Fresh starts

My dear friend Natalie's birthday is today. If you are reading this, I hope that you will go over to her blog and wish her a happy birthday. You'll be doing yourself the favor, actually, if you haven't been to her blog before, because she's a wonderful writer and great photographer -- you'll like what she's up to.

Yup, still playing with the camera. This was the least-blurry photo I could get of our house last evening (I felt as though my heartbeat prevented me from holding the camera still enough). The huge black shapes looming at the front door are arborvitae gone wild -- they'd be as tall as the roof by now if Ken didn't vigorously trim them back every year. Some years we (well, ok, Ken mostly) string the white lights on those monsters, but it takes a lot more lights, a ladder, and heavy gloves. By the time we decided to do lights this year, there was already snow on the ground so Ken rightfully decided to do the small, bare lilac bushes instead. In New England, the electric candles in the windows at Christmas are just kind of de rigeur. It was warm enough yesterday to melt some of the snow off the bushes in the foreground, but the forecast is calling for another 6 to 8 inches by this time tomorrow, so it'll be all solid white again.

I want to be a better person in 2008 (with the idea being that the new me carries forward from there!). I want to be less judgmental, more forgiving, and I want to figure out how to take the friendliness that's within me (and that seems to come out easily enough online, with friends I've never met) and let it out more easily with the people I do meet, in person. Truth is, I'm pretty socially inept in person; I assume that people have better things to do with their time than listen to me, but the result is that I come across as kind of cold and distant. I don't mean to be that way -- not at all -- but I need to learn how to just relax and be friendly when I get to know people (and not let it take the years and years that it sometimes can for me to relax and be myself, because frankly most people aren't willing to give it that much time). I need to reach out more. I need to be more willing to make mistakes, and to keep trying. I also really, really need to get my house organized and clean up the utter and complete mess that is the craft room/guest room. I need to follow through and finish up projects. Seems like enough to start with, since biting off more than I can chew is also a lingering fault....