What a strange picture for Christmas Eve!  I am posting it in utter relief at finding this contraption .An acquaintance lent it to me almost a year ago.  It is a frame for doing rug hooking.  I am rather inclined to “enthusiasms” and took up this very pleasant hobby but like so many other virtuous and constructive activities I have tried my hand at, I abandoned it.  My only justification is doing a bit more writing in my blog and some other scribblings.  Anyway, one of the women in the group ( no jokes about happy hookers please) offered me this thing so I could do my hooking when I went on vacation.  Over the past year I tried to return it to her but we just kept missing each other.  Last week I met the lady in the Museum.  I confess to not having the slightest memory of who she was even after she told me her name.  Such incidents are a bit worrying but I put it down to her being ” out of context”.  Anyway, she mentioned the hooking rack and panic immediately set in.  During this most chaotic and rather ” tender” time of year I was sporadically struck with the utter urgency of finding this damned thing.  I rooted around in unlikely cupboards and even, horrors!  the ” cold room”.   The cold room is a dark and cheerless space full of  abandoned pictures and suitcases where the occasional horrible centipede scuttles around.  I had a faint memory of my middle grandson playing with this contraption which haunted me.  His recent session with a caulking gun yielded results surprising even to him.  The day before yesterday I found half of the pieces and spent a few fruitless moments trying to convince myself that I could actually put it together somehow.  My mechanical skills are a bit weak as some dear friends can testify.  There was a little incident at a gas station. . . But as they say in Irma La Douce. . . .”that’s another Story”. Anyway, I did find the other pieces as I was searching for some obscure Christmas item, in fact.  More joy in heaven over finding the one lost sheep than the ninety and nine, as sone say.

Now, all this searching and scrabbling around in ” things” gave even more energy to my current de-cluttering phase.  I have been visiting the charity depots with surprising regularity lately.  More importantly, it made me think about some useless ideas and assumptions that are rattling around in my head.  Surely it is more important to examine the ” cold room” of thoughts that we all fear to peer into.  There are worse things than centipedes in there.  When I come back from Mexico I’m going to enrol in a philosophy class to try to understand things a bit better.  I ask my readers to call me to task on this.

now to make arrangements to get this damned rug hooking thing out of my house!  Merry Christmas to you all