I'VE DONE IT... JANUARY 2020

There are no words I can yet share to describe the first weeks of 2020. None. Plenty have put their own tangle of emotions into print. W...

There are no words I can yet share to describe the first weeks of 2020. None.

katiecrackernuts.blogspot.com || summer drought garden

Plenty have put their own tangle of emotions into print. Words of anger, distress, fear, shame, solidarity, even hope, have poured from many. I've seen Facebook comments spitting with rage and read eloquent, beautifully-penned pleas to care for those near and dear.

I know all are valid. Each and every one of us will process this summer over months and years to come. We all have a story to tell: from days of heavy smoke, to searing heat and advancing fire fronts. Of anxiously scouring apps and Facebook for updates, of alarm at a southerly - instead of delight and relief - through to heartbreaking loss. Such heartbreaking loss.

January has passed me by in a haze of work. There's been work to do, so much work. And more to get done.

IN JANUARY:

I WENT TO... The plan is to take a break this weekend and visit a fire-affected community on the mid-north coast. We'll take an #emptyesky and #spendwiththem.

I ATE... Simply, and well.

I OP SHOPPED... Not at all. I know, right?

I READ... To switch off from phones and a constant stream of notifications, I downed tools at the end of each night and picked up a book. This month I started with the last of Nora Robert's Chronicles of The One trilogy: The Rise of Magicks. A distracting read, but a little disappointing in its formulaic plot and ending.

However, Leah Purcell's The Drover's Wife was everything I needed, and more. You know those books that even though it's late at night, you just can't put down? This is that. It's a book you will walk away from knowing you've read something important. Read it.

I MADE... I did have a week off somewhere in the middle of January. It was a week of leave I'd booked and planned to take in December, but it wasn't until two weeks later that I could take it.

When I did, I came home to distressed parents, staying with us after leaving their home to the fate of fires for a third time. Their home still stands - sadly five in their village do not - and when they left us, I picked up an abandoned knitting project, pulled it apart and started knitting a simple cowl in the round. It has a teeny pattern repeat that can be done without thinking too much.

I got about 20cm in before having to abandon it to another frantic fortnight of work, but it was cathartic to rip something apart and start to remake. A crafting metaphor, perhaps, for the times we find ourselves in.

Take care.

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