My birthday was this week. I love having birthdays. Weird? I like to celebrate. Everything. I was lucky enough to be with my daughter and her family for my birthday this year.

My daughter-in-law made me this shirt! Her birthday is this week too and my granddaughter’s was last week. Next year we should have matching shirts!

Highlights of 2022

We got a new grandson. Born May 26th. And now he is crawling. Love this age! I don’t get to spend enough time with him since he lives in DC but we have visited several times.

I didn’t break any bones! Winner!

We did a lot of good works for our community.

I made 6 quilts in 2022. The last few months have been spent working on the Dinosaurs quilt from Elizabeth Hartman. Even my husband who usually has no clue what I’m working on in my creative cave, walked through the other day and said “still working on all those little bits and pieces” guess I’ve commented enough about this quilt that it got through his man bubble.

I made a lot of totes. And gave them all away. Oh wait, I did sell one! For way less than I should have. But. I have a hard time selling my stuff. Because it must be perfect.

Miss Kitty passed. (Not a highlight) I have to admit that I had a really hard time with losing her. She claimed me back in May 2021 and then died less than a year later. I still get weepy when I think of her. Seriously the prettiest and sweetest cat ever.

I was in no hurry to get another pet but then a friend’s daughter had a litter of kittens she needed to find homes for. And one was a calico. And now I have psycho kitty. Never a dull moment with Athena. Only unbreakable ornaments went on the Christmas trees this year. And all holiday decor has been rearranged daily according to her tastes. My daughter said I only have two more years to wait for her to settle down. Not sure I’ll survive that long!

Did I meet my 2022 goals?

I really didn’t make goals so YES, I did! I wanted to do less but more. Less dumb self imposed deadlines and more travel, music, reading….fun.

One of my hopes for this year was to cut back on my many responsibilities in the community. We hired a young woman to take over my volunteer job at the Old Homosassa Learning Center. I still help teach ukulele in the after-school program plus organize the sewing group. But I no longer have management responsibilities for either the adult or kid programs. Such a relief! And it helps that we hired a wonderful person that I care about very much. She reaches out to me when necessary but is really working on taking charge. I like what she has done.

I also wanted to read more books. I definitely read more books than in previous recent years. The last book I read in 2022 was “Shrines of Gaiety” by Kate Atkinson. She wrote one of my very favorite books “Life After Life”. She does such a great job with her characters and this one was fun to read but not as good as “Life after Life”. In 2023 I plan to read her first novel from 1995, “Behind the Scenes at the Museum”.

Most of my traveling in 2022 was to visit family. A good thing!

I wanted to play more music and my acoustic group “Two on Tuesday” performed in April. To an audience. I think we were pretty spectacular. But then we kind of fell apart. Our bass player, who was in a real band that got paid real money until Covid, moved back to California to rejoin her former group and is now performing constantly. Kind of took the heart out of our little group. Hoping we get back together in 2023. Because it’s fun!

On the other hand, the uke group has been performing quite a bit. We played in the Shrimpapalooza parade, performed at the Homosassa Arts, Crafts, and Seafood Festival, and entertained three times at our local Assisted Living facility. We also “rang the bell” for the Salvation Army at Publix.

And there is so much more. But that’s it for this post!