Whoa! (As oppsed to Wow!)

Another first, the last of the year. I would hazard a guess that women are more likely to think about comparisons and numbers : this time last year; this is the fourth year in our new house; where will we be next year? My mother was very good at watching other people work, and making comments. (I'm working on it.) Latterly, after Bill had died, and my father, every year when I took down the Christmas tree, Mom would say brightly, "Well, I wonder who'll be gone this time next year?"

You can't help but remember. Time and events are so inexorable and so irretrievable. A bright, callous question like my mother's does, in fact, make one pause and cherish the present. Whatever is past, whatever the future holds, we have now. Cherish the moment.

Is that a way to start the month? (And end the year?)

Do you like boxes? I'm not taking about plain boxes although shoe boxes are nice, and very useful. In the years before I had a career involving a lot of paper and also before I had a filing cabinet, I used shoe boxes. I wrote a guide for an insurance company to help clients keep track of receipts, expenses, insurance, investments, income - all that stuff. I called it The Shoebox Guide and it was very popular because I'm not the only one who stores mementos and other essential files in a shoebox. I save useless boxes, too, until I find a use for them. I have several pretty ones right now, empty but waiting. It bothers me to throw away a paper clip box because they are so cute. They would make lovely dollhouse furniture.

Years ago I made a darling 6-room dollhouse with 3 orange crates as the building, 2 rooms to a box. That was in the days when orange crates were made of wood. It was in the summer and I was visiting my grandparents. I canvassed all my neighbours (mostly relatives) for bits and pieces to help me decorate the rooms: crystal beads for a chandelier, remnants of cloth for upholstery, curtains and carpets and - most useful of all - matchboxes (for wooden) matches, the kind with the sliding sleeve, large enough to make a sofa or a bed for tiny inhabitants. That was long before Mary Norton wrote The Borrowers (1952). When I read that delightful book, and the series that followed , I really empathized with the small creatures and their borrowing habits, adapting odd, small objects to their uses.

The point of my tangent was the box, the match box. Did I mention that I love boxes?

I feel pretty strongly about baskets, too.