Five more days.....

Are you counting the days? Looking up the chimney, trying to figure out how a jolly old elf gets down it?
I am! When I was little, I would open up the fireplace screen, look up the chimney and try my best to work it out in my mind how Santa got through that tiny flue with a bike! Now, I just count the days until Wesley gets home :-)

It's been a busy week, getting some last minute shopping done, wrapping presents before Wesley gets home, wrapping up sales from the studio tour, I had a few shoppers in my studio during the week, which is a first for me, I kinda liked it. I even had time to get away for a wonderful lunch with my potter pal, Meredith from Whynot Pottery, you know the place, right?! We had a great time catching up on kids/grandkids and of course what would time with Meredith be without some enlightening words of wisdom! This is a wise woman, I tell ya.

Wesley is coming home today, my other potter pal Susan Wells is having a show and artist talk on Saturday and I am going to try to get by there. Looks like it will be a quiet little Christmas for us here in the Broome house. My mom declared that she didn't want to do any shopping and so she is getting her wish, we are not participating in the usual Christmas drama there, in fact we haven't talked since the first of November, no surprises there, I could probably go back through this blog and read this same thing every year. Gerry's family doesn't seem to have time to get together with us, so this promises to be a stress free and joyful year!

Gone are the days of tummy butterflies waiting for Santa, piling in the car on Christmas day to go see grandparents, ripping presents open with my cousins, eating my grandmothers sweet potato pie, standing at the department store gift wrap counter watching the wrappers crease the paper so expertly (I always wanted to do that). sitting on Santa's lap, shyly telling him what I wanted. But also gone are the days, waiting to see if my dad would come home on Christmas eve, waiting to see if my parents were going to fight in the driveway, asking for a specific gift and then acting like a spoiled brat when I didn't get what I wanted, taking down that nasty ass fake tree from the attic, because a real one was just "too much trouble", then putting it up and decorating it by myself because it was just "too much trouble" for some.

Gone are a lot of things, some I long for, some I'm glad for the loss. Ugh, Christmas..... I'm slowly changing what this holiday does to me. I got a letter from my mom, which Gerry intercepted and read first, just in case it would cause me to go into a mental coma. That eased the absurdity of it quite a bit. I have typed a reply, it is sitting on my desktop, simmering. It doesn't seem right to send these kinds of letters a week before Christmas, it might not get sent at all. Why would it matter, some people will never change, even when you ask them to for your own sanity......

I'm looking forward to a little more last minute shopping with Wes, baking some cookies, having friends drop by, listening to Christmas music, drinking warm tea, and just spending time with the two people I most like being with. I bought a Bing Crosby CD yesterday and rode around all day listening to it. What a great singer he was. When I was a kid, I would put his White Christmas album on our little turn table in the living room, pour myself a cup of tea in our "fine china" and sit by the tree, dreaming away in la la land. I lived in my own little weird world and I liked it there, I still like it there!

Blogger Judi Tavill will have this little barn with the blue roof living with her now. Thanks Judi for giving it a nice new home. I'm so happy you will have it. This is the last one and really one of the nicest I have made. It never got displayed very prominently because I think subconsciously I wasn't ready to give it up. The pieces I am not ready to part with never sell until it's time for them to go. Funny how that happens, but it happens a lot with my work. There were pieces that I sold during the studio tour that I had brought into the house, wanting to spend time with them, and then I was ready to say goodbye. I'm looking forward to making some new work that I can live with for a bit and then send out to the world. Wondering what that will be.......

I hope all of you have a really happy holiday, I may be checking in, we'll see how busy things get!

peace ya'll
xo