clearbluecup

It's been almost a week since we got back from our trip to Edmonton, and I feel like life has settled back down into the regular routines. It was great to see everyone, and wonderful to have such fantastic friends who were willing to go out of their way to make our visit special. But you know what? I kind of missed my writing time, during the quiet of the afternoon nap. I can only eat out at restaurants so much, and I really max out on drinking after a while. (I know, my life is so tough. Kill me now.) Holidays are fun, but I do appreciate my regular life when I come back to it, which is a sign to me that I am on the right path in life.

I thought a lot about my new year's resolutions, and I wrote about a few things I wanted to change in 2008, but when I went back and looked at them a week later I wasn't so inspired. Writing, keeping fit, etc. It's all the same stuff. None of it is new. I want something NEW for 2008, something that really challenges me. I haven't figured it out yet, but I'll keep you posted when I do.

I've been slacking off on the picture-taking recently, but I got a new digital camera from my parents for Christmas so hopefully that will kick start my photography habit again. Here's a shot of our dining room:

Want to help me get inspired to take on a radical new change in 2008? Share your new year's resolution with me! What are you doing differently this year?

Often, I find myself compulsively checking the status messages of my friends on Facebook. Some people update their status more often than others, and many come up with intelligent, witty and clever ways to describe themselves and their current activities or states of mind in a way that is oblique enough to be suitable for the Internet yet clear and entertaining enough to draw the interest of the friends who know them.

I blog semi-regularly at best, write in my journal very occasionally, but I am obsessed with updating my Facebook status every day or two. I go through potential status messages while doing such scintillating tasks such as unloading the dishwasher or cleaning the toilet. Michelle is foiled again. Michelle can't believe that her baby isn't napping. Michelle is weighing her options. Michelle: cranky mom. Which are clever enough? Which are boring? Which reveal too much? Which reveal too little?

Surely I could be spending my time and energy doing something a bit more purposeful.

Edited to add: Found this article posted by Tom on, where else, Facebook. Nothing I didn't already know, but it's good to be reminded of who exactly is behind this new social media, and how much money is involved. Scary stuff.

Yes, I know that it is already halfway through January, and that most people have probably made and broken their resolutions three times already. But I finally came up with some NEW things to resolve for this new year, and I want to share them with you all.

1. Learn to play the guitar. My brother very kindly sent me his acoustic guitar last year, and I am ashamed to say that I haven't learned how to play it yet. This year, I will learn enough about the guitar to be able to play simple nursery songs to Bea.

2. Read more. Writing more isn't anything new, and is pretty much a given, like eating, sleeping and showering regularly. But I haven't been reading as much as I have in the past. I also know that reading and writing are two sisters who feed each other, and one can tell the other when a dress makes her look like a dumpy canvas tent.

3. Publish in a print medium. I want to pick up a physical object and see my name in print beside an article I wrote.

4. Listen to my intuition. You know that little voice that whispers the truth in your ear? I don't listen to mine as often as I should. This year, I'm going to start taking action when I hear that voice speak the truth. This could also be called living honestly or taking ownership of my actions.

One of my online articles won an Editor's Choice award over at Suite101. Check it out!

Yesterday I tried handspinning yarn on my new drop spindle for the first time. It was fun - a little tricky to get the hang of at first but I found a good video on YouTube and by the end of the hour I'd made this:

It looks surprisingly like yarn for my first attempt! :)

Tom, Beatrice and I were all sitting together at the table the other day, eating breakfast or lunch, maybe it was dinner, I don't know. It doesn't matter anyway. We were all sitting there, and I remembered going to an electronics store with my dad when I was really little. I was three or four, maybe five, and I stood there beside him and looked at these tiny little cassette tapes that went into small voice recorders. I was fascinated by them because they were so small, kind of kid sized but I knew they weren't for kids. The tapes came in different colours, green and red and black, and they were all so, so tiny.

That memory had nothing to do with the meal I was having that day with Tom and Bea. In fact, there was nothing about that meal, or the conversation we were having at the time, that had anything to do with voice recording tapes from the early 80s, or an outing I went on with just me and my dad. It was just a memory bubble, a perfectly formed episodic memory that spontaneously rose up to the surface of my consciousness.

This sort of thing happens frequently when I've just moved house. For the first few months, memories bubble up like steam through a percolating coffee pot. As I settle in, the memories of the place I used to live slow down as they are replaced by more recent memories of the things we begin to do in our new home. But they never stop completely, and every now and then I will suddenly and vividly remember standing at our back door in Cork, ringing the wind chime to call Louis home when he was a kitten, or laying down on the ground at Dun Aengus and looking down the edge of the cliff to the water crashing below, or the feelings of relief and homesickness when our belongings arrived in Cork three months after we did.

I'm not so puzzled about the fact that these memory bubbles occur. It's happened this way for as long as I can remember, and I've just accepted that this is the way my brain remembers things. (Maybe this happens to other people too, I don't know.) What does puzzle me is the seemingly unrelated nature of the memory that bubbles up. It doesn't seem connected in any logical way to the situation I am currently in, but maybe on some subconscious level it is. What series of events is going on in my brain to cause this one crystal clear memory to emerge from all the rest at that particular moment in time?

Here's a good article in the Tyee on why smart people like Battlestar Galactica.

Also, comments are now fixed. Thanks to Leah for pointing out the fact that they weren't working properly, and to Tom for actually fixing it.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

~via

"If you're not saying 'Om Nom Nom Nom' out loud at the same time as looking at these pictures then you're doing it wrong."