I am re-inventing my January strategies and traditions. Because while January seems to me to be a series of dreary, cold low notes, I still hope to see many, many more Januarys; it would be ridiculous to simply endure them all, as if they were punishment. If I send optimistic, hopeful thoughts out into the universe, maybe they will come back to me as a dozen healthy, happy Januarys. I wish I’d thought of this strategy sooner.
Reeling with a severe cold that felt almost flu-like, I drove with my husband to the airport (again, again) on Sunday morning. We talked about essential things, the sort of things that blur my mascara. Good for Us, for sure, but not good for head colds. I kissed him goodbye, my body and soul mostly numb to the blow of parting. I was nearly a third of the way home when he called his own cell phone, which happened to be lying on the floor next to me in the van—unnoticed til that moment, to let me know he had forgotten it (the cell phone). So after my return to the airport to hand off the phone, and my drive again back home, I felt hectic and disheveled, with no time to get everything and everyone ready and off to church. Nora had bedhead, and Meisha’s hair looked just as gnarly, though she assured me she’d hit it with a comb. We were so late there was no place left to sit but the very front of the chapel (and I wasn’t about to go there).
Returning from a wonderful choir concert, Michaelyn and I passed our favorite local gas station/convenience store. We’ve bonded with this place for several reasons, the most important of which is its sign out front. The sign bears the name of the establishment (“Hoagies”), a philanthropic greeting to the masses of motorists that pass by, its fare du jour, and the price of that fare. Today the sign read “Drive Safe Corn dogs 49 cents”. Other days the sign admonishes Pizza Stix to Drive Safe. Or it worries about the vehicular safety of Burritos (79 cents). In the summer, it is preoccupied with Frazil hazards, and more expensive about it too (somewhere over a dollar). One day last spring Maurya and I were beyond entertained to read “Drive Safe corndogs 49 cents”, just as a man pulling out of the gas station casually turned his face towards us and stuffed an entire corn dog in his mouth.
and you…I’ve grown tired of the grind
This year, I am intrigued by the idea of delighting in truly good food. I can be a very haphazard cook, as I can be haphazard in almost everything I do. My daughter Maurya was sweet and told me that she loved that her mother is so spontaneous. Well, whether it is spontaneity or haphazardness, my family (and guest/victims we lure to our home to feed) eat at their own risk. Sometimes, the fare is sublime, conversation flows, the world is good. Sometimes not. So I’ve made a goal of focusing, of planning, of actually following recipes. Of educating myself. Of making at least some of our daily meals delectable, beautiful Events (in terms of hospitality and warmth and enjoyment). I can’t wait to start my garden and my little orchard, to facilitate these grand schemes. But back to the Danish. 
This was Sunday, three days ago. I actually finished making this dress about a week before Christmas. Sunday was the third time I wore it. It is a special dress, made in a lonely two evenings to seduce my husband. I should qualify that. I suppose if it were made absolutely exclusively to seduce my husband, it would look a lot different—more scarce, perhaps, and I certainly wouldn’t be posting a picture of me in it on a blog for the world (that would be my friend Gaylynn, some cousins, and an in law or two) to see. So, it was made also (secondarily) for picking my husband up at the airport, for going out with him, and ok, yeah, I could wear it to church too. If Frank happened to be with me. Which he isn’t a lot lately–he travels so much. 
Dragonflies are on my mind and absolutely everywhere right now. They struck (or re-emerged from) my consciousness a year ago, when a very large one took a very long nap in a window of my house-under-construction. I thought he was dead, an inert, grey-brown surreal thing gathering dust (keeping company with a broken shim, a paint lid, and some bent nails) on the sill. I was installing flooring at the time, working long and late and hard, often alone. This was a time of restless nights and strange dreams for me… like the dream about cows grazing on acres of my newly installed oak flooring. Cows slipping and tipping and help I’ve fallen and I can’t get up and what was I thinking, laying down acres of hardwood in a cow pasture? Anyway—the supposedly dead dragonfly was an object of interest and conversation when I brought the kids to the house one night. We looked at him, talked about him, and left him there because he was so very big no one wanted to touch him. We were tired of cleaning, and he was sort of an exotic trophy worth keeping anyway. Even if keeping only meant leaving him there. 
Lynaea invited me to be a guest blogger in her blog. Well, actually I might have asked her if I could a long, long time ago. But I am thinking that her recent invitation is because she adores my writing not because she has to paint four pictures a week for three weeks in a row to get ready for her art show.