Whew

 It's over, he's gone. It was much, much worse than I expected. His insane clown posse is still out there, but at least we have a few adults in the White House now. 

The days are getting longer

And I'm feeling better. I don't know how much of my low grade depression to assign to seasonal affective disorder, but I am not a happy camper in December. Anyway, welcome back, sun.

I went downtown here in Fayetteville for the Women's Rally on January 20, the one year anniversary of last year's march. It was organized by the local chapter of NOW, a diverse and interesting group of women. There were about 75 people there, including some folks from other groups. A reporter took a number of photos, and we made the paper the next day. I was very colorful in my pink pussyhat and pink tank top, and they published not one but two photos of me, one of which ran on page one of the metro section.

I have gained a lot of weight in the past couple of years, and while I can look at myself from my best angle in the mirror, in the newspaper, I got to see what others see. I'm 50 pounds overweight, and the bulk of it is around my middle, an unhealthy place to have it. So I'm back to watching what I eat. It'll take a long time to get it all off, but off it must go. The day before the March, I got the results from my bloodwork at the clinic, and my cholesterol is up, and whatever the number is they use to watch for diabetes is up (slightly) from last year. My father has adult-onset diabetes. It's nothing to mess with. I need to stop it now.

My New Year's resolution is to make more stuff. To that end, I'm planning to take more fiber arts classes. I just signed up for Shibori Dyeing in March. It'a Japanese technique of resist-dyeing to make designs. I'm going to hear a talk about it from someone else tonight at my weavers' guild meeting. I re-joined the guild in Chapel Hill, too. I have a warp on the Saori loom right now.

Recently, one of my co-workers asked me how old I was when I discovered I was creative. I said, "About 50." Here I've been, cranking out creations for the past 25 years, thinking it's not creativity because I was following a pattern. I'm claiming it these days. I have made some cool stuff. I'm looking to weave some yardage on the Saori, and make some clothes out of it.

Excelsior!

End of a short week

We had New Year's Day off, as usual. Then we had Thursday off, due to inclement weather. The snowfall in our area was patchy - I had an inch of snow in my yard, two miles away it was double, in areas to the south and west, they had 5 or 6 inches of snow. Happily, the sun came out and the streets are clear. Solar plowing wins again!

Our weaving guild has a special event every January, for Distaff_Day. The location is in Moore County, west of here, so people are considering postponing it until the following Saturday. I'd point and laugh, but a friend of mine got in a car accident on Thursday, because of black ice. It's real and we have it.

The orange buffoon continues to stress me (and other thinking persons) right the heck out. I haven't given up hope for Mueller's investigation, and James Comey's Twitter feed is delightful. I read an excerpt in New York Magazine of the new book about Trump. Everything you guessed is true, and worse.

The animals are all fine, if a little tubby. Unlike Dolly, Jake and Ivy are not fond of the cold weather. Ivy goes to the door, all wags, but when I open it, she suddenly says, nevermind, I'm good. (I boot her out anyway.) Since David's at home, we don't leave them out all day. He is all too sympathetic to their chilliness, since he hates the cold, so they get to lie about on their dog beds like the royalty they are.

I've been working on a few small projects for Distaff  Day - crocheted flowers and the like. I am not a crocheted flower kind of person. I'm using a skein of yarn I got in a swap that is a) pastel, b) sparkly, and c) mohair. The color scheme is adequately described as Unicorn Barf. It's perfect for this use (since I wouldn't wear it to a house fire). I'll try to take some photos.

Happy 2018. May all our impeachment wishes come true.

Good bye and good riddance, 2017.

What a year. The country and the world have gone quite mad. Most recently, Christmas had me so stressed out I was in tears. I am quite over 2017.

My plans for 2018 include another Women's March. As Brother Arlo says, if you want to end war and stuff, ya gotta sing loud. I went to the march in Raleigh last year. This year, I might go to the one in Winston-Salem, just for a change of pace.

