For a brief moment I was seized by the fear that I would someday take the ultimate picture of snow falling on trees, and that I would have to stop.

Then I realized; like snowflakes, no two storms are alike. I can go on forever.

Avert your eyes, if you must.

I just realized I’ll probably be trapped! trapped, I tell you! in the house with Daughter and nobody will be posting because of some bizarre tradition! What will I do?

Knit mittens, headband, socks, sew birdies, rearrange living room, straighten out basement, set up sewing machine and drawing table, cook soup, cook chicken, bake gingerbats and spicecake. Eat. Sleep. Shovel snow. Read some of the ten or so books out from the libraries.

Maybe I can get my blood pressure down.

Oh, shoot! I forgot about the traditional christmas movies; Diehard, Lethal Weapon, Trading Places, Blade Runner (which gets put in here because I got all five versions of it for the holiday one year – maybe we will compare and contrast). There’s some candy floating around too. I have spare toilet paper; there will be no need to leave.

The winter is starting to look better and better.

Sing it with me! Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

Solstice. Say your prayers, sacrifice whatever (I think ritual animal sacrifice is specifically a no-no in my lease – bummer, man).

Don’t stare too long into the blackness. The eyes are windows into the soul. You might get frostbitten, or boil away into the emptiness.

I’m sticking up links to things I’ve stumbled on.

(Wouldn’t it be great if life was set up so that it was much longer and so unscary that we could wander off finding things? Spend a month or two trying this thing, or that, and if it worked, sticking to it until it was time to wander off again, or scurry back home? Of course, following this impulse to wander out and try things might be why I am where I am today, which is, um…)

Anyway. Paperiaarre. Little matchbox poem things. I know absolutely nothing about her, or how I found her.

For me the internet is populated by women, making things. Everyday life is spent on shore, but at night I sneak away in a glass-bottomed boat to look at all the beautiful creatures living their lives under the water. I want a better balance.

Tis the season, and all.

You know. Christmas movies. Movies in which things go bang. Think Diehard. Or A Clockwork Orange. I saw that one on christmas eve one year, which I suppose should lead to a discussion of the movie theater association forcing theaters to be open 364 days a year, because, suck man, people should have days off. And seeing Alan Page come in (now assistant justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court but then defensive lineback for the Minnesota Vikings back in the good old days of real football), and watching the (sparse) crowd in the theater part like the Red Sea to let the really big man come through. My oldest brother had Boom Boom Brown as a substitute teacher once. He said the class was awful quiet that day.

Anyway. Life sucks again, and I’m really tired of turmoil being the driving force in my life, and so on, so we’ve been watching Grosse Pointe Blank over and over again. (Wait. That needs at least one more “and over.”) We’re going to skip over the thing where I told Daughter that I thought “Mirror in the Bathroom’ was an awesome song to murder somebody to, especially with a pen after a kick-butt fight, and move on to the thing with the C4 in the microwave.

There’s a mercury switch in the wiring, and when the microwave turntable quits turning, contact is made. Boom.

Hey, kids! only 11 days till the shortest day of the year! Keep popping that D3, and we’ll get through! (And hey. D3. C4. I see a connection…)

It’s cold this morning.

Still above zero, barely.

Jackson Pollack .org Click the link to do this;

I may be gone for a few days.

I know people out on the west coast. They in turn know people, who ended up in Norway.

With all the stuff that went down out there towards Seattle, my people were emailing their people. Those people sent my people an email. It goes like this;

Yes, we have seen this tragic story. I follow the news, US and world, very closely and this story is being fully covered nationally and somewhat internationally. It is a tragedy for the individuals, their families, the police force and the community.

Over the past two weeks I have exchanged emails with a friend. She and her family have lived not far from the scene of the tragedy for decades and are active in the community. This tragedy is impacting her very hard. One of the victims was a classmate of her son.

My friend’s grandmother was born in Norway, so she could return and easily become a citizen. She has been asking me many questions about our life here and what Norway is like. One of the issues she asked a lot about is crime and specifically about homicide rates and prevalence of handguns. Norway has the lowest homicide rate in Europe and one of the very lowest in the world, according to Wikapedia. So far in the 18 months we have been in Bergen, population 250,000, there has been only one homicide. The police, except for the equivalent of SWAT teams, do not carry guns, or even mace. A friend of ours was in the Norwegian Military Police and he never was issued, or allowed, to carry a gun or mace.

