******2015******

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

            I hope everyone sees the New Year as a wonderful chance at love and joy; that we all learn to use our time in the most efficient way for chores and must-do items and in the most relaxed and enjoyable way for love and fun. Let's get things done that are serious and important, but take time to play with our dolls or any other toys we might want to enjoy.

            Let's make opportunities to be with friends and loved ones, to comfort those who have lost something precious to them, and rejoice with those who have gained joy and happiness. Love the loveless, grieve with those who mourn, rejoice with those who are celebrating life and love and comfort those who are down and out. Give to those who have nothing. Encourage those who have everything to share with others as an act of gratitude for what they have been given. 

            Let's make this a year of sharing everything we have with everyone we know and those we meet that we don't know. Encourage those who feel hopeless. Prod those who have everything and clutch it to their bosoms to make them see they will only gain by sharing, and will only lose by holding on to what they have too tightly.

            Let's comfort those who are heavy-laden, sharing their burdens. Make this a year of joy and gladness for any and everyone with whom we come in contact. We have so little time here. We have so much we could accomplish if we used that time in love and sharing and comforting and helping. 

            Let's do it, okay? I wish you all a productive, wonderful, vigorous, loving year of understanding, forgiveness and joy.

Peace.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas...

and I'm doing my usual, which is nothing much. My next thing to do is go sing in the choir at the Christmas Eve service. I gave up trying to do any kind of "show", i.e. decorations and such like, when I grew up enough to have my own apartment. As long as my folks were alive and well, we did Christmas stuff there. Then we didn't after they got very sick, with my Mom taking the lead there and my Pop following soon after. When I had lost them both, every attempt stopped.

Now, I have a husband who isn't a Scrooge but he doesn't do anything about the actual reason for Christmas, so I don't feel obligated to work myself into a tizzy... and so music at church is my big emphasis for the season, and Easter likewise. It feels better to me than a huge buying engorgement at the public trough.

So, I am writing to you all just before I leave to go to the warmup of the choir before the service tonight. Then tomorrow, the Man and I will eat our lovely vegan meals in a festive mood and go for a walk.

Therefore, I will say have a Blessed Holiday Season, however and whatever you do or don't celebrate in whatever way you do or don't—and a wonderful 2015 to you all. I hope for us as human beings that we will drag our governments, kicking and screaming no doubt, into peace and tranquility with love and kindness reigning, not only to our own kind, whatever that may be, but to every living thing on our planet.

Peace, Joy, and Love to all—so may it be.

Okay, I did finish my "novel" — that is, I completed the 50,000 word minimum required to "win" (everyone who did the minimum at least is a "winner")—I did that plus some 3,000 more! I am still amazed. But the thing is not much more than just that: a bunch of words run together with a story embedded therein. Somewhere. I think. It is a VERY ROUGH draft. But it is a beginning. It will be a long slog to finish it. Then polish it. Then revise it. Then polish it again. Then... and like that. There is a winner banner and a winner button (see above) that I am entitled to use to prove I attempted and then completed this amazing feat (for me) of concentrated writing (and that's all it signifies, by the way, so don't be impressed—yet!). At least my husband likes my story enough to be enthusiastic about it. I think he was shocked that I actually stuck to it and did it! This may suprise you all as well, but I often take a great long time to finish what I start...I know you might find that hard to believe....heh heh....five plus years to get a blog underway and still not fulfilling its stated purpose!

As I work on the "novel", I'll have to take a lot of Dolly Breaks! (Shocking fact: I do not drink coffee. I am a Tea-Totaller! So it's a Dolly or Tea I'll be Breaking with...see?) 

Anyway, now that I have done the month of November attempting to begin to start to become a novelist I will dub the month of December as Dolly Diva Design Month. Note the alliteration? It's a sign! It will happen. Just like I did all 50,000+ words. I hope. We'll get this show on the road, or sink beneath the flood of boxes of dollies struggling to be free. I will do dolls to rest my brain from all that word-smithing. So coming up? DoDiDeMo! Get it? Great! Right?

Check back here now and then and if you're on any fashion doll e-mail list, check in there now and then as well. Stand by, cross your fingers and let's see what happens!

DoDiDeMo, here we come!....