January

 I'm really meant to be registering for a new health plan online information presentation (what a mouthful) right now, but as I sat down to get to it, some books on my worktable fell over.  I looked around and found this little iron owl to put in place.  Better.

It's a simple fix, I know, but it signifies what January has always been for me.  Putting things in place, collating, weeding out unnecessaries, shapeshifting my environment.   Sometimes I re-place things, then re-place them back to their original spot, as if the movement were a kind of verification.  Sometimes, like yesterday's sudden impulse to rearrange the handmade, disaster strikes...a ceramic angel, the gift of a friend, dislodges, falls, and is decapitated.  But mostly these efforts make some peace with my way of living.

Since it's my birth month, executive orders are supposedly the order I live by, but I find that the rest of the year (with the exception of maybe September, that old beginning-school-year thing) my talents for executing aren't so much in evidence.  That's okay.  Pushing things around doesn't have to be a year-round sport.

Plus, it seems that I will be moving myself in a few months...back to my own house, as Joseph and Alexander have found one nearby...right next door, in fact.  So this month's mindset has been useful in pre-organizing Things That Have To Be Done.  There's quite a lot, in fact...some kitchen and bath renovation, new windows, the back yard to make into something besides a sea of ivy and spindly trees.  But plans take shape, and it's actually exciting to make lists of the ideas and materials to make them happen, and to search among the available experts to effect them.  I'm in the mood for change.

There is, of course, the dust of debris to look forward to...from change itself, from expunging, from rebuilding.  It isn't pleasant when you are in the middle of it, but it's a pathway and I, at least in these ways, find it a challenge I look forward to.  Even the inevitable surprises and adjustments (and re-adjustments) that come with the territory of changing anything.  It turns out to be my forte any month of the year.

I'll keep you posted as things shape up.  I'm accepting all manner of renovation advice, if you care to contribute.

Be well, all.  Take care. Now on to that health thing...