudely reminded of my mortality this year, but we all certainly know people who have been less fortunate.

Hunkering Down

Snow beginning to fall - can you see it?

We are in the midst of a winter storm, although it seems not to be the snowpocalypse that was predicted – just swirling snow and howling winds.  I spent the morning preparing for a potential power outage anyhow – I baked fresh bread, made a big pot of stew, washed all our laundry, and cleaned up the house.  Now I’ve got nothing left to do but craft and read.  Jim spent the better part of the afternoon helping our neighbor fix our snowblower, and I’m so glad we will have the luxury of not shoveling our driveway tomorrow.  I have a feeling it was good for him to learn how to fix a small engine, and it was nice to have the house to myself.  My goal was not to leave the house, and while I did end up making two excursions off our property, I also spent the majority of the day in domestic pursuits.  Yay!

Welcome, New Year!

It’s a happy, snowy new year at the Flanagan household.  We rang in the new year last night with some friends at a low-key party with a pajama dress code,  a movie lineup that included Airplane and Blues Brothers, and a menu that inlcuded baked brie and eggplant parm.  If there is a better way to start a year, I don’t want to know about it, because I just had a wonderful time.

I think for many people, this past decade has not been their best, but for me, it’s been a pretty seminal decade – my entire adult life so far happened in the last 10 years.  I went to college and graduate school, I met the love of my life and got married, I found a career path and got a great job, I’ve made a lot of good friends and have divested myself of many unhealthy relationships, we bought a house and adopted two wonderful cats, and I’ve discovered many passions, including cooking, knitting, and homebrewing.  I’ve been very lucky this decade, and I have great expectations for the next.

This past year my parents bought the house right behind ours.  This photo is the view from my back door – it’s snowing out, so it’s not the crispest.  It’s nice to know they are up there.  This morning they came down to help us with our snowblower, and it’s nice to know we can help them out going forward, making sure they don’t work too hard mowing their lawn or shoveling their driveway.  Having a close support network is important to me, and I think the value to our family of close proximity is impossible to forecast, but I look forward to taking care of my parents as they age, having my children really know their grandparents as people, and being able to pool resources, among other benefits.

This next year holds a lot for me.  Most majorly, I’m chairing the committee to plan the Maine Library Association Annual Conference, which this year will be held in October at the Samoset.  That will be a major professional challenge, and I’m looking forward to devoting more and more time to it as the date approaches.  I think it’s going to feel very good to have that under my belt, and I hope to prove myself worthy of the trust that’s been placed in me.

One of my goals for the coming year is to articulate my opinions on books and beer.  I have been a member of goodreads for a couple of years, and have enjoyed rating books, keeping track of books I want to read, and seeing what my friends are reading.  In 2010, I want to start reviewing the books I read.  In 2009, I read 79 books – in 2010 I’d like to read 80 and review each one.  This evening should be a good one for reading.  I also joined Beer Advocate, and I reviewd my first beer this afternoon.  Jim and I seek out interesting and delicious beers, but I have made no effort to keep track of what we have.  Reviewing some of these great brews will not only help me remember what we try, but should go a long way toward refining my ability to describe beer and identify flavors.  Many of the other goals I have for this year are more personal, but if I keep up with the blog like I always mean to, I will share more as the year goes by.  I would like to start using this blog as a means of personal expression and as a way to keep in touch with friends who are near and far.  Reconnect and reflect are my among my blog goals.

My Brush With Celebrity

It looks like I cried laughing.  I probably did.

Perkus Tooth

I am nearly finished reading The Book of Other People, edited by Zadie Smith.  It’s an interesting collection of short stories by a variety of contemporary and well-known authors, each story a character sketch, a glimpse into someone else’s life.  I’ve mostly enjoyed it, and it’s been a good introduction for me to a few authors I’d heard of but not read.  One such author, Jonathan Lethem, is someone I’ve heard of repeatedly (I think he writes similarly to other authors that I enjoy?  Perhaps he’s been recommended to me?  Perhaps I’ve just seen his name on the bestseller list?), and his story Perkus Tooth is near the end of this collection.  This story and its characters are haunting me, and I will have to pick up one of Jonathan Lethem’s novels soon.  I just read his Wikipedia page to find out more about him, and learned that he lives in Berwick, Maine, just one town over from where I grew up.  Neat!  I love local celebrities even more than national ones.  Sometime I’ll dig up the photo I sneakily had taken with Rob Caldwell at a party.  Possibly the highlight of that year.

