Happy New Year!

I have pretty much spent the day trying to hoe out my office. Last night I spoke of some Cuban customs. I recently finished reading a book on Scottish New Year's customs and ran across the "first footer" tradition. If you're lucky, the first person to cross your threshold is a dark man. The first person to come to our door was my daughter. According to the same tradition, I was supposed to chase her away with a broom as a female visitor is supposed to be unlucky.

Great. What would really be unlucky is if I chased my teenager with a broom. I'd never live that one down. My parents lived for a while in Lillian, Alabama. So, in her email of the day she asked me if I had eaten my hoppin' John (black-eyed peas cooked with ham hocks and collards).

I hate black-eyed peas. I told her that no, I'm a Michigan girl so we had Navy bean soup with Andouille sausage, red peppers, onion and carrot. (Navy beans are grown in Michigan, they are the biggest producer of this type of bean in the US.)

Over on the Quiltart site, everyone has been posting their "word" for the year. While I have been working on the "simplify" theme for the last several weeks, that one was quickly taken up. I don't usually like to follow the leader, so I thought good and long. I decided that my word was going to be "discipline." Discipline in many different forms...to put things away while they were in my hands, to finally finish cleaning out various areas in my house and in my life, getting rid of what isn't useful, or is painful, or just superflouous. Discipline to try to keep what is really important in front of me, discipline in exersize and in art.

Unlike Lemmie who even at a year old can't keep himself from climbing up through the middle of the Christmas tree.