Random Thoughts Before Shoveling Yet Again

It snowed overnight again, so when I awakened at 2:15 am, I decided to go ahead and get up. My hope was to catch up a little on my emails and blog comments before once again shoveling the driveway before the gym. That's my goal, in any case. We'll see if I can successfully achieve it. 

I was looking for a good graphic for "catching up" and
saw this one posted by someone wanting to catch up
with Phoebe and her Unicorn (named Marigold).
What really caught my eye was the scarf and
leggings that Marigold wears. Too funny for 3:40 am,
so I just had to share. If you want to read the graphic
novel, it's available on Comixology for $9.99. 

It's a week of taxes - year-end reporting for the state and federal governments as well as attempting to get the W-2's done and the sales tax. I actually got quite a lot of these finished yesterday, but the W-2's are being their usual reluctant self. The business section of Social Security is always a bear to get into. I have a notation to phone them as soon as I get into the shop today. I need to get yet another entry code since mine has been used for the maximum permissible number of times.  Annoying ... did I say ANNOYING! Their phone banks open at 6:00 am, and usually when I phone them I'm on hold for more than an hour. Oh joy! 

Family and how they intersect is a hard one for me. My definition of
family is quite fluid and the only stable part is DH and his family
up here in the Frozen Northlands. That's the part of family that I actually
intersect with regularly. But I have other family defined in many
ways in other locations across the globe. It's exhausting. 

The Daily Challenge for today isn't really doing it for me. It's "Family" and the task is to do something visual that encompasses family. I'm left with decisions I'd rather not make when faced with tasks like that. My family is DH and I. My extended family is a lot of nieces and nephews and their assorted kidlings, as well as my cousin in Colorado. My family of the heart is another Coloradan and her hubby and kidlings (the last of which is getting married this month), and my BFF, Sharon. I'm not even counting my family back on the Rez which extends even farther or the newer re-found family on my mother's side back on the East Coast. So my preference for "Family" is just two - DH and I. It's a lot easier than ring, after ring, after intersecting ring, ad infinitum. 

Artist Pauline Galiana maked collages from
shredded paper. I suppose I could have dome
something like that, but it seemed a waste of
quality time. 

Yesterday's Daily Challenge was another that I blew off. It was to write for ten minutes, then destroy what you wrote without reading it. I always start my day with emails and writing my blog. That's writing for more than ten minutes. I'm not going to shred my blog, though, and I'm not going to fracture it into little bits of cyber coding either. So that's two days of Daily Challenge that I'm blowing off. Oh well, it will give me a few more minutes to shovel the driveway without being rushes. Huzzah! 

Here's hoping you have a glorious day and don't have to shovel too much snow. I'm planning on returning tomorrow for my "day off" which, as usual, has a billion things on my "to-do" list. 

A Cold Day Off and A Haiku On the Fly

Today is my "day off", the first one I've had in weeks. With Christmas and New Year both on Wednesdays this holiday season, and my December filled with a six-day work week for much of the time, I'm seriously in need of a day of laundry and shopping - grocery and sundries. I'm also seriously in need of my Wednesday chat with Aearwen. I'm having withdrawal pangs from that one. We've only been able to talk once in the past five weeks, and for people who usually chat weekly, that's serious withdrawal pangs. 

I know I mentioned my niece Catie's new Australian
Blue Heeler puppy, but I finally had a chance to access
the photo she had sent a week or so ago. Here's the
sweetie guarding the equipment in the changing room at
whatever ice rink my grand-nephew was playing at
that day. Since he's often at games up to seven days
a week, it could be anywhere. Catie's trying to socialize
the dog - get it used to a lot of people. The dog seems
extremely comfortable. 

Yesterday was registration for May/June's annual Bead & Button Show in Milwaukee. I had my eye on three classes and pounced as soon as registration was open. Got all three, so I'm quite happy - two metalsmithing classes and one beading class. There's another metalsmithing class I'm interested in, but my budget only stretches so far, and it's a night class on the day I drive out to the hotel. I'm never at my best for night classes, but I might drop by the class just to take a closer look at the project. 

Yesterday's task for The January Challenge was to make
something from a small, square piece of paper. I decided
to make a pinwheel from the cube paper pad we use at
the shop. I grabbed a couple of highlighters for the
color and a headpin for the joining pin. It twirled just
fine. 

Today we're in the deep freeze, and I'm in a turtleneck, long-sleeved t-shirt and a hoodie, and I'm still cold. I slapped one of my wonderful knit hats on my head to stay a bit warmer. We're only going to have a short span of deep freeze, but of course it would happen when I have to be at Target, the grocer and the office supply company. Nothing like a billion places to go in the cold. At least I've got plenty of gas in the car. 

Today's "The January Challenge 2020" is to write a haiku. Let me see if I can do this on the fly ... 

Cold and shivering
I huddle at my keyboard
Dreaming about spring. 

That'll work. I guess cold can also be an inspiration - LOL. I'm going to cut this short, plug in pictures, and move onward with my day. I hope all of you have a wonderful Wednesday and I'll be back tomorrow - hopefully a bit warmer than single degree temps. Ugh!!!