Hey now.
I made my xmas list yesterday, and decided that this year, I’m going to hand-make as many gifts as I can. The thing with handmade gifts is they take about 99.8% more time than selecting ‘Buy now with 1-Click®’ on Amazon. I consider it a personal challenge1. And I’m happy to say that Gift #1 was begun yesterday and will probably be finished today. I’m quick like that. I love holiday cards. LOVE them. Card-and-letter-writing is seriously undervalued nowadays. Speaking of which, I bought this little watercolor of daruma from America’s favorite discount store, eBay. When it arrived yesterday, the first thing I did was pry open the cheap, musty-antique-store-smelling picture frame to see what was hiding inside2. It turned out to be a holiday card on the most beautiful handmade paper. The note read: Mr. and Mrs. Thayer: It was one of the happiest events in 65, to have known you. Sumiko Gomi. So then I found this, and I’m compelled to try to get in touch with her, to find out if she’s the one who sent the card. I’m not sure why; completing the circle, I guess. How will I react when someone contacts me 40 years from now and tells me they just bought a piece of my correspondence? I’ll probably apologize. Ha. I think I want to make a page where I can post all my finished knitting projects. I’m proud of them. Also, I think we may be starting a supercolossal photo project tomorrow, but I’m not sure. I’ll get back to you on that. I’ve been having some crazily fucked-up dreams the last couple nights. I noticed that whenever I have stressful yelling-and-fighting dreams, I also regularly dream that my teeth are loose or falling out. I have to give a lot of credit to my brain for coming up with exactly the right symbol to fit me: according to interpretations, it can mean that I have dental paranoia, I have self-image issues, or that I have repressed anxiety. Yes on all counts. Good work. So, last night, I can’t tell if this actually happened or not. I dreamed I was fighting, and I had yanked off someone’s glasses and was beating them hard in the head. Then I have this fuzzy memory of holding my own glasses (which were on the floor next to my bed), and pushing hard on the dog’s head. Both of those are unusual: my glasses are usually on my desk, and the dog is usually not sleeping with me. But last night, both of those items were indeed there, so I’m a little afraid I was smacking G in my sleep. I hope he knows I didn’t mean it; we’ve actually been starting to understand each other lately. Time to go! Father Ripley is coming over to scale the house like it was the Matterhorn. I will have the Ricola at the ready.Jenni