Grateful for a Gift

I am extremely grateful to my family for giving me a wonderful Christmas gift: a Lenovo Miix combination tablet/keyboard.  It seems very sturdy and above all, the display is wonderful and the keyboard very responsive and easy to work with (essential for someone with lingering problems in my hands due to years of writing comments on essays).  I know my family really wants me to finish my book.  I am hoping I might get this done completely in about 18 months (even with daily work, the process of interviewing is lengthy and can take much time).

Overall, I had a great Christmas, but am very glad the winter holidays are drawing to a close.  I feel a lot of sympathy for folks who have a hard time with Christmas: I did have some glimmer of the spirit, but as I've said before, in my grieving process, which seems to get better and then recycle, I have gone from numbness to feeling emotional pain, and I really felt my loss this Christmas.  I am grateful to have a book to channel these feelings into: imagine what people must feel who experience losses I cannot even imagine!

As an aside note, I have had to remove the Daily Word widget from my blog for the moment.  I love Daily Word because it is a relatively nonsectarian bit of inspiration, and I like the quotes I get every day.  Given the amount of exit clicks on it, I think at least some of my readers like it, too.  However, at least on this new computer, it seems to be slowing down the loading of this blog in Firefox.  I will try restoring the widget tonight.  If it does not work, I can set up a link to Daily Word, and maybe some other sites.

At least I can  keep the Koi Pond, another widget many of my readers seem to enjoy.  Note that there is a rainbow koi about once a week on that widget.

In other news, I went to a local ceramic-painting place in Santa Cruz to do some crafty-things with her.  Our sleep cycle is totally screwed up and we have to be getting to bed earlier very soon, so this is one of the few ventures with us that happened in the evening.  I thought this might be fun for us; you pick out an unfinished ceramic "something"--they have teapots, cups, boxes, plates, etc.--and paint them with ceramic glaze, in any design you want.  The place puts a clear glaze-over on the pieces and then kiln-fires them for you.  Thistle made a child-sized teapot and a box shaped like an ice cream cone; ironically, the latter is her Tooth Fairy money box.  I made what was intended to be a small jewelry box with a dragonfly on it, but when my back was turned, Thistle took a brush and painted a red heart on the lid.  I figure that is much nicer.

I paid for a year membership because we really liked working together and I think it would be nice for me to work on a large project, like a large teapot, while Thistle is in school, and to take a break from the book.  It's really essential when working with such subject matter to find things that "rinse" the mind for a while.