Wrap it up.

January is ending and tomorrow will be the start of Project Spectrum. So today is the perfect time to show you my latest project. A pair of 'Allo Gov'nr mitts for me. I started them a while ago and since I lost the mitts my grandma made me the other day (I think I know where they are though), I need something else so it's time to finish them.

Yesterday's pictures were:
1. Pot half full (with Jefferson's theme song in background), 2. Seen on a table in a local coffee store.

3. Cold tree. Although since the scarf is in the mail on it's way to the Red Scarf Project, lost could still happen. 4. Both. The Mr. was supposed to put those in the shed for me since he has the only key, but they never made it and once that snow started, I thought they looked quite nice. After all, even ancient artifacts start out as someone's junk. 5. Both. I was standing on the front step, in the cold wearing a sweatshirt, with my arm twisted around in front of me holding the camera at odd angles trying to get a good picture of the falling snow. The neighbour pulled into his drive, got out of the truck watched me for a minute then shook his head and went into his house. He saw me take this picture too. I'm pretty sure he thinks Prince Valium and I are tight.

6. Found on my camera. Look around you. Sometimes you can get some pretty crazy pictures out of just changing the angle you see things from. The lumps are the part that the plow left on the bank in front of our car. I held the camera near the ground, pointed it up the bank and started taking pictures. Since I can't see the screen on the camera, I just change the angles slightly in between pictures and sometimes you get a gem from the ordinary around you.
Like this one of the snowbank at the end of the drive. Try it, you just may find something beautiful out of the stuff around you.


Time for a quick check on my things to do list I had posted at the end of December.

Ten Things to do in 2007

1. Carry my camera everywhere. Check. So far, so good.

2. Quit wearing men's sweat pants in public. Not even to the mailbox or the grocery store. Giant Sorel's don't disguise what they are. Check. So far so good.

3. Start a knitting/crafting group. I've started on the poster to put on bulletin boards around town.

4. Get outside more often. Unless it is really cold or really wet. Don't feel like it isn't an excuse since I never seem to feel like it. Utter failure. Too dang cold. Try again this month.

5. Keep up with the charity knitting. Check. So far, so good.

6. Try harder not to put things off until the last minute. This would ensure that I am on time more often. Utter failure. I've been late for nearly everything this month. Try again.

7. Quit glaring at things and waiting for them to do themselves. Sitting on the couch knitting and getting annoyed at the laundry and dishes for not doing themselves hasn't worked thus far, it probably won't work in the future either. Sort of check. I've done things more often before knitting. Now to do them more often before blog-surfing.

8. Try to bake a bit more often. Check. I've made a few muffins and cakes already this month and have some bananas sitting on the counter ready to go now.

9. Try to exercise once in a while. Utter failure. Try again. I've been surfing around looking for something quiet to do while the children nap. I think it's going to have to be yoga since that looks relatively quiet and I've done a tiny bit before. We've also been looking around for a good inexpensive treadmill.

10. Start knitting small gifts now so I have a backup stack of stuff for birthdays and Christmas. Utter failure. Try again. I've been too busy working on Swap stuff. I'm going to keep my swaps to one at a time and just small ones for a while. That ought to help a bit.

5 out of 10. Not bad. If I did everything all at once, I wouldn't have anything left to do for the rest of the year. ;)

I'm pretty proud of the quitting smoking thing too. I smoked for nearly 15 years before quitting. It took me four years to cut back from a 50 cigarettes a day habit to 2 or 3 on a day off and 5 or 6 on a work day. I tried quitting many times in the 15 years, but I always went back and rarely lasted for a full day since there was always an excuse.

It wasn't until I began to see how much I was being controlled by cigarettes that I really began to not like smoking. As soon as it stopped working for me, I was in a place where I could put them down. Then the Minister of the Northwestern Health Unit decided it was time for all Ontarians to be able to work in a safe and healthy environment and decreed that he was going to make sure that there would be no smoking inside anyone's workplace and that meant restaurants and bars too. I saw how crazy everyone was getting over this and wondered why my right to smoke should be taking precedence over someone's right to be healthy. Think about that this way, if someone walked into a restaurant with a pot full of hot tar, they would be told to go put the pot outside since no one would want to smell it and the fumes aren't very healthy for you.

Ontario had already kicked smoking out of government buildings, industrial work sites and offices. Why were these people worth more than the people in the service industry? Are they more expendable? I personally don't think so. I think every legitimate job is important. Pick any job and think about what life would be like without it.

Then came the cold. I was so tired of being cold. My workstation at the mill was ranging from -35*C to -43*C for two months. I was in that for 10 hour workdays and I just wanted to be warm on my breaks not wandering out to the smoke shack for 5 minutes before heading to the lunchroom. I didn't want to go outside on my days off either. It was time. I waited until I had five days off on the rotation schedule and hibernated. For three months I did nothing but go to work and go home. When I was at work I ate in the filing room to avoid as many people as possible and kept to my workstation.

In May, I found out I was pregnant and that was the end of it. You can't tell your children not to smoke if you are. They will think you are a hypocrite and begin to lose faith in you. I wanted my baby to think well of me and I definitely didn't want him/her to be stuck smoking.

Now it's time to wrap up this saga and get on with the laundry. Just remember, no matter the habit/addiction, if you make it stop working for you, you will lose interest in doing it. If my Dad can quit biting his nails at 46, and a friend's father can quit drinking at 68, then it must not be too late for anyone to change any habit.