I love to cook but I hate to bake. If I remember correctly, when my kids were little I used to make Pillsbury Slice ‘n Bake cookies for Christmas. For the last few Christmases, my daughter baked and brought cookies, but this year, with little Lex pretty much monopolizing her time and energy, that’s not going to happen. So, am I going to bake? Heh.
Of course not. I went out and bought a big plastic cannister of Christmas-shaped pretzels, got some candy-making chocolate from the craft store, and am making chocolate-covered pretzels, which I like a lot more than cookies anyway.
I sure hope everyone else does!

Some of the women in my (non-blog) life to whom I feel closest are women I’ve met through the men I’ve known. One of them dated a guy after he and I decided to end our three-year relationship. He introduced us at a dance, believing that we had a lot in common. Since then (more than a decade ago), he has gone on to other things and other women, but Joan and I have remained the best of friends.
And (thanks to him-whose-name-is-unmentionable-in-this-blog) now I come upon Laurie Doctor, who seems like someone I’d like to know better. Of course, she lives half-way across the country, so chances are we’ll never meet in person. But her work speaks to me. She creates from a place that I used to know well but have wandered too far from.
While I had been to her website before, I’d never gotten in touch with her. But this time I did, perhaps because the spirit that her work captures has been tapping on the back of my brain for several weeks now. It’s just wonderfully synchronistic that, again, I meet a kindred female spirit through the energies of a decidedly unkindred male.
I had lunch last week with a female friend who is an expressive arts therapist. She and I used to give workshops together (she has the credentials; I just have the chutzpah and a sense of the theatrical). She’s invited me to pick up this spring where we left off a couple of years ago and join her and her new business partner in presenting a series of workshops on “conscious aging.” I would like to do that, although a lot depends on how my mother is doing.
One door closes (dancing) and another door opens.
Meanwhile, I just joined the local Kripalu center and enrolled in a Caregivers workshop as well as a meditation session and an expressive arts day that my friend is facilitating. I noticed that they offer a Yoga for Seniors at an time late enough in the morning for me to actually be able to make. I’m thinking about it.
The solstice is on December 22. Laurie Doctor says that she’ll be getting together with some of her female friends to celebrate. I used to do that, and I’d create a ritual that would honor the power of our circle of women. These days, my circle of women has lost its shape, and we won’t be getting together until after the New Year. So, I hope that Laurie doesn’t mind if I send my spirit out into the Rockies to join her and her circle. Women. Circles. Cycles. Celebrations. As much as I love men (with the exception of one or two), they’re just not women. Heh.

Yesterday, Jeneane remembered her amazing great-grandmother, and today I add my own remembrance in a comment to her post on Blog Sisters. I guess it’s the holidays.
I took my mother to a Polish church yesterday afternoon to sing “koledy,” Polish Christmas caroles. I avoid going to church every chance I get, but I have a feeling that this could just be my mother’s last Christmas, so I did the right thing.
I remember as a child I used to love to go to our big cathedral-like Polish church in Yonkers at Christmas time — the lights, the candles, the music, the incense, the crowds packed into the pews, everyone regaled in Christmas finery. I still love the smell of that incense, and years ago I bought some frankincense to see if I could duplicate it. Nope. (Maybe my sense memory has something to do with the scent of human sweat combined with that unique incense. Could be.)
My childhood church had a great choir, and they indeed sounded like a choir of angels when they sang the koledy. The church we went to yesterday was sparsely filled, the choir meager. There was no incense. I tried to let my awareness drift back in time, but my brain was too wired from dealing with my altercation with the previously-posted-about cult personality. But my mother sang right along, happy to be connected to something very important to her. And that’s why I was there, anyway.
On our way out, we picked up some “oplatek,” some of which I’m sending to b!X to keep him connected to his family roots.
I’ll miss my son deeply this Christmas, but we’ll talk on the phone, and I’ll probably cry. And then I’ll hug my grandson and cry some more. And my mother will play some koledy on her Lowry organ and, this time, I might even sing.

Beloved Blogger Gary Turner and his exhausted wife Fiona have brought into the world a lovely baby girl. Welcome, Cameron, to this crazy mixed up world. Blessings on you, little one.