Thanks for showing us the way, Martin

I had plans.
And they were good plans.

But life intervened, as life will, and here we are in the last few hours of the long weekend (we celebrate the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. here in the US with a holiday on the third Monday of every January) and I don't have done what I'd planned to have done to show you.

See, I've got this Christmas Club scheme going. It's not too late to join in -- just please leave a comment back on that post -- and anyway here I am in the first month and already just a bit behind where I hoped I'd be. Is it just the nature of Christmas, that no matter what I do I'll always be behind in getting ready for it? I've started sewing (see a picture in this post) and I've got a pretty solid list put together despite some list-anxiety, but it's going to take me a coupla more weeks to get where I wanted to be by now.

Oh well.

I'm in the midst of some very intense and troubling family stuff -- not my own little family here in my house but my wider family. Everyone and everything will ultimately be fine, but it's taking all my time and energy and savings to try to get things where they need to be. I won't say more than that -- partly because everything's going to be ok, partly because it's my nature not to want to get into the family stuff in a public way, and partly because of what could be read here by people I'd prefer not to keep informed. Too cloak and dagger for my taste but there we are.

Let's have some chocolate frogs instead, and see whose card we got this time.