So, it is time to start a new series.  This one I made up myself, to help me get back in to the swing of Photo-a-Day and blogging in general.  I’m calling it the 29 days of Christmas vacation, of which yesterday was the first.  Yes, I had an exam.  I am counting it anyway :).

So, on December 13th, I finished reading this book.  This is significant, because I started the book last spring.  Yeah.  So it’s been hanging around bugging me to be finished.  I also did a bit of knitting on my scarf while chatting on the phone.

One of the things I want to do this coming year is read through my house.  And then, I want to donate the books.  Well, some of the books.  I need to downsize.  I also plan to knit through the yarn, bead through the beads, scrap through the pictures and so forth.  I just have too much stuff, and if I am going to move to the farm, I need to get rid of a lot of it.  And boys and girls: I AM MOVING TO THAT FARM.

Today was fairly active as well.  I had lunch with my lunch buddy, and thoroughly spanked her at chess.  Twice.  I am bragging about it now, because it won’t be long until she is spanking me over the same board.  Then I came home and found out someone walked into an elementary school in Connecticut and killed 18 children.  I had just eaten lunch.  I sat here crying and so badly needing to throw up.  What a horrible thing to do.  What a horrible place to be.  Eighteen children, nine adults, and the 20-year-old shooter.  At the risk of politicizing a tragedy, this is what happens when we have access to guns and not mental health care.  This is what happens when gun owners are bad-ass, and those who receive mental health care are stigmatized.  Because I had to do something besides sit at the computer and weep, I did this:

Sorry I didn’t stop to take a before shot.  What you see here is the start of my plan to divide my room into sleep space and work space. My sleeping and dressing stuff will be on the bed side and my books, yarn and toys will be on the other end.  While I was hunched over the laptop in the living room floor writing my last few papers, I realized something had to give.  I’m past the point of the multiple choice tests in my schooling, and into the “show me” section.  It’s multiple papers per class from here on out, and I need a space to do that.  And to draw, and to write, and to scrapbook.  And to dream a bit. I need to be able to walk away from all of those things for  two minutes or two days and not worry that it’s going to be messed with.  I won’t get finished with this project today, but by the time school starts again on January 9th, it will be clean and organized and I will have some sort of desk/table/workspace.    I am quite excited by this idea!

I also didn’t put the stilts back on my bed.  Hopefully, I will get organized enough to not have to store stuff under there.  We’ll see when I’m done.

And yes, I know I own an inordinate amount of fishing poles for a girly girl and an obscene amount of scarfage for a tomboy.  Get over it 🙂