Life – Page 6 – New England's Narrow Road

Happy New Year, There’s Always Hope

Happy new year to all. I suppose there is always the hope that it will be “happy”. The 31st of December is the birthday of an old friend of mine. I always thought it was the best day of the year to celebrate a birthday. Everyone all over the world is partying so it’s a festive atmosphere everywhere. I’ll have to remember to give her a call later.

As far as hopes for a happy year to come, what does that mean? I’d rather be content, healthy, and settled, which I suppose would convert to being happy. In the new year I hope for an increase in business income. I’ll continue to work on becoming healthier and get off my medicine.

Don’t make resolutions you can’t keep, but maybe making one little resolution would be a good idea. I’ll have to decide what that will be. It will not have anything to do with losing weight! I should blog more, and procrastinate less. I’ve already begun painting pictures, which was a lifelong goal of mine. That could be an easy resolution to keep. Paint more! Working more on my art and get it posted for sale in my store.

Tonight I will watch the Stooges or the Simpsons until I fall asleep relatively early. No champagne, but I will have a glass of Irish Whiskey (or 2). I wish you a fun and safe new year’s eve, and success and health for 2015.

2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Adjusting to The Time Change

Time ticks away and we never seem to get ahead, until Fall, when we gain an hour. Then part of that extra hour is wasted changing the time on all our clocks.

Although the time change has screwed up my sleep even more than it was, I have felt like I had extra time over the past couple of days. I even took an hour off work yesterday to sit and watch The Walking Dead episode I missed. I couldn’t stay awake until 9pm to see it on Sunday night.

Now I go to bed at 8pm and get up at 3am and I guess that is how it will be for a while. I’m glad I don’t have a baby in the house. Their schedules get all messed up, and I remember how tough it was to get my kids on any kind of sleep schedule (they didn’t like to sleep), and then the time change would happen. It was like starting over again.

Now the mornings are brighter, but they will get dark too. Our shortest days are ahead, and that is a tough time. I’ll be going to bed earlier and earlier as winter closes in. It’s a form of people hibernation I suppose.

But nice days are in the forecast for this week, and there are a lot of leaves out there to rake. I see backaches in my future for sure. My workday will have to be cut short so that I am not raking leaves in the dark!

If the weather is not too cold this morning I will go downtown and vote with my daughter and then walk home, while she goes on to work. It should be sunny and bright, and there won’t be many more days for walking. Most of the leaves have blown off the trees, but there are still some beautiful colors on the stragglers.

Today I am happy about the end of political ads and phone calls! Whoo hoo…..

Seasonal Photos of a Rural Life

colorful fall leaves — Autumn Leaf Collection

I collected these leaves while on a walk along a dirt road one day. I used to live in a very rural location and I didn’t own my own place, so I had a lot of time to walk. Fall and winter were always my favorite seasons to take landscape photography around the nearby lake. I walked alone mostly, but sometimes I took my landlady’s dog with me for company. The area was full of dirt roads and paths to follow through the woods. It was fun to find moose tracks (never saw one though) and spot wildlife.

In winter I got out early with the camera to capture the morning sun glinting on the tall pines. When I was a kid I always wanted to be the first one to go out in a new snowfall and make the first tracks. There is just something about a landscape of fresh smooth snow that calls to me!

Although I knew it was not my true home, that area where I lived for a few years made an impact because of it’s beauty. I enjoy solitude, and my rental years near the lake gave me plenty of that. The change of seasons was especially pretty there, and I always looked forward to the leaves changing color in fall. Many of the houses around the lake are seasonal, and are empty during foliage season. During summer the place is buzzing with visitors to beach and boat ramp, but once the kids go back to school the place becomes mostly deserted.

Since I work from home, I could take time during the day and get my photos without any people getting in my way. So here I share some of my photos.