Look Around, It's 2012 Already

Here we are in the first hours of the new year.  I can understand the people who tell themselves that it's just another day, making resolutions should happen anytime and not be saved for a new year, but truly, turning over the calendar to a whole new year seems momentous and, to me, something that should be marked.


I'm sitting here in our office room, the windows to my right looking out on a beautiful Florida sunny day (the internet tells me its 63 degrees but I haven't been outside yet), and at nearly 10am my husband is still asleep after staying up "late" last night.  We cuddled on the couch and watched movies, and at midnight we ended up cozy in bed reading to ring in the new year with kisses and books and a purry kitty at our feet.  We are not yet too old and lame to go out and drink a lot and party to celebrate a new year, but we chose to be quieter this time.


We had a nice Christmas with my mother in Georgia.  She loved the digital photo frame, and I'm already collecting photos for the other memory card to switch out on my next visit.


Over the past week I have been off work, and I set up a little light box/photo studio on a table in the sun room.  I've been having fun taking photos and playing with light and shadow.  Ironically, one of my favorite photos so far was taken not with the new lights but in direct sunlight streaming in the window.


My Aunt Cleo, my father's sister, was a registered nurse.  Back in the 40's when she graduated from college and went to work in a veteran's hospital, she needed a watch with a second hand to count people's pulses.  My father told me that she couldn't find a women's watch that had a second hand, so she ended up getting a men's pocket watch.  She thought it was pretty and it did the job perfectly, and she kept it in the pocket of her uniform, using it throughout her decades long nursing career.


A few years ago Dad gave it to me.

Aunt Cleo was a smart, independent woman who never married.  She bought me lots of books when I was little, and was my very favorite aunt.  She lived next door to us (the term "next door" being relative on a street like the one I grew up on) and always brought chocolate chess pies to Christmas dinners.  She passed away when I was in college, and I still miss her.


I never saw this watch or knew about it when she was alive, but my Dad assured me she'd want me to have it.


"Time, time, time
See what's become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please.
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter."
~ Paul Simon, Hazy Shade Of Winter