Happy Winter Solstice!

Winter, 2008, wood sculptures by Linda Studebaker

Snow- We're almost snowed in here. There is at least 10 inches of snow on my sundeck and just as much ice and slush on our hilly roads. In between snowstorms yesterday, we did manage to get some friends over for lunch. We were in such a hurry to get them back to Seattle safely, we forgot to serve dessert. Now, I'm stuck (!) with a pound or two of homemade caramel with almonds. Weep for me.

Lists- I'm still making lists and checking them twice. Sadly, the list gets shorter every year, as I've lost most of my senior relatives. How I miss my mother and her sisters. It would be hard to pick a favorite aunt. All of them were funny and loved to laugh. As I am just part Hispanic, for most of my life, I felt like just a partial member of their very special club. In later years, the aunts opened up more. In my last visits, I felt like a full fledge member of the Meraz Women's Club (Oklahoma-California-Missouri). How I wish they could have lived long enough to read the books I based on them.

My Aunt Norah and I pulled one of the last pranks together when I was visiting Lawton. A fellow member gave us the keys to her house so we could feed her cats while she was out of town. While we were in there, we put a life-size cutout of Billy

Ray Cyrus in her kitchen. We put an ex-rated note on his chest. He looked so real, he startled her. She found someone else to feed her cats on the next trip. Ha!

On my dvd- Mamma Mia! Psst! Pierce Brosnan can't sing, but he doesn't know, so don't tell him. No matter. I loved him and Meryl Streep and the rest of the over-forty cast in the movie. If you haven't seen it, get it. It's a wonderful way to celebrate the Winter Solstice. Plenty of blue water and sun. I loved every bit of it.

I'm famous in our family for giving a movie 12 minutes. If it doesn't grab me by then, I'm punching out of it. Carl Sandburg did much the same thing with books. I've read that, when he was traveling around college campuses giving talks, he'd stop by the college bookstore and pick out a book to read. When he got to the checkout counter, he's rip off the first third of the book. He'd tell the clerk to save the rest under the counter. If it was any good, he'd send for the rest. According to the story, he never did.

On my bed table- I'm still reading Lawrence and Zig Zag, with a short pause to read my friend Nancy Covert's new romance, Kaniksu Magic. Books are piling up, and I'm not good at dusting, so I'm going to have to take an afternoon and finish some of the books I've started. Sometimes, I set my alarm for an hour earlier, and read until it's 8:00 AM. As an empty-nester, I can get away with this. With kids, it doesn't work. The minute the alarm goes off, they're hungry, no matter what time it is!

I hope you're having a very Merry Christmas. For my friends who do not celebrate Christmas, I wish you much joy and happiness. Thank you for being a part of my life.