My New Year

We started renovating a few rooms in our house, well my husband did. He has torn down two chimneys which formed a wall between our loungeroom and dining area. The house is filthy,everything is covered in dust. There are shattered bricks and bits of concrete all over the floor, a hole in the ceiling and scaffolding and tools littering both rooms. I hope with all my heart that no-one decides to visits us in the next couple of weeks, especially people with little kids. WE LIVE IN A CONSTRUCTION SITE!!

I found this 1956 penny in the wall cavity and decided to clean it up and wrap it in copper wire to use as a pendant. Pity I don't know anyone who was born in '56! It would have been great to have found a 1961 coin for myself (it's still all about me) or one for my sisters ('59 or '64). It will look nice though as a focal on a necklace with more copper beads and serpentine or torquoise. On second thought, rose quartz would look great.

My Christmas was spent with our families. I travelled down the week before Xmas for a party with my family. All the nephews (bare one) and nieces were there - some with their partners, my sisters, my parents and an aunty I hadn't seen in years & years. It was good to catch up with them all. My oldest son, Brad, was given a sky-dive for Xmas from his girlfriend and I went to watch that. I had never envisioned watching my first born hurl himself from a plane and plummet to earth. It was exciting and I was grateful that I didn't know any statistics of people crashing to their death on their first jumps. He loved it and swears he is going to do it again. Todd and I drove down on Xmas day to spend the night with his family. It was very relaxing once we got out of all the holiday traffic. I'm not used to driving bumper to bumper anymore and I was over it by the time we got there. A nice glass of wine soon calmed me back down.

New Years eve was very peaceful for me. I thought about the year gone past and the new one coming and what may be in store for us all. I wrote the poem "The Burden of Choice" for a dear friend who lives in Palestine because I was thinking about new year resolutions we make and how we can choose to do or not do something. We take our ability to choose for granted. Todd's band played in town and going on experiences from past years I knew it would be a very late night (or early morning) so I stayed at home watching movies and eating junk food...my kind of night!! Brad went to Byron Bay to celebrate and Matt went to Sydney. Both of them had a ball. Matt rang at midnight but I could barely hear what he was saying...I made out Happy New Year then a chorus of what seemed like 1000 females started screaming and I wished for a second that I was there too.

I hope you all have a great year in 2010 and are successful in whatever it is you want to be successful in.