Time keeps slip sliding away

The Time of Long Shadows

I definitely think I am behind in my weekly blogs here. Too quickly we seem to be into the time of the long shadows. And the too short days. I seem to have gone into longer sleeps and more things to accomplish when awake. And less of those things done perhaps.

My neighbor has been gone and when she left that seemed like a really good thing because I was going to gain all that time I had been spending on morning coffee of late. Best Laid Plans*, etc. She left me with a list of tasks I could work on and get paid for while she was gone and I fully felt I could easily get them all done. BLP* again. And this week she will be home. I blame all the things I had to do at my house like clean up the studio, get the holiday tree cut down and decorated, etc. But there is a whole list of what I was suppose to do here that did not get done. BLP again.

Studio open for visitors

 But the Yule tree did get selected and erected and decorated. And the studio clean enough to have it open on the weekends through the holidays and then it snowed. About 10 inches with high winds. All other plans got set aside as I concentrated on the getting the snow out of mine and my neighbor's drive and shoveling walkways and keeping warm. There was this mishmash of which came first. Trudging through a foot of snow and deeper drifts I opted for the less is more approach to the tree and retrieved only enough boxes out of the storage area to do a Charley Brown tree with no lights.

Went with the old fashioned look

This week is about doing some catching up and wrapping up. And this blog is about trying to sum it up. The tenants are out but left behind the mess you would expect including the irate letter saying they are not paying for the extra days (10) their stuff occupied the space, that all future correspondence should be sent to their personal address (which they never provided and are still using my mailbox) and not the office, and a promise (I am sure they will never keep) to get the rest of their trash after the snow melts (they had 60 days before it snowed to get it gone) and they set that limit.

They left me with major repairs and stuff to get rid of and a total distaste for officers of the law as tenants, a section of fence down where I wanted to install snow fencing (I think about that every time I shovel the section of the driveway that snow fence would have protected), an endless source of kindling to pick up, and an acre of land that has to be reseeded next spring. But I have my driveway back and people coming to the studio can park.

Major storms across the nation held up new shipments of snow tires while generating a huge demand for them. I am renewing all my driving skills on slick roads without snow tires or a four wheel drive vehicle (I am doing better than the visitors with the huge SUV's). All I want for Christmas is snow tires. Well, a used four wheel drive pickup would be nice. A girl can dream.

But the studio is clean and open again this coming weekend. I am looking forward to morning coffee with my friend when she returns, and I know in the next few days I can wrap up round one of her list and tidy up the mess before beginning on round two.

Sometimes you have to look at what you accomplished and not what you failed to do. Dad always said I had a tendency to bite off more than I could chew. And there is always 2014 ahead. To close really.