Where does the time go? Gosh, it’s mid-January already. In 6 days it will be one month since the winter solstice. The daylight is coming back. I can now leave the former banquet room of the historic Eagle Hotel at 4:00 p.m. and not have to drive in the dark.

The weather remains variable, and this is a nice word for it. How about the weather remains crappy? Now it is close to 40˚ F out and threatening to rain. Oh oh. Rain is a huge complication. But living where we do, up a bit higher than town, we may get snow here.

Kids Kupboard shed at Bugge Park

If it does rain tomorrow, I will take the day off. Yesterday I burned the candle at both ends. I worked late on Shelf Life and then I got up very, very early and resumed work on it. It was interesting, I had to deal with lag time. There was a pause in my thinking before right answers came to me. I could feel this pause and just had to be patient and wait for the right synapses to fire.

What a day. I was going to distribute books but never got to it. Went right to the hotel and passed off books to Kathlene who takes them to the Palmer Senior Center. I then got into this project in which I was relocating fiction; then I left suddenly because otherwise I’d be late for the Palmer Rotary meeting. I left a huge mess, felt as if I had no choice. Actually I did have a choice, which was stay put and clean up the mess.

I returned to the former banquet room and there was Pam, another volunteer. She went off on a tear about the volunteer who left a huge mess. I could have shared her ire; rather, I said it was me. The situation was then funny because being the founder, I can get away with such things.

A huge har har there. I spent a part of the afternoon putting stickers on the price labels of books, something I recently started doing, and I actually enjoyed it. Then I met with the artist in residence – we resumed working on my journal – this is her area of expertise, which is creating journals. I am working on the Bacon Family Family Scrapbook – it is going to be an account of a Bacon Family vacation. I’m not sure where they are going yet, but the important thing is that they are going on a vacation, leaving Alaska (where it’s too cold) and heading to Canada. I’m not sure where they’re going next. Could be a world tour, with stops in some pretty exotic places. They’ll travel by car, bicycle, horseback, and camel.

Just writing about this makes me realize that I have a narrow world view and am geographically stymied. They’re going to have to have passports and Megan Bacon is going to have to have all her accessories.

It feels like a Friday because I am thinking that tomorrow, because of the inclement weather, I’ll be getting the day off.

Next: 16. 1/16/26: Overwhelmed