Christmas baking and candy making.

The kitchen is where I feel most at home. I love following a recipe. And I adore tweaking them, experimenting until the result exactly pleases the palate. It's a strange kind of science. 

I've worked on one recipe a day in anticipation of Christmas. Grandmother's recipes, all of them. Three different kinds of spritz cookies and fudge. There's more to come over the next week. And I may need to work on more than one a day. 

Like so many, I feel my heart is strangely disconnected from the expected merriment of the holiday. I definitely feel like I am going through the motions. 

I think about the massacre of innocents in Connecticut, and know my nieces and nephew all attend elementary school, and nothing is safe. Nothing is off limits anymore when one person can choose to systematically end tiny, precious, innocent lives. 

I keep grasping for an explanation even though logic does not factor into the murderer's decision. I want answers, and justice, when those seem to be denied. Logic doesn't factor in there either. 

The world is a beautiful, twisted, ugly, evil, wonderful place. And it's hard to see the positives.

But I work in my kitchen because it's what I can do. Taking pages out of a hymnal to frame seems to help too. 

I'm going to keep looking for the light in a dark place. I hope you do too. 

Coming to grips.

I'm a former corrections officer. I worked in corrections for seven years, ten months, and two days.

And now I am learning how NOT to be a corrections officer, even though I loved the work. Talking to people from a different walk of life, and learning about the things that made them tick--it was important to me. I did my best to treat each person as I would want to be treated.

Now, for reasons completely outside my control, I may have to find a new career path. I don't know where my experience and education are taking me, and a future employer in a bad economy will have to take a leap of faith to hire me, a stranger in a new place. One could say my career path was not aligning with the goals my former employer had in mind for me. One could say a lot of things.

I gained strength I never knew I had, by working as a corrections officer. Mind games and manipulation and all manner of BS actually sound wrong to my ears because of the work. I grew strong enough in my personal life to identify situations that were not working, and try new ones. It's gotten to the point where it's easy to call things as I see them. Despite all that, I know my creativity was stifled every day. I know that my work environment wasn't conducive to feeling energized, or having all be well with my soul.

There was a Lieutenant at my facility, recently retired, who taught many officers under his tutelage, to look for "what's wrong with this picture." It is not until I look back, tonight, that I realize he was not just talking about the living areas for inmates. All I can say, is I learned very well to recognize what's wrong with a picture. And I'm also able to recognize when fixing what's wrong is far beyond my capability.

It's amazing in the midst of all this uncertainty, my soul is at peace.

Once upon a dream...

I've been a shop owner on Etsy for just under two months now. It's wonderful, exhausting, and thrilling all at the same time. But I was trained well, by my grandmother and great-grandmother. I was going to thrift shops at five years old. Thrifting and buying vintage has always been on my radar thanks to those two resourceful ladies. On one hand, it helped train my eye towards loving well made above commercialized, and the makers of the past are certainly where I find my inspiration. On the other hand, my living spaces tend to look like a little old lady should be the one answering the doorbell.

It turns out a talent for singing skipped right over me. But, I got the craftiness. Creativity is everything to me, especially since I can't draw a stick figure...

I'd much rather have the craftiness. And again, I have those two women to thank for it. Sewing, using found jewelry to make art, making quilts and whatever else under the sun... stacks of fabric, old lace, gallon plastic baggies full of jewelry, and what might be the world's best button stash. That's what I remember when I think about my Nana.

Whatever happens, I'm going to do my best to honor a family legacy, and my first, best teachers. The ones who showed me by example.

Thanks to Tzadkiel and sunmeadow for the paisley background! I love it!