Woo hoo! My Adventures in Chalking article is a Backwash Gold Choice link! There's never a bad time to go chalking.

Tonight I will be making manicotti shells for Thanksgiving. In my family, it's pronounced "mah-nih-GAW-ti". The rest of the non-Sicilian world calls it "man-ih-cat-ies". When I was growing up, our neighbor called because my Mom had made extra. I swear all three of us kids passed the phone back and forth because we couldn't understand what the heck she was talking about. What the heck is a manicattie? I've bowed to saying "motzerella" for mozzerella instead of "mootzadell" like I was brought up with. All I know is it tastes good. linkage: Let's hear it for the Sicilians! Due to an erupting volcano, there may be a new island off the coast of Sicily. Divers have already planted a flag on it with "the hope of claiming it as Italian the moment it rises above the surface."

For the first time ever, my original Christmas cards are for sale! It's for a limited time only, so go take a peek!

Try to use this in a sentence at least once today.... de·fen·es·tra·tion (d-fn-strshn) n. An act of throwing someone or something out of a window. --------------------------------------------------- [From de- + Latin fenestra, window.] I forgot all about this word until I read someone described in a book as a "defenestrator".... that would be a cool thing to add to your job title.

More POSSIBILITIES.... This weekend, I not only found the possibility that I could do fantastic things, a little bit at a time, but I also found the possibility to say "no" was at my fingertips too. That's where I start getting excited about possibility: I can take the chance. Or I can leave it. Or I can twist it so I'm seeing it from another angle to make it into something I can handle on my own terms. Things that seemed overwhelming to me now seem attainable. Coming this week is the possibility that I am actually going to sell my cards online. I thought I couldn't, until I looked at it in a different way. Now instead of being a monumental thing of towering perfection that I had to do a certain way, it can be something simple I do with great love. And if it doesn't work, I can always try it again a different way — the how of it doesn't upset me or stress me. In fact, the whole thing has me pretty darn excited. Possibilities, here I come.

I've had such an extra jolt of something lately that can only be described as POSSIBILITY. The permission to make a change, to go with the flow and see where it takes me, to set goals for myself and actually enjoy trying to attain them. I overhauled a project today almost from scratch and I am 100 times happier with it. I designed another project that is making the clients very happy. (I love when my clients love things, especially when it's something I did!) I took time away from the computer to draw in my sketchbook and got instant answers. They weren't the right ones, but they led me on the path to the right one. It's like the answers are in my fingers and were just itching to get out. I need to spend some more quality sketchbook time just doing some doodles and imagining the possibilities around me. The moon is smiling at me through the window, I'm wearing a butterfly in my hair, and the baby is giving me little wiggles. I'm managing more than my two rows of knitting per day and all of a sudden I feel like there's an aura of creative possibility around me that's so bright I can see it.

"You see, wars are a wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man has started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop him." "But both sides always say that the other side started them." "Of course they do, and it is a good thing that it should be so. At least it shows that both sides are conscious, inside themselves, that the wicked thing about a war is its beginning." ~ Merlyn instructing King Arthur T. H. White's The Once and Future King

I'm feeling lots better about the micromovements: I can combine the two rows of knitting with watching Sesame Street and then everybody wins. :) I also realized that (okay, with a little help from my friends) that (a) pregnancy wears you out, and hey, I am being creative, every single day! I'm creating a baby in here! A very very active one, too; and (b) I maybe can still do the things I planned to do, just not in the way I originally planned. I may not be able to set up my whole online store for my Christmas cards, but I can still send out an email and take orders that way, if I want to go ahead with it. And if I decide that it'll be too much, I don't have to do it and that doesn't make me any less creative. I'm not going to beat myself up any more. Yay for me.

Okay, at last I have an excuse for all my tiredness/forgetfulness. My brain is shrinking because of the baby. So if I owe you a phone call/email/something else, my sincerest apologies. I'm working on it. I'm trying to make lots and lots of lists, and be very kind and forgiving to myself. I can't get half the things done that I want to, or plan to — I'm just too tired. My hope is that more exercise and chipping away at my list bit by teeny bit is going to help in that regard. I want to work on my website, finish the baby's webpage (you knew that was coming), and get Christmas stuff done so I don't have to get stressed out about it. I'm trying to knit a little bit every day (like SARK's micromovements) so that I can just do little bits and not overwhelm myself, and maybe by March this baby will have a blanket.

Paul and I voted* this morning and then we went out to breakfast with Paul's mom at the diner across the street. We had a printout of the baby pictures (for Mom) with us and we showed them to Carolyn who was at the voting place too. It wasn't long before EVERYBODY there wanted to see them... it was fun! And I got to eat my french toast. (High in protein! And I think the little one liked it — there was non-stop wiggling going on.) *You did vote today, right? Frank Zappa wants you to...