When I got home on Wednesday afternoon, I felt relieved that I could start getting back to normal routines, but still up in the air because the whole holiday weekend was ahead of me. I had no plans for New Year’s Eve–I usually don’t, having worked on many past New Year’s Eves (including 1999!) and being just as happy not to be on the roads that night. But I was doing a ritual on Thursday afternoon for the Full Moon/Lunar Eclipse, and I was watching the weather forecasts lugubriously. The weathercasters were all predicting a humungous “stalled” storm and several consecutive days of snow and that didn’t sound like much fun, even if we weren’t getting hit as hard as folks further north.
Wednesday night I started tackling all the stuff that had been piling up for weeks–boxes, and decorations, and piles of books and magazines I’d gotten out looking for pictures for my holiday cards, unopened mail, bills and receipts that needed to be filed–whew. The kissing bush was dropping little showers of dry needles with every errant draft. I took that down, which led to taking everything else down and clearing away all the greenery. Vacuuming up the needles led to vacuuming elsewhere. I’d been intending to make more ritual candles for a couple of months and now I had a pending ritual for which I needed four candles and I had exactly none in stock. So I got out the candle-making supplies and made a couple of batches of new candles. I never did get to cycling and I forgot about doing my hair color, but I did make a lot of progress in getting my work areas cleared out, straightened up and organized, which psychologically felt very good.
Thursday was a very busy day. I’m desperately overdue for a hair cut, but I called the salon and couldn’t get an appointment. My stylist was going home early and had re-scheduled all her Saturday clients because of the forecast snowstorm. I feel like a walking advertizement for the new Wolfman movie, but I’ll just have to wait! I did ritual in the afternoon. I did two workouts, to make up for missing the day before. I did my hair color. I made more candles, because they were coming out well and I wanted a good supply of them, and I made a batch of delicious Italian vegetable soup from leftover veggies and broth I brought home from dad’s.
I didn’t even turn on the TV on New Year’s Eve–that’s another long story for another post. But I put three silver dollars outside on the stoop during the evening. Just before midnight, I brought up the clock on my computer and counted down the last seconds to 12:00. I wished the cats a Happy New Year, went outside, and tossed the coins into the house through the open door. That’s a little prosperity spell I learned from one of the shelter guests years ago. That’s how I greeted 2010: ching-ching-ching, the sound I hope to be hearing all this coming year! Okay, I’m mercenary, but I want By Light Unseen Media to become self-sustaining!
Just a couple of minutes later, I heard fireworks outside, and they sounded like more than firecrackers. I looked out the kitchen window, and there in the western sky, perfectly visible from my driveway, were professional-caliber fireworks. I have absolutely no idea where they could have been coming from! There isn’t a public space that I know of to the west closer than the high school in Townsend, and these were much nearer than that. They didn’t last as long as a public show would, either. I went outside and watched them, and when they finished, I clearly heard voices whooping and cheering. That was a pleasant surprise but remains a mystery!
Friday was a holiday, so my usual Friday errands were on hold. I calculated astrological transits for January and February and wrote them into my date book, paid some bills, and otherwise had a quiet day.
Saturday, I got up to several inches of snow, with more falling. I’d wanted to go to the post office. I decided to go out and shovel, clear off the car, and go, for no more urgent reason than because I hated feeling trapped by mere weather. I got the mail and the local paper and filled the car’s gas tank. The driving wasn’t too bad, but things were a lot quieter than your average Saturday. I spent a lot of the rest of the day working on financial spreadsheets, personal and business. I was actually amazed to see how well I did for 2009 when compared to 2008. I wasn’t consciously trying to economize, but I seem to have been doing so without thinking about it, because I saved tons of money in a lot of areas. I’m starting out 2010 with almost $2000 more in my bank account than I had on January 1, 2009! I was especially amazed to see that I cut my heating oil costs in half–whether that’s from burning all that firewood or not, I’m not sure, but it’s a drastic difference. I saved substantial amounts in other categories, too, including the gas and electric bills, groceries, cat food…just lots of things. My property taxes are going up but not as much as my health insurance is going down. At any rate, it feels pretty good to be weathering a recession in such positive financial shape! My natural frugality and good management skills are really paying off, literally and figuratively. Maybe I should start teaching workshops! *g*
By this morning, we’d gotten an inch or two more of snow plus a lot of drifting and dropped snow from all the trees and so on. I went out this afternoon and did the clean-up shoveling: the mouth of the driveway, and the newspaper box, the woodpile and the path to the compost pile, and cleaned off and scraped the car. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere (the Ashby UU church cancelled its service this morning because the roads were so bad, I had an e-mail about it). But I like to clear everything out just in case I want, or need, to get out quickly. Two days of snow shoveling in a row is not my idea of a good time, but I shouldn’t complain! I am truly blessed to be fit and hale enough to shovel my own snow, and this wasn’t a lot of snow, comparatively speaking. It’s been another quiet day, but I’m getting things lined up to launch back into projects and work. The new computer will be here soon and I want to have everything ready for that! I have manuscripts to read, editing to do, queries to answer, and my own writing to finish–and that’s just for starters. I’ve had quite as much holiday cheer as is good for me! I hope all of you can say the same. 🙂