Holiday Spirit

Ever since Thanksgiving I have suffered from a slight low-grade bad mood.  I figured it was because I have been just the tiniest bit overworked with the extra holiday parties to cater.  Just a touch of tiredness and feeling overwhelmed.

But the feeling persisted in spite of anticipating the holiday break.  I finally decided enough was enough and I pulled this bad mood out of the dark and shone the bright light of day on it.  I realized that what I was feeling was dread.

Now I have a full-time job that while doesn't pay as much as I would like, pays enough for me to keep the bills paid, oxygen in my tank, food on the table and the numerous pets fed.  As I continued to scrutinize my bad feelings, I realized they were from the past.  In past years, I did not have a full time job.  I did not make enough money and both money and time seemed to be in scarce supply.  There were times when food wasn't as plentiful as I would have preferred.

This year, not only do I have a holiday break, but I have worked long enough to accrue vacation pay.  So, for the first time, I will have a paid holiday.  I just received an order of glass to keep me occupied.  My house is already fairly tidy after this morning's whirlwind cleaning session.  And I can go buy whatever I want to prepare in the way of special holiday meals.

I am glad that I took the time to decipher my bad feelings.  I am now looking forward to the Christmas break with anticipation, gratitude, and the realization that I will have plenty of time to accomplish all that I want to do.

Gallery

This year I had the opportunity to place my glass in a small, local pop-up gallery.  This turned out to be a learning experience.

The gallery was located in our small town and was open only on the weekend.  Each artist was to volunteer to man the gallery at least once  month.

Our traffic was very limited.  I discovered quickly that I did not enjoy sitting in an empty gallery even with something to do.  I find boredom to be exhausting.

The greatest difficulty I discovered was that after watching people come through and appear to be underwhelmed by what I had chosen to display I began to doubt myself.  Even accounting for different styles it was still disappointing to see people unimpressed.

I think that, in the future, should I have the opportunity to display in  gallery, I will choose one where I can maintain a certain distance. 

Electronic Age

We have done it!  We have broken down and gotten our first tablet! Now to master the learning curve.

Connected!

I have missed my blogging community so much.  We have not had internet at home for nearly three years.  And when we did have internet, it was dial-up and wouldn't support blogging.  Today, for the first time ever, we have a new internet connection.  I am so thrilled!


We also have a new computer, so I have no pictures to show you today.  I will fix that soon. 

Forever

Forever

This is the sum total of my creativity over Thanksgiving vacation.

We said "Good-bye" to my wonderful dog, Lucy.  She always wore a red collar.

A Long Month

It has been a long and adventurous month!  In the first place, it has been years since I have worked full time. And I have never had a job where I needed to be at work at 6:30 a.m.  So that has been quite an adjustment.  I no longer putter around the house in the morning washing dishes and sweeping and whatever else that I find to do.  No, I must get up at the extremely unholy hour of 4:30 and rush through my morning and out the door by 6:00 a.m. to be to work on time.

I first started out working as the salad bar person.  And I enjoyed doing this.  I was responsible for making sure that all twenty items plus greens, and dressings were stocked and looked pretty.  I like to make things look pretty and I liked to chat briefly with the people that came through the salad bar.

I was just getting it all figured out and into place when I was asked to transfer into the bakery.  This is essentially a promotion (without a pay raise yet), so I agreed with some trepidation.  Well, I do enjoy the bakery and I have a large amount of freedom to be creative.

So my poor brain has felt completely overstuffed with information for the last month.  I am only now beginning to feel like I know what I am doing and am comfortable doing it.

Then to make matters really exciting, my daughter also got a job.  Her first full-time job--she has been looking for a long time for work.  She is working an opposite schedule from me.  She killed her car some time ago and it has been interesting trying to get her to work on time.  Oh, and I also get to do her chores in the evening.  This includes feeding the horses and trying to convince all her cats that they need to go indoors for the night...Mostly the cats run off and then reappear after my daughter has come home from work.

Now that things are beginning to level out and not be quite so stressful, I need to start preparing for a show in December and get back into making beads on a regular basis.  I hope to start doing that this weekend.

Hooray!!!!!

I have a job!