Remembering a Great Year

Jimmy and I

Every year on the anniversary of our marriage, Jim and I write a note to ourselves about how the past year has been.  Our guestbook for our wedding was about 200 pages, and only the first dozen or so were written on at our very small wedding.  We decided that it would be a nice way to remember every year if we spent our anniversary recording in it, so we are currently alternating writing.  It’s been a really nice year of marriage – not as eventful as last year.  Last year we had some really great moments, such as buying  a house, and some really sad moments, such as putting a cat to sleep on Christmas.  This year has been without the highs or lows – we’ve just been settling into ourselves and each other.

Anniversary

Tags

Jimmy, Music

Songs in my head today:
Section 12: Hold Me Now – The Polyphonic Spree
I Got A Man – Postive K

Two years ago today, Jimmy and I got married.  It was a sunny and windy day, and if I were into cliches, I’d say it was quite possibly the happiest day of my life.  If I may be more sappy than that, I will say that every day with Jimmy is something new and wonderful.  Getting married was the public celebration of something very intimate and personal, and I’m very happy that I found someone who I enjoy spending so much time with.  Jimmy and I have been married two years, but we’ve been together and having a blast for eight and a half really fun years.  Yay!!!

New Book Group Update!

In other news, the first meeting of the new book group I started through the South Portland Library was snow-delayed until March 9, but it was wonderful to meet some new people!  Our next meeting is at the Branch Library on April 6 at 6pm.  We are reading High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby.

A Mystery

People have lots of different reactions to stress.  When I’m stressed, I generally check out socially.  I don’t pick up the phone, I don’t write emails or letters, and apparently I don’t blog.  Don’t ask me what I’ve been stressed about – I haven’t been able to pin it down.

I have been reading, and I read ALL 6 of Julia Spencer-Fleming’s books within a month.  I really enjoyed reading all of them!  It was kind of like watching an entire run of TV on DVD – I didn’t have time to forget details, and I got the whole story at once.  Only problem – it would be hard to review any one book now because the stories all run together.  I have to say All Mortal Flesh was my favorite, and A Fountain Filled With Blood my least favorite.  Will I read another if she puts it out?  I’m not sure – I Shall Not Want, the most recent book, has a pretty happy ending.  I’m not so into happy endings, and I don’t know if I want to keep reading if the main characters have a regular relationship.  Our book group was actually going to have J S-F visit and speak about her books, but it was postponed due to widespread power outages, then cancelled due to snow.  I had a question to throw out for discussion: Why do most people not consider mysteries to be literary?  The genre seems to be written off by many, as in “I liked the book but I’m not going to call it good literature,” or “I want something light…how about a mystery?”  I’m not saying all mysteries are well-crafted works that will live on in history, but I would say these mysteries were at least as well-written as much of the new fiction we have on our shelves at the library.  Hopefully, we will be able to have Julia speak at the library at some point, because I would LOVE to meet her.

In beer news, Novare Res is celebrating strong beers right now.  Jim and I met Robin and Jeff there last night, and the selection right now is truly wonderful.  The only problem is that we no longer live within walking distance, so we have to exercise restraint and caution in our consumption.  We are solving this problem by going more often!  We should be camped out Sunday afternoon, should anyone want to join us.

I have also been knitting like crazy.  I just finished a HUGE shawl that I started in August of 2007.  Or was it 2006?  The yarn is a nice rustic one-ply I purchased in Canada from Cottage Craft Fine Woolens, and it made a wonderful springy Feather and Fan Triangle Shawl (Ravelry Link).  I’ll block it tomorrow (hopefully) and take some photos.  I was inspired to pick it back up by a similar shawl being worked on over at Mason-Dixon Knitting, and an urge to finish some languishing projects.  I’d like to finish a few things before starting a number of new projects that I picked up yarn or patterns for at SPA a few weeks ago.  We’ll see how long that pragmatic side of me lasts.