I'm going to take as many weaving/fiber arts classes as I can manage. I'm especially excited for the Master Weaver Level One class in April. This is a program held by Olds College in British Columbia, but they are also offering the class in one other place: Yadkinville, NC. I've already paid my deposit. I signed up for an indigo dyeing class at the Carolina Fiberfest in March. I have a Craftsy class on serging to take. (It's paid for, just not started.)

If I want to have a better year, it will have to be up to me.

Bar Harbor

Last week, David and I accompanied my parents to Maine, to see my stepfather's family. This is my fourth trip to Bar Harbor. The weather was superb, the family is awesome, the babies are cute (if intermittently inconsolably angry) and the food was great. We did a ton of walking in town. David did some studying, but actually accompanied us on most things. The other times he's been to Maine, he spent most of the time in the hotel, working. He actually got a vacation this time.

I went hiking with my cousins on Thursday to Great Head, a hilltop in Acadia National Park. On the way back, we stopped to see tidal pools, and I saw two birds in the ocean that I'd never seen before. My cousins were amused to see me pull out a field guide and start flipping through it. "What is that? Maybe it's a ... no. What the hell is that? Is it a female...? No. What IS that?" It turned out to be a male surf scoter in breeding plumage. Then I saw a male common eider about 100 feet away. (Birders can guess that I don't do much seashore birding. Those aren't rare birds.) Anyway, that was fun. The next day, we all went hiking on the ocean path at Sand Beach, then up to Cadillac Mountain after lunch. This is my new computer wallpaper:

And this is me squinting in the glare:

Friday night, we all went to dinner at a local lobster place. This is Vivian. She got a Whoopie Pie dessert. "Whoopie!"

It was cool and hardly humid at all in Maine. I was thrilled. We got home on Saturday night, and going outside was liked being slapped with a wet mop. Oh, July in NC. How I did not miss you. Anyway, I was glad to see my dogs, and vice versa, and I spent Sunday quietly, trying to get acclimated. 

I'm hoping to go to water aerobics this afternoon, but it's 3 pm and I just heard thunder. We get a lot of those afternoon thunderstorms in the summer. Maybe they will roll through earlier rather than later. Fingers crossed.

Verklempt.

My thank you gift for chairing the Founders' Day committee. I am verklempt!

(For those who have not seen this, it means Sober As Fuck. Bah ha ha ha!)

New season, new office

Our organization has been building a new three story building for the past two years. It's finished at last! We moved in yesterday and today, and WOW. I'm in an office with two big windows. The windows in my old office were up at the ceiling level, so they let in light but you wouldn't see out. Now I have a view in two directions. The space is smaller, but workable.

The new building is very nice, and well thought out. It's a little trouble getting used to the change, but soon it will be like we were always here. Yesterday, we got training on how to use the room dividers without breaking things or pinching our fingers. Good information.

One thing about the construction: we've had no parking on site since January of 2016. They have to knock down the old buildings (that we just vacated), and create a parking lot in that space. This is projected to take until December, so we are still parking off site and taking a shuttle back and forth. I can walk in the cooler weather, but in the hot, humid, eight month summer, I have to take the shuttle. I'm a Yankee, I melt like a candy bar on a dashboard.

One of my service jobs in AA this year has been to chair a committee to put on a big party for the annual Founders' Day celebration. It was last Saturday, and it went fine - no smoke or bodies, we're good. But I had a spot of brilliance on Monday and wrote up organizational information for the next poor sucker, I mean chairperson, so they don't have to figure it out from scratch. I would have appreciated having it myself!

Other than that, I'm recovering from some mild depression that I didn't even know I was in. I've re-joined the gym, and I have an appointment with a counselor later this month. I'm thinking about getting a master's degree. (Feel free to try and talk me out of this.) I'm nearly 55, but I'm never going to escape the admin gig if I don't try something new. I still need to get hold of the local university and see what I need to do to make this happen. I've had a pretty heavy workload the last few weeks, but it will slow down in July. So things are changing all around.