The "empty days"

People joke about the "empty days" between Christmas and New Years, where no one really knows what day it is or what they're supposed to be doing. Do we go to work? Are we supposed to be traveling somewhere? Why do we even exist? Who knows?

I've been taking advantage of the "empty days" to geek out and do little things here and there. Today, I found a book on marionette-making that I think was included in the back of an old children's copy of Pinocchio that I've had since I was 6 (and haven't been able to find recently *but I know it's around here somewhere*); I've been fascinated by marionettes since I was a kid and always wanted to make one, but never quite have done it. Maybe having this book on hand will kick start a project or something.

In the past few days, I've also bought replacement parts for my drafting compass, which they apparently don't make anymore, finally figured out and wrote Chapter 13 for my novel, and made homemade hot chocolate from a recipe on the side of the Penzeys Cocoa Powder bottle. Yum.

Combine 4 c. milk, 3 TB sugar, 2 TB Natural Cocoa, and a dash of Cinnamon and Vanilla. Heat in a heavy saucepan, top with mini marshmallows.

I skipped the marshmallows. This made about three coffee mugs full of tasty chocolate goodness, but the coffee mugs were all different sizes, so don't take my word on how many it actually serves. There are three people in our house, so for us three mugs was perfect.

Oh, and I've also gone clothes shopping with my Christmas gift card, because I need to update my wardrobe for the job search I'm planning on in January. I hate clothes shopping usually, but I had my daughter to help me out, and it was actually fun for possibly the first time in my life.

So, how have you been? What have your "empty days" looked like?

Hope you have a great New Year, and a great winter holiday of your choosing.

My Current Hope-To List

Longtime readers will recognize that I've made some cosmetic changes to the blog in the past few days (let me know what you think of those, btw); well, I was doing some stuff behind the scenes and had cause to look at a bunch of posts from about 2008 or so.

It was kinda cool, but also kinda depressing.

Cool to see some of the projects and ideas I'd had floating around – but depressing to see how many of those are still in stasis, and more so to see that the things that were bugging me about life in 2008 are still bugging me today, in 2011.  I still need a job.  I still am having relationship issues.  I still question my abilities as a mother, and my value to society.

Like I said: depressing.  It's as if I'm the project that is currently in some kind of indefinite holding pattern.

However, that's not what I want this post to be about.  I want it to be about all the nifty ideas that I've had floating around, waiting to be acted on, and on all the sweet projects that actually have come to fruition in the past few years.

So, here is my current "hope-to" list.  It's not a to-do list because those are depressing and frustrating; it's a list of stuff I hope to get to because it would be nifty if I could.

• Hang-gliding; and once upon a time, you could actually take that for PE credit at Indiana University in Bloomington.
• Marionettes, which have interested me ever since I read Pinocchio when I was about six, and the book had this terrific appendix about them, their history, and how to craft papier-mache heads and the proper way to rig the controls.
• Mosaics.  I have #3 to repair and then 9 more to build to finish that monster of a project
• Oil lamps and
• Silk banners – both of these are for our group campsite at Pennsic, but I've taken a class on oil lamps and they're really really cool.  Cost-effective, safer than tiki and lighter-fluid type things, pretty, and crazy easy to make. The banners would involve learning silk-painting, which I could totally see becoming my Next Crazy Project for a few years, you know?
• Hand-crafted books.  I already know how to do a specific type of limp-binding, and I've even built one full of calligraphy already as part of a group project to make a "scroll" (see previous posts about the accuracy of that name) back in 2003.  I keep thinking of crafting a pair of books with favorite poems in them, to gift to a couple friends of ours.  Making the book itself only takes about 90 minutes, if you have all the right supplies.  Prepping the pages, doing the text and illustrations and such, takes considerably longer.
• Decent, regular work in henna bookings.  I could pay my bills with this if I had more consistent business, but that's a big if.  I really enjoy puttin' the pretty on people, though.  Also, that's not really a "project" like the other things on this list.

See, that's my problem with lists:  I start out with "want-to" and start putting in "should" and "need to".  For instance, right now I need to get a job and should start looking.  The house needs de-cluttering, organizing and cleaning.  I should be downstairs getting a load of dishes going.  Blah, blah, bleah, blah.

Anyway.  Watch this space; I hope to get more calligraphy stuff up this evening – but I do have a gig tomorrow that I still need to finish preparing for.

If any of you have ideas for how I could turn this stuff into a regular job, I'm all ears!