Midwinter

The cards are done. For the first time since I was about nine, I have made some linocut prints, which were fun. A basic starter kit for school children got the job done, in an authentically shonky home-made style. I’ll get some sharper tools, though, before I do it again.
The advent calendar, a wooden one we have had for years, has been dug out of the cupboard and filled with chocolate coins that apparently no one is too old for. The tree is on hold for now, because this year we have a half-grown cat. A gleeful and acrobatic predator, she has already murdered a pair of curtains, swarming up them like a pirate until sharp claws and gravity reached their inevitable conclusion; and no one likes decorating the tree enough to redo it every day, so it can wait.
We are all dragging ourselves through the last two weeks of darkening days before the holidays, yawning and cursing Thomas Edison for keeping us from the hibernation our creature-selves are longing for.