Amazingly, you do not even see aggression, verbal or otherwise, expressed by anyone. We have yet to see one act of aggression by one person toward another not on the roads, in crowded areas, in long lines, toward kids or by kids. When you see parents treat kids with incredible patience, for example ALWAYS walking down a street at the pace of the three or four year old rather than the child being dragged at the pace of the parent, it helps to understand the origin of the amazing patience/tolerance adults show toward each other.

Another amazing phenomena, related to aggression, is that children do not have temper tantrums. We have yet to see a temper tantrum and I see many kids of all ages with teachers or parents everyday. In fact, I began to talk about this with my Norwegian friends, some being parents, and they did not know what I was talking about. When I explained it in detail, they said no they had never seen or heard of that. WOW!

Quite simply there is a very different culture here with respect to trust in others (a recent survey showed 80% of Norwegians to fully trust others, 10% to trust others most of the time and 10% to sometimes not trust others), honesty and social responsibility. Norway is certainly not perfect, Oslo is having some significant increases in crime as the former Eastern European immigrate population has grown, but it is very different from the US. Young children, elderly and women walk the streets and ride the busses in safety anytime of the day or night. Personally, I have never felt safer in my life.

I hope the US will reach for and achieve such a level of safety, trust and social responsibility. I do not know what it will take to bring these changes. Even the horrific schools shootings have not resulted in any important changes. Still ending the high level of senseless violence in the US must be everyone’s hope. We too find it hard to understand or accept the tragic events in our former home and community. We wish healing for those most directly impacted as well as for the community.

The last two weeks have sucked, but then again, others have it worse. And now work is playing mind games. Ack.

But – in all the brouhaha over the new Twilight movie, has anybody stopped to think about what happened when “A Hard Day’s Night” hit the theatres? I know there are rumors that guys went to see that movie, but I doubt it.

“And then Buffy Staked Edward. The end.”

I suspect real posting will start again some day.

It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on

When I googled this, it came up “River Lyrics.” I like that. I think I found my new photo essay. And whoa! So much for the topic of this post, and being all depressed and moody. Wait a minute – I’m sure I can work myself up into a good funk, if I try.

It all started a few days ago. KmKat had a quiz up – “What Famous Dead Person Are You?” It had a question about your love life. Sheesh. This is something I don’t like to dwell on, Because I Have Been Flamingly Stupid My Entire Life, Thank You, And He Hurt Me, Ow, and I Am A Martyr To Love. And so on and so on… Whatever. It was fun, or interesting, or something. I suspect I might be the sort of person who has to have a dramatic narrative running in her life. Too bad I took it out on “luurrve” all this time instead of art. But, I’m not over.

A side effect of all this getting healthy stuff I’ve been doing this year; this has become the Year of Ripping Things Out and Starting Over. It started small. I cannibalized a hat that I never wore to make a pair of outrageous and funky fingerless mitts. Next I tore out a scarf that I was about a third through because it was just going to be dumb, no matter how hard I tried. Next will be a sweater. My neighbor lady convinced me that it was beautiful! And think of all that Work! And you could do this to it! But in the end it was a sloppy loose sweater, and not at all what I wanted.

I find this attitude astonishing.

No prize for these. No selling a pattern. But I worked out a loose cast-off, they’re warm, and they suit me. Take that, Ravelry.

Now that the deadline for the year is nearly here I’m settling in to negotiate between what I would like to make and what I’ll have time to make. Daughter wants a Jayne hat. I’m going to try out Vista for postcard xmas cards, because that’s what I want to do with my photography anyway. I think I’ll try making these bird ornaments for my support group at work.* Then there’s a possibility of knitting little stockings for some other people – out of worsted weight acrylic, so they will have nothing going for them but The Cute.

I think this is possible in 21 days. Especially if I quit reading political stuff.

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*I probably didn’t tell you about that. All three of us have a dead brother date in the end of September – beginning of October time frame. I was so terrified of this fall, and ended up starting work at 5 a.m. with two people who were just as freaked out by the time of year as I am. It was very comforting to find out I wasn’t a nutcase, but actually just human.