Winter is here

It snowed today. For some reason, this took me by surprise. With errands to run, I had no choice but to clean off the car and relearn how to drive in the snow. And relearn a few other things. Such as; remember your gloves (not the nice ones, the waterproof ones!) and locate the snowbrush/scraper for the car before you are ready to leave. I wasn't the only one surprised by the snow, it seemed as if the road crews (town, county and state) were surprised, as well. The roads were barely plowed and there had been no spreading of sand. What should have been a series of three 15 minute errands stretched into 3 hours of white knuckle driving, while the sun set and it got dark. I didn't realize how stressed I was by the drive until I showered later on and realized that my legs were quivering from having them tensed the whole time.

And there is a perfect image for me for the year. I've gotten through this year of the reordering of my family and universe. I've mourned my Grandmother and accepted the changing of the familial responsibilities. I've made her belongings a home in my home, and have made them my own, in the process. But, just as the driving today was bad enough, but do-able, but then made worse by nightfall, new, small and possibly expected events kept testing my abilities.

After 27 years of holding on to my mothers jewelry (he kept it all in her jewelry box, in a drawer in his dresser), this Thanksgiving, my father decided it was time for me and my sister to have it. Shall we say that is created a new psychological and emotional workload? The week after Thanksgiving, my mother in law came up from Florida for a visit. While I knew that I would do the lions share of entertaining her, DH's work schedule was such that he saw very little of her. And, as a further test of my abilities (patience, empathy, grounding and centering, translating...) we found that my mother in law was without a legal drivers license. So now I can add chauffeur to my list of skills.

All Work (Great or lesser) is personal, whether you are aware of it or not. This year, there was no way to avoid that knowledge.

There is a great deal that I am looking forward to writing about-I've written little to nothing about actual magic is a very long time. But first, I am going to New Orleans for a week. Maybe I will write about that first.